Attention

Question 1

What is attention described as?

Answer 1

An information filter

A spotlight

Question 2

What is the cocktail party effect?

Answer 2

Ones focus changes abruptly due to salient stimulus

Question 3

Somebody enters the room and calls your name as you are talking with your friends. Your attention immediately diverts to the person who said your name. What effect is this?

Answer 3

Cocktail party effect

Question 4

What is a KEY STUDY (2) of inattention blindness?

Answer 4

Running track study

Policeman court case

Question 5

What is inattentional blindness?

Answer 5

When you fail to see something that is plainly visible

Question 6

You are on a run and run past a car crash scene at the side of the road. You did not notice it until shown CCTV of you running past the scene. What is this an example of?

Answer 6

In-attentional blindness

Question 7

Who is in-attentional blindness more likely to affect?

Answer 7

A novice over an expert

Question 8

Can in-attentional blindness occur in anyone?

Answer 8

Yes, even intelligent/vigilant people

Question 9

What is the key in-attentional blindness running study?

Answer 9

Students asked to follow runner round track
Fight occurred on route
Asked if they saw anything unusual

Question 10

In the IAB running study, what percentage of students saw the fight in daytime
What percentage saw the fight at night time?

Answer 10

72%

35%

Question 11

In the IAB running study, what effect did increasing cognitive demand (count how many times the runner tapped his head) have?

Answer 11

Had major influence on IAB

Dropped to 56%

Question 12

What are 3 reasons for in-attentional blindness?

Answer 12

1) Increased cog demand
2) Individual diffs between people
3) Conspicuity of stimulus

Question 13

How can expectations cause in-attentional blindness?

Answer 13

Past experiences teach us what is relevant

I.e. expecting something to have a bright label, but on one occasion having a plain label

Question 14

What is the conspicuity of a stimulus?

Answer 14

The degree to which it jumps to your attention

Question 15

How can mental workload/task interference affect IAB?

Answer 15

It is MORE LIKELY to occur if part of our attention is diverted to a secondary task

Question 16

Where are most of our attentional resources directed towards?

Answer 16

The centre

Question 17

What did Laberge find, when placing targets in the centre of a screen?

Answer 17

People react at a faster rate when purposely spotting it

Question 18

We preferentially process whatever falls into our…

Answer 18

Beam of focus

Question 19

What might cause us to shift our attentional spotlight around?

Answer 19

1) Envirnomental cues

2) Exogenous/endogenous cues

Question 20

What is cueing?

Answer 20

Being informed about an upcoming event

Question 21

An amber traffic light is an example of…

Answer 21

Cueing

Question 22

A cue is often followed by…

Answer 22

A target stimulus

Question 23

A cue is often followed by a target stimulus. This is called

Answer 23

A valid cue

Question 24

Why might cues show up at locations other than that target?

Answer 24

To be misleading

Question 25

Exogenous and endogenous cues cause...

Answer 25

The attention to shift around

Question 26

In an experiment, what might cause a ppt's attention to shift around?

Answer 26

Endogenous and exogenous cues

Question 27

What are exogenous cues?

Answer 27

Cues in a location we are NOT CURRENTLY ATTENDING TO

Question 28

What are endogenous cues?

Answer 28

Cues within our current focus

Question 29

What is inhibition of return?

Answer 29

Slower RT for targets appearing in previously inspected locations

Question 30

What is an evolutionary advantage of IOR?

Answer 30

More efficient for foraging | Stops animals searching same spot more than once

Question 31

Inhibition of return helps us not fixate on one location, and -

Answer 31

View the scene as a whole

Question 32

Inhibiting responses only happen when there are both...

Answer 32

Valid and invalid cues

Question 33

When does inhibition of return occur (3)

Answer 33

1) long cue-stimulus gap 2) criterion shift 3) evolved response

Question 34

What brain imaging method has been used to assess attention?

Answer 34

fMRI

Question 35

fMRI study into global/local motion

Answer 35

Ppts asked to report whether they saw global/local | Diff areas of brain activated in global vs local

Question 36

What part of the brain was more active in global motion processing?

Answer 36

a-IPS

Question 37

Studies into global/local processing suggest that spatial/feature based attention are...

Answer 37

Closely related

Question 38

What is global processing?

Answer 38

Processing a visual stimulus holistically (as a whole)

Question 39

What is local processing?

Answer 39

Processing the individual details of a stimulus rather than whole

Question 40

ERPs can tell us (3)...

Answer 40

a) neural response/diff tasks b) timing of attention processes c) between group diffs in attention mechanisms

Question 41

The Navon task is an example of ....

Answer 41

Global vs local processing

Question 42

The Navon task found that people are...

Answer 42

FASTER at identifying features at the global than at the local level

Question 43

What does the STROOP test demonstrate?

Answer 43

Interference in RTs of a task

Question 44

The store task shows that it is difficult to name the ink colour of a word if there is an....

Answer 44

INCONGRUENCE between colour-word and word-colour

Question 45

Stroop test It is difficult to suppress our...

Answer 45

Automatic tendency to read