w3

Question 1

what is attention

Answer 1

a resource that you distribute

Question 2

why is attention necessary

Answer 2

the amount of information coming down the optic nerve ar exceeds what the brain is capable of fully processing and assimilating into conscious experience

Question 3

how does attention help the brain to process stimuli

Answer 3

Attention reduces this information overload and determines what we perceive

Question 4

what is inattentional blindness

Answer 4

We overestimate how
much of the world we are
actually aware of- even very salient (i.e.
attention-capturing) things can be missed

Question 5

can inattentional blindness be induced in healthy patients?

Answer 5

yes easily

Question 6

what affects inattentional blindness

Answer 6

• Occurs more frequently if
  the display is transparent
• Depends on the difficulty
  of the task. The more the
  primary task occupies
  attention, the less likely
  they are to see the
  gorilla/umbrella

Question 7

what study provides evidence for inattentional blindness

Answer 7

Simons & Chabris, 1999
- video style either opaque or transparent
- counting task either hard or difficult
- watch teams passing a ball and have to count passes, miss that a gorilla is in the video

Question 8

what does the central capacity theory suggest

Answer 8

attention is a single central capacity that can be used flexibly, the single pool is shared between multiple tasks

Question 9

what is the attentional blink

Answer 9

We can make something invisible by
showing it to people very quickly after
showing them something else that is
important to them

Question 10

key ingredients of the attentional blink:

Answer 10

– Rapid visual stimuli (at ~10 Hz)
– Participants asked to look out for
TWO targets and report if they saw
them at the end of each trial
– The first target is referred to as T1,
and the second target as T2
– Masks (i.e. distractors) need to follow
T1 and T2 for the effect to work

Question 11

what happens when your brain accesses the meaning of almost any stimulus

Answer 11

we see a negative event-related potential, called the N400

Question 12

what does the N400 reflect

Answer 12

cognitive processes related to accessing the meaning (semantics) of a stimulus

Question 13

what can N400 be used for

Answer 13

a sign (or marker) that someone’s brain is processing meaning, without them
telling us with their behaviour

Question 14

what did Luck (1996) find

Answer 14

even when attentional blink occurred, there was an N400 after T2, meaning it was unconsciously processed

Question 15

what does interference theory of the AB (Shapiro, 1994) propose

Answer 15

• T1, T2 and their masks are all encoded into a temporal buffer
• The AB is competition for retrieval among all items in short-term
  memory

Question 16

what evidence is there for the interference theory to explain the AB

Answer 16

Isaak (1999) reported that the AB increases with increasing
numbers of task-irrelevant competitors (distractors)

Question 17

how does a unified model explain the AB

Answer 17

• Due to the mask following T1, increased attention is required to
  process T1.
  – This leaves less attention for processing of T2, which leaves T2
  vulnerable to decay or interference from distracter

Question 18

what is the cocktail party problem

Answer 18

A familiar voice is easier to pay
attention to AND easier to ignore

Question 19

what did Cherry (1953) find

Answer 19

Unattended auditory information is processed to a lower level of complexity than attended information

Question 20

what goes into the sensory register according to Broadbent’s (1958) Theory

Answer 20

parallel input

Question 21

what happens after input into the sensory register in Broadbent’s (1958) Theory

Answer 21

Inputs are then filtered on the basis of its physical characteristics
– Filtering prevents overloading of the limited capacity mechanism
– Inputs remaining in the buffer after filter are available for later [semantic] processing

Question 22

who proposed attention as late selection

Answer 22

Deutsch and Deutsch (1967)

Question 23

what does attention as late selection propose

Answer 23

All stimuli are fully analysed
– The bottleneck occurs late,
before the response
– The most relevant stimulus
determines what response is
made

Question 24

what does Treisman (1960) leaky filter propose

Answer 24

Unattended information is attenuated/filtered after the sensory
register

Question 25

what is covert attention

Answer 25

Sighted people can pay attention to a part of space that they aren’t
directly looking at

Question 26

what does Posner’s endogenous system involve

Answer 26

Controlled by the individual’s intentions and expectations
Involved when central cues are presented
Top-down

Question 27

what does Posner’s exogenous system involve

Answer 27

Automatically shifts attention
Involved when uninformative peripheral cues are presented
Stimuli that are salient or that differ from other stimuli are most likely to be attended
Bottom-up

Question 28

what does attention as a spotlight mean

Answer 28

Endogenous attention is a limited
resource that we distribute

Question 29

what is feature search

Answer 29

Target has a unique feature that is not shared by other items in the display

Question 30

what is conjunction search

Answer 30

Target has no unique feature that is not shared by other items in the display, making visual search more difficult

Question 31

when is reaction time slowest

Answer 31

many distractors, conjunction search

Question 32

what did the feature integration theory say

Answer 32

• Perceptual features are encoded in
  parallel and prior to attention
• If an object has a unique perceptual
  feature then it may be detected
  without the need for attention
• If an object shares features with other
  objects, then it cannot be detected from a single perceptual feature and spatial attention is needed to search all candidates serially

Question 33

what are the stages of visual search according to feature integration theory

Answer 33

• object in front of you
• pre-attentive processing of visual features
• focused attention to bind features
• perception of object

Question 34

what are illusory conjunctions according to FIT

Answer 34

When focused attention is absent

Question 35

what evidence is there against FIT

Answer 35

FIT argues that an object is only an object if it is attended to, however negative priming shows semantic processing of unattended stimuli

Question 36

strengths of FIT

Answer 36

• An important contribution to
  explaining what happens within the
  attentional spotlight
• Influenced thinking on a variety of
  topics from early sensory encoding to
  later attentional control

Question 37

weaknesses of FIT

Answer 37

• Doesn’t explain why the similarity of
  distractors is influential
• Neglect/Extinction patients have
  problems with both conjunctive and
  single-feature targets

Question 38

what does guided search theory suggest about real world search

Answer 38

• In real world search,
  people usually have
  expectations of where to
  find certain things
• Prior knowledge can make
  search more efficient

Question 39

how does guided search theory differ from FIT

Answer 39

Unlike FIT, where processing moves from parallel (pre-attentive) to serial (attentive), Wolfe (1998) assumes a simultaneous mix of serial and parallel strategies for visual search

Question 40

according to guided search theory, what do early pre-attentive processes produce

Answer 40

an activation map, where each item in the
display has its own level of activation

Question 41

other name for guided search theory

Answer 41

dual path model

Question 42

is dual path model top-down or bottom-up

Answer 42

Combines top-down and bottom-up
processing for efficient search