Chapter 4- Attention

Question 1

Attention

Answer 1

Focusing on specific features of the environment or on certain thoughts or activities.

Question 2

Attenuation theory of attention

Answer 2

Treisman’s model of selective attention that proposes that selection occurs in two stages. First the attenuator analyzes the incoming message, and the unattended message, but at a lower strength.

Question 3

Attenuator

Answer 3

Treisman’s model of selective attention- attenuator analyzes the incoming message in terms of physical characteristics, language, and meaning. Attended messages pass through the attenuator at full strength, unattended messages pass through with reduced strength.

Question 4

Automatic processing

Answer 4

Processign that occurs automatically without the person intending to do it, uses few cognitive resources. Associated with easy or well-practiced tasks.

Question 5

Balint’s syndrome

Answer 5

Condition caused by brain damage, where a person has difficulty focusing on individual objects.

Question 6

Bottleneck model

Answer 6

Model of attention that proposes that incoming information is restricted at some point in processing only a portion of info gets through to consciousness. Ex. Broadbent’s.

Question 7

Change blindness

Answer 7

difficulty in detecting changes in similar but slightly different scenes that are presented one after the other. Changes often easy to see once attention is directed, usually undetected in absence of appropriate attention.

Question 8

Cocktail party effect

Answer 8

Phenomenon that occurs when in the process of focusing attention on one message or conversation, a message from another source enters consciousness. Can occur when a person is focusing attention on a conversation at a party and suddenly hears their name from across the room.

Question 9

Cognitive load

Answer 9

the amount of a person’s cognitive resources needed to carry out a particular cognitive task.

Question 10

Cognitive resources

Answer 10

idea that a person has a certain cognitive capacity, resources that can be used for carrying out various tasks.

Question 11

Compatible flanker

Answer 11

a stimulus in the display for a flanker compatibility task that is associated with a response that is the same as or compatible with the response that the participant is supposed to make to a target simulus.

Question 12

Controlled processing

Answer 12

Processing that involves close attention. Associated with Schneider and Shriffrin’s experiment.

Question 13

Covert attention

Answer 13

Occurs when attention is shifted without moving eyes.

Question 14

Dichotic listening

Answer 14

Procedure of presenting one message to the left ear and a different message to the right ear.

Question 15

Dictionary unit

Answer 15

Component of Treisman’s attenuation theory of attention. Processing unit contains stored words and thresholds for activating the words. Helps explain why we can hear w familiar word in an unattended message.

Question 16

Divided Attention

Answer 16

The ability to pay attention to/ carry out two or more different tasks simultaneously.

Question 17

Early selection model

Answer 17

model of attention that explains selective attention by filtering out of an unattended message.

Question 18

Endogenous attention

Answer 18

Occurs when a person consciously decides to scan the environment to find a specific stimulus or monitor what is happening. Can also occur with auditory stimuli.

Question 19

Exogenous attention

Answer 19

Attention that is automatically attracted by a sudden visual or auditory stimulus.

Question 20

eye tracker

Answer 20

device for measuring where people fixtate and how they move their eyes from one point to another.

Question 21

Feature integration theory

Answer 21

An approach to object perception developed by Treisman that proposes that object perception occurs in a secquence of stages in which features are first analyzed and then combined to result in perception of an object.

Question 22

Fixation

Answer 22

Pausing of the eyes of places of interest while observing a scene.

Question 23

Flanker compatibility task

Answer 23

Procedure in which participants are instructed to respond to a target stimulus that is flanked or surrounded by a distractor stimuli that they are supposed to ignre. Degree to which the distractor interferes with responding to the target is taken as an indication of whether the distractor stimuli are being processed.

Question 24

Focused attention stage

Answer 24

Second stage of Treisman’s feature integration theory. Attention causes the combo of features into perception of an object.

Question 25

High-load task

Answer 25

Task that uses most or all of a person's resources and leaves little capacity to handle other tasks.

Question 26

Illusory conjuctions

Answer 26

Situation demonstrated in experiments where features from different objects are inappropriately combined.

Question 27

Inattentional blindness

Answer 27

Not noticing something even though it is in clear view, usually caused by failure to pay attention to the object or the place where the object is located.

Question 28

Incompatible flanker

Answer 28

Stimulus in the display for a flanker compatibility task that is associated with a response that is different from the response the participant is supposed to make to a target stimulus.

Question 29

Late selection model

Answer 29

A model of selective attention that proposes that selection of stimuli for final processing does not occur until after the information in the message has bene analyzed for meaning.

Question 30

Location-based attention

Answer 30

Models of attention that propose attention operates on whatever stimuli are at a particular location. This contrasts with object-based attention in which attention is focused on a particular object.

Question 31

Low-load task

Answer 31

A task that uses few resources, leaving some capacity to handle other tasks.

Question 32

Object based attention

Answer 32

Model of attention proprosing that the enhancing effects of attention can be located on a particular object. Contrasts location-based attention, where attention is focused on a location.

Question 33

Overt attention

Answer 33

Shifting attention by moving the eyes. Contrasts with covert attention.

Question 34

Preattentive attention

Answer 34

First stage of Treisman's feature integration theory, where an object is analyzed into its features.

Question 35

Precueing

Answer 35

Procedure where participants are given a cue that will help them carry out a subsequent task. Used in visual attention experiments, where participants are presented with a cue that tells them where to direct their attention.

Question 36

Saccadic eye movements

Answer 36

Eye movements from one fixation point to another.

Question 37

Same object advantage

Answer 37

Occurs when the enhancing effect of attention throughout an object spreads throughout an object, attention to one place on an object results in a facilitation of processing at other places on the object.

Question 38

Scene schema

Answer 38

Person's knowledge about what is likely to be contained in a particular scene. Knowledge can help guide attention to different areas of the scene. Ex. knowledge of what is usually in an office may cause a person to look towards a desk to see the computer.

Question 39

Selective attention

Answer 39

Ability to focus on one message and ignore all others.

Question 40

Shadowing

Answer 40

Procedure of repeating a message out loud as its heard. Used in conjunciton with studies of selective attention that uses dichotic listening procedure.

Question 41

Stimulus salience

Answer 41

Bottom-up factors that determine attention to elements of a scene. Ex. colour, contrast, orientation.

Question 42

Stroop effect

Answer 42

studied by stroop, uses a task where a person is instructed to respond to one aspect of a stimulus (like the colour of ink that a word is printed in). Effect referes to the fact that people find the task difficult when the colour differs from what the word spells.