CH5

Question 1

Inhibition

Answer 1

is whenever decreases in some activity are seen as a result of manipulating some
aspect of the task environment.

decreases in some activity as result of manipulating some aspect of task environment

Question 2

Neurological inhibition

Answer 2

at a neurological level, inhibition works by lowering the
activation level of neurons. Does not require conscious effort.

(both neurological and reactive inhibition depend to some extent on excitatory
processes)

Question 3

Reactive inhibition

Answer 3

inhibition that arises as a result of performing some process. It
is like a side effect of executing a process that must subsequently be overcome.

• (both neurological and reactive inhibition depend to some extent on excitatory
  processes)

Question 4

Behavioural inhibition:

Answer 4

increases in reaction time or decreases in performance may

be referred to as inhibition without specifying how that inhibition occurs.

Question 5

Paradigms that explore the ability to inhibit the processing of irrelevant information:

Answer 5

Stroop effect

Simon effect

Flanker-compatibility effect

Question 6

Stroop effect

Answer 6

filter out irrelevant information. Difference in response time and accuracy. Incongruent
phenomenon (one-way effect). When irrelevant stimulus dimension is processed within same system
as responses or similar manner of coding, interference.

an important property is that it is asymmetric, meaning that incongruent
colour words slow colour naming, but incongruent ink colours do not slow colour-
word reading. Some scientists argue that the stroop effect does not imply a pure form
of automatic processing in which words can never be ignored. For example, if only
one letter of a word is coloured, colour-naming responses are less influenced by the
presence of incongruent colour words. This shows that the requirement to focus
attention on just one letter of a word stops the automatic reading of the entire word.
Stroop effects can also be affected by changing the proportion of congruent and
incongruent stimuli.

Question 7

Simon effect

Answer 7

the finding that responses are faster when the stimulus appears on the
same side as the assigned response than when it does not. It shows that it is not
necessary that the relevant and irrelevant dimensions of the stimuli be related (like
colours and their names) in order for interference effects to occur. The Simon effect is
the result of conflicting spatial codes. Hommel: the spatial code associated with
stimulus position forms rapidly when the stimulus is presented and then decays
automatically, without the application of voluntary inhibitory strategies.

Question 8

Stroop and Simon effects have been attributed to

Answer 8

the stage of processing called
response selection. Both the relevant and irrelevant stimulus dimensions are
assumed to be processed in parallel, and both result in the activation of a response
code. When the response code for the irrelevant dimension is different than that for
the relevant dimension, the irrelevant response code must be suppressed before the
correct response can be selected.

Question 9

Race models assume that

Answer 9

the relevant and
irrelevant stimulus dimensions are processed in parallel and then queue up for entry
into a single-channel central processor. Whichever stimulus is finished processing
first gains entry into the channel. These models are wrong though: the effects of
irrelevant information depend on the relation between the stimulus dimensions and the type of response. Also: pre-exposure often reduces Stroop effects.

Question 10

Ideomotor

compatibility:

Answer 10

when the stimuli closely resembles the assigned responses.

Question 11

Ideomotor

compatibility theory:

Answer 11

response selection occurs directly when ideomotor compatibility
is high, bypassing the usual bottlenecks.

Question 12

Flanker-compatibility effect:

Answer 12

responses are relatively slow and inaccurate when the target is flanked by incongruent letters, intermediate when the flankers are neutral letters, and faster when the flanker letters require the same response as the target. The flanker letters are perceptually processed even though instructions are to focus on only the central letter, but also information is often processed to the point of producing a lateralized readiness potential, which is indicative of motor preparation. Flankers assigned to an incompatible response produce more interference than flankers not assigned to any response, which suggests that the interference arises because of conflicting response information.This is an example of the failure of early selection in that people are not able to filter out flanker information.

Question 13

Flanker letters are

Answer 13

letters that are assigned to different responses, e.g. S might
require that a letter be moved to the left.

Question 14

The flanker-validity effect is

Answer 14

that people can learn a probabilistic relation between the target and the flanker, even
when instructed to ignore the flankers.

Question 15

Reducing the flanker effect can

Answer 15

only be done with spatial separation.
Research has suggested that making the task easier actually makes selection
more difficult, because there is spare capacity

Question 16

flanker effects reflect

Answer 16

difficulty in suppressing irrelevant

information.

Question 17

Endogenous (observer-based) and exogenous cues are

Answer 17

both effective in directing attention,
but exogenous cues often have a larger and faster acting effect on performance. Also, the
facilitation produced by an exogenous cue can turn to inhibition. Observers are slower to
detect a target at an exogenously cued location when 300 or more milliseconds elapsed
between the cue and target. It seems that exogenous attention has a short lifetime and is
biased not to return to a location where it has recently been. This is called inhibition of
return.

Question 18

Inhibition of return and visual search:

Answer 18

the function of inhibition of return may be to
ensure efficient search of complex environments by creating a bias against returning
to locations that have already been investigated. The inhibition of return effect is
largest at the most recently searched location and declines in a linear fashion.

Question 19

inhibitory tagging

Answer 19

Inhibition of return to locations in a search display, and it seems to be bound to an object rather than a location. In general, object-based
inhibition of return is less pronounced than location-based inhibition of return.

Question 20

Attentional and motor effects in inhibition of return:

Answer 20

inhibition can be associated with
many locations at the same time, which shows that a purely oculomotor account
(saccades by the eyes) of inhibition of return is oversimplified. There is also a motor
component that contributes to inhibition of return. So, it seems to consist of both an
oculomotor and an attentional component

Question 21

Top-down performance can

Answer 21

also influence search performance.

Question 22

Visual marking

Answer 22

when there
is an effect of pre-exposure of distractors to a mechanism. This results in the active inhibition
of the distractor locations. The marking of static items can be location-based, whereas the
marking of moving items depends on a feature map.

Question 23

perceptual load hypothesis

Answer 23

Increasing attentional demands can reduce interference from irrelevant distractor

Question 24

Negative

priming occurs when

Answer 24

responses to a target are slower when the target was present as a
distractor on the previous trial than if the target was unrelated to the previous trial. It is
action-centered: when actions are directed at objects in the environment, attention is
directed to action-centered representations in which the relationship between the target and
the effector takes center stage.

Question 25

Object-based negative priming

Answer 25

it makes sense to think that inhibition might be tied to
objects instead of (or in addition to) locations. It has indeed been proven that
inhibition can be based on objects even when location is responded to. Identity- and
location-based inhibition may affect different aspects of target processing.

Question 26

Ease of selection and degree of negative priming:

Answer 26

the degree of negative priming
increases directly as a function of election difficulty. When selection is more difficult,
much larger negative priming effects were observed.

MacDonald, Joordens and Seergobin: degree of negative priming increases directly as function of
selection difficulty.

Lavie and Fox: increasing the number of distractors during prime trial decreased
negative priming, distractors could not be inhibited or attention was distributed.

Question 27

Inhibition accounts of negative priming:

Answer 27

they say that negative priming results from
having to suppress distractor information in order to select a target. The selective
inhibition account of negative priming assumes that distractors are attended and
receive some initial activation, and that this activation must then be suppressed or
inhibited. The overall activation level of the distractors is not decreased by their
suppression on the prime trial. Negative priming cannot be attributed to response
competition between distractors and targets during the prime trials. People who are
relatively good at filtering out irrelevant information show relatively large negative
priming effect. So, inhibition of distractors is the mechanism of both selection and
negative priming effects.

Question 28

Episodic retrieval accounts of negative priming:

Answer 28

negative priming results when the
target was previously a distractor because of the way that it was encoded into
memory. However, this theory cannot account for differences in negative priming
across different groups or for relations between skill in selecting information and
negative priming.

Question 29

Reaching paradigm:

Answer 29

reach to one of nine targets, red light indicates target and yellow light should be ignored. Only distractors on
the path for making a response caused interference, so action centered

Question 30

Intentional forgetting

Answer 30

first learning items and then being cued to forget some of the items. Firstly, it is important to remember the items of interest. So, the cure to forget
an item is not presented simultaneously with the item itself. It could be that the item is
not actually forgotten, but that the instruction to forget the item is part of the memory
trace for that item.

demonstrated whenever recall protocol contains more to be recalled items
than to be forgotten ones. Assume that instruction to forget is part of the memory trace for an item. Or
to be forgotten items are actively inhibited, probably at time of retrieval.

Question 31

The stop-signal paradigm

Answer 31

was developed to isolate stopping processes from other
aspects of performance. The dependent variable is whether people can withhold
responses after receiving a stop signal. It has been hypothesized that a stop signal
initiates an inhibitory “stop” process that then races against an excitatory “go”
process that is set off by the primary task stimulus. Research often focuses on
finding the point of no return by manipulating factors that have been shown to affect
different stages in the primary task. It has been found that response-selection
processes can be interrupted. Some researchers argue that there is no point of no
return.

A normal young adult will be able to stop the response in about 200 ms, and the
response to a stop signal depends on age. The stopping times for elderly people and
young children are about the same. The frontal lobes, which play an important role in
cognitive control processes, are the last parts of the brain to fully develop and the
first parts of the brain to show age-related decay.

Question 32

A normal young adult will be able to stop the response in

Answer 32

about 200 ms, and the
response to a stop signal depends on age. The stopping times for elderly people and
young children are about the same. The frontal lobes, which play an important role in
cognitive control processes, are the last parts of the brain to fully develop and the
first parts of the brain to show age-related decay.

Question 33

According to the race model, stopping an action depends on

Answer 33

a separate sort of
processing than selecting and executing an action, and this is supported by
evidence. It may be that the act of suppressing conflicting information uses some of
the same processes or resources needed for suppressing a response. Stopping is
qualitatively different than changing, so stop processes provide a different sort of
control than that needed for go processes.