W5 Attention

Question 1

Perceptual Experience in response to a stimulus event

Answer 1

response of the whole person (the information provided when your sensory receptors are stimulated, your final perception depends on who you are, whom you are with, and what you expect, want, and value)

Question 2

Qualitative measurements of perception =

and why it’s important

Answer 2

Say what you see or feel

Important in practice, given that perception is not reliably objective (i.e. perceptions of pain will not always ‘make sense’ from a medical perspective, but such self-reports are important nonetheless)

Question 3

Quantitative measurements of perception =

Answer 3

Absolute thresholds: the minimum intensity required for the senses to perceive stimulation, at least half of the time.

Question 4

Examples of Quantitative measurements of perception (absolute thresholds)

Answer 4

• Vision: a candle viewed from 30 miles on a dark, clear night
• Hearing: A watch ticking from about 20 feet away in a quiet room
• Taste: 1 teaspoon of sugar dissolved in 2 gallons of water
• Smell: 1 drop of perfume diffused around a small house
• Touch: The pressure of the wing of a fly falling on your cheek from about 0.4 of an inch

Question 5

Subliminal priming

Answer 5

presenting stimuli at speeds which do not allow for conscious recognition of the target (approx. 14ms)

Question 6

When presented with affective (positive and negative) stimuli, individuals are able to guess, more
accurately than chance would predict, the valence
of

Answer 6

negative stimuli => ppl are more prepared for negative events

Question 7

Factors Affecting Perception

Answer 7

• degree of interest
• external stimuli
• ideas

Question 8

Inattentional blindness

Answer 8

phenomena whereby foveally presented changes are not detected by individuals

Question 9

Attentional Biases: attention is a limited resource -

Answer 9

• Focusing attention on one stimulus reduces yourcapacity to focus on others.

• Attention, therefore, is often distributed towards ‘concern-related’ cues.

Question 10

Attentional Biases

Answer 10

• attention is a limited resource
• addiction
• links with emotion
• motivation

Question 11

Attentional Biases: links w/ emotions

Answer 11

If the concern-related stimuli activate memories and thoughts of negative stimuli, this could have negative effects on health and health behaviour

Question 12

Attentional Biases: Addiction

Answer 12

Drug and alcohol dependent individuals are distracted by drug-related stimuli: they find it hard to ignore and disengage from them

Question 13

Attentional Biases: Motivation

Answer 13

Motivations to attain a certain goal may increase attendance towards goal-related information
• a patient searching for “cures”

• Conversely, this could also lead to individuals not attending fully to information which is undesirable
• the patient being told that the “cure” is highly unlikely to work, and may even have adverse consequences