Attention 2

Question 1

What is Change blindness?

Answer 1

The failure to detect
changes in stimuli
Ex. Continuity errors in film

Question 2

Explain the Flicker technique paradigm (Technique to measure change blindness):

Answer 2

• Two similar visual images (e.g., scenes;
  A, A’) are presented with an interstimulus “mask” (I)
• Across trials, small changes are made to
  the images (e.g., removal of window)
• Participants asked if something changed between the images
• People are inaccurate

Question 3

What is Inattentional blindness?

Answer 3

• Inattentional blindness is not noticing something new in your
  focus of attention
• A failure to attend to new or unexpected events in attended-to
  environment
• E.g., A deer jumps in front of your car; you don’t notice it even though
  you are attending to that space (the road)

Question 4

What is the attentional spotlight theory?

Answer 4

Attention is about focusing on space and
ignoring what is located ‘outside’ of the focused space
* When moving attentional spotlight, disengage from current focus and shift to another area
* Attention for pre-activating processing shifts

Question 5

Two types of attention for visual search tasks (Where’s waldo) :

Answer 5

Preattention phase:
* Object features are separately coded
* Bottom-up processing, automatic

Focused Attention phase:
* Object features are integrated to guide a search
* Top-down processing, voluntary attention

Question 6

Feature search vs conjunction search:

Answer 6

Feature Search
* Search for an object that differs from the distractors
based on one feature
* Bottom-up attention (automatic)

Conjunction Search
* Search for an object that differs from distractors
across many features
* Top-down attention (voluntary)

Question 7

What is The pop out effect?

Answer 7

• Time to find a target that is different by one feature from distractors is independent of the number of distractors (set
  size)
• ONLY for features processed
  automatically in the visual
  cortex

Question 8

What is the Embodied theories of attention

Answer 8

Eye movements detect visual
attentional goals

Question 9

What is overt vs covert visual attention?

Answer 9

Overt visual attention
* attending to something with your eye
movements

Covert visual attention
* attending to something without eye
movements

Question 10

Explain Cultural differences in visual attention (eye tracking)?

Answer 10

East Asian tended to look at background info more

Question 11

What is Sustained attention?

Answer 11

• The ability to focus on one task
• Vigilance or concentration
• Baggage scanners at the airport

Question 12

What is Divided attention?

Answer 12

The ability to attend to more than one task; Multi-tasking
* Restaurant servers who take order, collect payment …

Question 13

What is Task switching ?

Answer 13

Changing from working on one task to working on another task
* Involves using top-down processes to switch between mental sets
associated with each task

• Mental sets: method of organizing information based on the goals
• A tendency in how you approach situations or solve a task
• Switching it requires attention

Question 14

What is Attentional capture?

Answer 14

• The sound of a car crashing; sirens
• Seeing a mouse scurry in the corner of a room
  *Personally relevant stimuli, such as our names
  *Addictive stimuli for individuals
  *Fearful stimuli, many with evolutionary roots (Snakes)
• It is about surprise or a prediction error