Week 6 Flashcards
Performance in divided attention tasks depends on ____
How much attention is paid to each task
What experiment did Solomon and Stein perform in 1896?
Asked participants to read a story while transcribing another being told to them, and found that performance increased with practice
Why might practice affect dual-task performance?
It decreases the attentional demand for the tasks
What PET evidence supports the idea that practising a task decreases attentional demands?
After practising a task, there is less blood flow to the areas affected when first starting a task - blood flow indicates brain activity
What is an attentional resource?
A unit of cognitive processing energy that is specific to attentional operations
What aspect of tasks can affect task performance?
Similar tasks decrease performance
What are structural models of attention?
Models that utilize bottlenecks to restrict the amount of information that can pass through at any time
What are capacity models of attention?
Hold that information processing is limited by the number of available resources and not the structure of the selection mechanism
Change perception is less likely to occur if ______
The part of the scene that is changing is not explicitly attended to
What is the risk of using a head-up display while driving?
Being inattentionally blind to roadway information
When does automatic processing occur?
When a task is so well practiced that it seemingly requires no attention to perform
What is the difference between automatic and controlled processes?
Automatic processes are rapid, effortless, may be unconscious, and require little attention, while controlled processes are slower, effortful, conscious, and require more attention
When is a process occasionally automatic?
When processing normally requires attention, but can sometimes be carried out in the absence of attention
When is a process partially automatic?
When processing can be carried out in the absence of attention but is also facilitated when attended to
When is a process strongly automatic?
When a process is not facilitated by focusing attention on it or impaired by diverting attention from it
Attending to strongly automatic process does not ____, but may _____
- Facilitate performance
- Inhibit performance
Why can attending to strongly automatic processes inhibit performance?
Focused attention invokes controlled processing, which can lead to slower, more error-prone performance
What is consistent mapping?
When subjects learn a particular mapping of target items to distractor items, because the same mapping is always used
Automaticity only occurs with ___ mapping, not with ___ mapping
- Consistent
- Variable
What is the multiple-frame visual search task?
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
Fatigue and consumption of alcohol have a greater effect on ____
Variable mapping tasks, rather than consistent mapping
What happens as task performance becomes more automatic?
It becomes more resistant to physiological and psychological effects that reduce attentional capacity
What are action slips?
Errors that occur because we are not paying attention at the critical decision points during a task
Heavy media multitaskers are more susceptible to ______
Interference from irrelevant environmental stimuli and irrelevant mental representations
Heavy media multitaskers perform _____ on a test of task-switching ability
Worse
It’s difficult to explain ____ with the filter model, leading to the model that attention is like a ____
- Practice effects
- Resource
Who created the attentional resource model?
Daniel Kahneman
Kahneman speculated that we may have more attentional resources when ____
- We are aroused
- Performing a more complex task
- Fully awake/alert
The filter model is a ___ model while the recourse model is a _____ model
- Resource
- Capacity
Why is automatic processing desirable?
- More accurate
- Faster
- Better at multitasking
What brain area is more active when the Stroop effect occurs?
Anterior cingulate cortex
Brain activity ____ with automation
Decreases
Heavy media multitaskers perform ____ than light media multitaskers
Worse
