Week 6

Question 1

Performance in divided attention tasks depends on ____

Answer 1

How much attention is paid to each task

Question 2

What experiment did Solomon and Stein perform in 1896?

Answer 2

Asked participants to read a story while transcribing another being told to them, and found that performance increased with practice

Question 3

Why might practice affect dual-task performance?

Answer 3

It decreases the attentional demand for the tasks

Question 4

What PET evidence supports the idea that practising a task decreases attentional demands?

Answer 4

After practising a task, there is less blood flow to the areas affected when first starting a task - blood flow indicates brain activity

Question 5

What is an attentional resource?

Answer 5

A unit of cognitive processing energy that is specific to attentional operations

Question 6

What aspect of tasks can affect task performance?

Answer 6

Similar tasks decrease performance

Question 7

What are structural models of attention?

Answer 7

Models that utilize bottlenecks to restrict the amount of information that can pass through at any time

Question 8

What are capacity models of attention?

Answer 8

Hold that information processing is limited by the number of available resources and not the structure of the selection mechanism

Question 9

Change perception is less likely to occur if ______

Answer 9

The part of the scene that is changing is not explicitly attended to

Question 10

What is the risk of using a head-up display while driving?

Answer 10

Being inattentionally blind to roadway information

Question 11

When does automatic processing occur?

Answer 11

When a task is so well practiced that it seemingly requires no attention to perform

Question 12

What is the difference between automatic and controlled processes?

Answer 12

Automatic processes are rapid, effortless, may be unconscious, and require little attention, while controlled processes are slower, effortful, conscious, and require more attention

Question 13

When is a process occasionally automatic?

Answer 13

When processing normally requires attention, but can sometimes be carried out in the absence of attention

Question 14

When is a process partially automatic?

Answer 14

When processing can be carried out in the absence of attention but is also facilitated when attended to

Question 15

When is a process strongly automatic?

Answer 15

When a process is not facilitated by focusing attention on it or impaired by diverting attention from it

Question 16

Attending to strongly automatic process does not ____, but may _____

Answer 16

• Facilitate performance

- Inhibit performance

Question 17

Why can attending to strongly automatic processes inhibit performance?

Answer 17

Focused attention invokes controlled processing, which can lead to slower, more error-prone performance

Question 18

What is consistent mapping?

Answer 18

When subjects learn a particular mapping of target items to distractor items, because the same mapping is always used

Question 19

Automaticity only occurs with ___ mapping, not with ___ mapping

Answer 19

• Consistent

- Variable

Question 20

What is the multiple-frame visual search task?

Answer 20

The presentation of a series of visual search displays presented 40-800ms apart, and subjects are required to search for a target in each display

Question 21

Fatigue and consumption of alcohol have a greater effect on ____

Answer 21

Variable mapping tasks, rather than consistent mapping

Question 22

What happens as task performance becomes more automatic?

Answer 22

It becomes more resistant to physiological and psychological effects that reduce attentional capacity

Question 23

What are action slips?

Answer 23

Errors that occur because we are not paying attention at the critical decision points during a task

Question 24

Heavy media multitaskers are more susceptible to ______

Answer 24

Interference from irrelevant environmental stimuli and irrelevant mental representations

Question 25

Heavy media multitaskers perform _____ on a test of task-switching ability

Answer 25

Worse

Question 26

It’s difficult to explain ____ with the filter model, leading to the model that attention is like a ____

Answer 26

• Practice effects

- Resource

Question 27

Who created the attentional resource model?

Answer 27

Daniel Kahneman

Question 28

Kahneman speculated that we may have more attentional resources when ____

Answer 28

• We are aroused
• Performing a more complex task
• Fully awake/alert

Question 29

The filter model is a ___ model while the recourse model is a _____ model

Answer 29

• Resource

- Capacity

Question 30

Why is automatic processing desirable?

Answer 30

• More accurate
• Faster
• Better at multitasking

Question 31

What brain area is more active when the Stroop effect occurs?

Answer 31

Anterior cingulate cortex

Question 32

Brain activity ____ with automation

Answer 32

Decreases

Question 33

Heavy media multitaskers perform ____ than light media multitaskers

Answer 33

Worse