Chapter 4-Attention Pt. 1

Question 1

Attention

Answer 1

The ability to focus on specific stimuli or locations in our environment

Question 2

Selective attention

Answer 2

Attending to one thing while ignoring others

Filter out some information and promote other information for further processing

Question 3

Divide attention

Answer 3

Paying attention to more than one thing at a time

Question 4

Dichotic listening

Answer 4

Participant “shadows” one message to ensure he is attending to that message

Could not report the content of the message in unattended (overshadowed) ear

• knew there was a message
• knew gender of the speaker

Shows that unattended ear is being processed at some level

• cocktail party effect
• change in tone is noticed
• change in gender noticed

Question 5

Models of selective attention

Answer 5

Early selection model
-Broadbent’s filter model

Intermediate selection model
-Tresiman’s attenuation theory

Late selection model
-Mckay (1973)

Question 6

Broadbent filter model

Answer 6

Early selection model

Filters message before incoming information is analyzed for meaning

Question 7

Sensory memory in broadbents filter model

Answer 7

Holds all incoming information for a fraction of a second

Transfers all information to the next stage

Question 8

Filter in Broadbents filter model

Answer 8

Identifies attended message based on physical characteristics (e.g. pitch of speakers voice)

Only attended message is passed on to the next stage

Question 9

Detector in Broadbent’s filter model

Answer 9

Processes all attended information to determine higher-level characteristics of the message

Question 10

Short term memory in Broadbent’s filter model

Answer 10

Receives output of detector

Holds information for 10-15 seconds and may transfer it to long term memory

Question 11

Broadbent’s “splits scan experiment”

Answer 11

1958

Letters are presented simultaneously to the left and right ears. After hearing all of the letters, the participant is supposed to repeat the letters in any order (Condition 1) or as they were presented in pairs (Condition 2)

Question 12

Broadbent’s model could not explain

Answer 12

How participants name gets though
-cocktail party effect

Participants can shadow meaningful messages that switch from one ear to another
-Dear Aunt Jane (Gray and Weddedburn 1960)

Effects of practice on detecting information in unattended ear

• you can be trained to detect in unattended ear
• based on the meaning of the message

Question 13

Dear aunt Jane is not only based on

Answer 13

Ear channels-also based on semantic information

Question 14

Treisman’s Attenuation Theory

Answer 14

Intermediate selection model

• attended message can be separated from unattended message early in the information processing system
• selection can also occur later

Question 15

Attenuator in Treismans attenuation theory

Answer 15

Analyzes incoming message in terms of physical characteristics, language, and meaning

Attended to message is let through the attenuator at full strength

Unattended message is let through at a much weaker strength

Question 16

Dictionary unit in Treisman’s attenuation theory

Answer 16

Contains words, each of which have thresholds for being activated

• words that are common or important have low threshold
• uncommon words have high thresholds

Question 17

Late selection model

Answer 17

Selection of stimuli for final processing does not occur until after information has been analyzed for meaning

McKay (1973)

• in attending ear, participants heard ambiguous sentences (“they were throwing stones at the bank”
• in unattended ear, participants heard either “river” or “money”

Question 18

McKay experimental results

Answer 18

The meaning of the biasing word affected participants’ choice

Participants were unaware of the presentation of the biasing word

Question 19

Load theory of Attention

Answer 19

Processing capacity: how much information a person can handle at any given moment

Perceptual load: the difficulty of a given task

High load (difficult) tasks use higher amounts of processing capacity

Low load (easy) tasks use lower amounts of processing capacity

Question 20

Flanker

Answer 20

Irrelevant location (distraction)

Refer back to letters in diamond shape experiment and cartoon flanker.

Low load task got higher interference from the flanker

High load task didn’t report seeing it-they had less attention to to assign to the flanker

Question 21

Another flanker experiment (letters)

Answer 21

Stimulus Flankers Result

B A B Compatible Fastest response
C A C Incompatible Slowest response
X A X Neutral Intermediate response

A or B is target. Press “z” if it is A or B. Press “m” if it is C or D in middle

Question 22

Letter flanker diamond experiment

Answer 22

For low load task: incompatible condition was harder than compatible (people have resource to pay attention to the flanker)

High load task: compatibility of the flanker did not really affect the high load condition because participants had no resource to pay attention to the flanker

Question 23

The Stroop Test

Answer 23

Not only the load but also the property of the irrelevant stimulus or dimension

Name of the word interferes with the ability to name the ink colour

Cannot avoid paying attention to the meanings of words

(Easy with shapes, challenging with words)

Question 24

Stroop effect conditions

Answer 24

Congruent: colour and word same
Incongruent: colour and word not same

Incongruency doesn’t matter much for word reading
Incongruency hurts a lot for colour naming

You can’t stop yourself from reading a word. If you could then incongruent conditions wouldn’t slow you down in colour naming. Automatic tasks are harder to control