Attention selection

Question 1

Visual attention types

Answer 1

Overt attention:
- Moving eyes/body/ears in direction of relevant stimuli

Covert attention;
- Shifting attention without overt signs. EG while maintaining fixation. Social aspect

Question 2

Selection

Answer 2

Eg in dichotic listening task, you process the stimuli you’ve selected to attend to. Unattended information is not processed consciously.

Question 3

Cocktail party phenomenon

Answer 3

Covert attention, selecting your conversation (or someone else without them noticing) to pay attention to. Hearing what they say and cancelling surround sound.

Question 4

Attentional capture

Answer 4

Hearing important/meaningful information even when paying attention to something else. Unattended stream processing, eg hearing your name while talking to someone else

Question 5

Limited capacity

Answer 5

Bottle neck phenomenon. You don’t have the capacity to process all the stimuli in your environment. You need attention to select the relevant information.