Visual Attention Flashcards
What is attention?
The process which results in certain sensory information being selectively processed over other information
What is overt attention?
When you move your eyes from one place to another to focus on a particular object or location
What is covert attention?
When you shift your attention without moving your eyes
What was Cherry’s listening experiment?
Used dichotic listening to present stimuli in the left and right ears
Participants had to focus on one ear and repeat what was being said out loud
What were the results of Cherry’s listening experiment?
Participants could shadow a message in the attended ear but couldn’t report on the other ear
What is dichotic listening?
Presenting different stimuli in the left and right ears
What is shadowing?
Repeating words as they are heard
What is the cocktail party effect?
The ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli
What is Broadbend’s model of attention?
Messages enter a filtering unit that will then let the attended message be detected
What was Michael Posner’s precueing experiment?
Does paying covert attention to a location improve a person’s ability to respond to stimuli presented there?
Used precueing
What is spatial attention?
Attention to a specific location
What is the precueing method?
Participants look at a + in the display
An arrow appears to show which side the stimulus is likely to present on
Press a key as fas as possible when target square was shown
What were the results of Posner’s precueing experiment?
Participants reacted faster in a detection task on valid trials than on invalid trials
Information processing is more effective at the place where attention is directed
What is Anne Teisman’s feature integration theory?
There is a preattentive stage, then a focused attention stage, and then perception
What was Teisman’s experiment?
Participants asked to report identity of black numbers first and then what they saw in each location of the shape
Numbers were correct but not shapes, generally
What is illusory conjunction?
When features of objects combine
What is the preattentive stage?
Features of an object are analyzed rapidly and un-consiously
Features exist independently of each other
What is the focused attention stage?
Attention becomes involved and conscious perception occurs
What is binding?
Individual features are combined
What is visual search?
A procedure where we look for an object among a number of other objects
What is a feature search?
Look for a target with a single feature
What is a conjunction search?
Search for a combination of two or more features
Takes longer than a feature search
What is fixation?
When you are scanning a scene and pause briefly
What is saccadic eye movement?
Rapid, jerky movement from one fixation to the next