chapter 4 (attention)

Question 1

filter model of attention (broadbent)

Answer 1

proposes filter that lets attended stimuli through and blocks some/all of unattended stimuli.

Question 2

dichotic listening

Answer 2

procedure of presenting one message to left ear and diff message to right ear.

Question 3

cocktail party effect

Answer 3

ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli.

Question 4

filter

Answer 4

broadbent’s filter model. identifies message being attended to and only lets this message pass through to detector.

Question 5

detector

Answer 5

boradbent’s filter model. processes info from attended message to determine higher-level characteristics of message (meaning).

Question 6

early selection model

Answer 6

model of attention that explains selective attention by early filtering of unattended messages. broadbent.

Question 7

attenuator

Answer 7

treisman’s attention model. analyzes incoming messages in terms of physical characteristics, language, and meaning. attended messages pass through at full strength, and unattended are reduced.

Question 8

attenuation model of attention (treisman)

Answer 8

proposes that selection occurs in two stages. first: attenuator analyzes incoming messages and lets attended message through, as well as unattended at lower strength.

Question 9

dictionary unit

Answer 9

treisman’s model. processing unit that contains words and thresholds for their activation. explains hearing name in other conversation.

Question 10

late selection model of attention

Answer 10

model of selective attention that proposes that selection of stimuli for final processing does not occur until after info in message has been analyzed for meaning.

Question 11

perceptual load

Answer 11

related to difficulty of a task. low-load tasks use only small amount of person’s processing capacity. high-load tasks use more of processing capacity.

Question 12

load theory of attention

Answer 12

proposal that the ability to ignore task-irrelevant stimuli depends on load of the task that the person is carrying out. high-load tasks = less distraction.

Question 13

stroop effect

Answer 13

difficulty separating colour of font and colour a word spells because of the automatic process of reading.

Question 14

fixation

Answer 14

pausing of eyes on places of interest while observing a scene.

Question 15

saccadic eye movement

Answer 15

eye movements from one fixation point to another. rapid and jerky.

Question 16

stimulus salience

Answer 16

bottom-up factors that determine attention to elements of a scene. ex: colour, contrast, orientation.

Question 17

saliency map

Answer 17

map of scene that indicates the stimulus salience of areas and objects in scene.

Question 18

covert attention

Answer 18

occurs when attention is shifted without moving the eyes. commonly referred to as seeing something out of the corner of your eye.

Question 19

precueing

Answer 19

procedure where participants given a cue that will usually help carry out a subsequent task. used in visual tasks telling them where to direct attention.

Question 20

same-object advantage

Answer 20

occurs when enhancing effect of attention spreads throughout an object so that attention to one place on object results in facilitation of processing at other places on object.

Question 21

attentional warping

Answer 21

occurs when the map of categories on the brain changes to make more space for categories that are being searched for as a person attends to a scene.

Question 22

automatic processing

Answer 22

processing that occurs automatically, without intention, and uses few cognitive resources. associated with easy/well-practiced tasks.

Question 23

experience sampling

Answer 23

procedure developed to answer the question: “what percentage of the time during the day are people engaged in a certain behaviour?” one way is to have people report when given a signal at random times throughout the day (often hard to recall when asked otherwise).

Question 24

mind wandering/daydreaming

Answer 24

thoughts that come from within a person often unintentionally. usually decreases performance on tasks.

Question 25

inattentional blindness

Answer 25

not noticing something even though it is in clear view. usually caused by failure to pay attention to object/place where object is located.

Question 26

inattentional deafness

Answer 26

occurs when inattention causes a person to miss an auditory stimulus.

Question 27

change detection

Answer 27

detecting differences between pictures or displays that are presented one after another.

Question 28

change blindness

Answer 28

difficulty detecting changes in similar but slightly different scenes presented one after another. usually easy to see once attention directed to them.

Question 29

binding

Answer 29

process by which features are such as colour, form, motion, and location are combined to create perception of a coherent object.

Question 30

binding problem

Answer 30

problem of explaining how an object’s features become bound together.

Question 31

feature integration theory

Answer 31

treisman’s approach to object perception that proposes a sequence of stages in which features are first analyzed and then combined to result in perception of an object.

Question 32

preattentive stage

Answer 32

first stage of treisman’s theory. object is analyzed into features.

Question 33

focused attention stage

Answer 33

second stage of treisman’s theory. attention causes combination of features into perception of object.

Question 34

illusory conjunctions

Answer 34

situation demonstrated in experiments by anne treisman in which features from diff objects are inappropriately combined.

Question 35

balint’s syndrome

Answer 35

condition caused by brain damage in which person has difficulty focusing attention on individual objects.

Question 36

conjunction search

Answer 36

searching amongst distractors for a target that involves two or more features.

Question 37

ventral attention network

Answer 37

network that controls attention based on stimulus salience.

Question 38

dorsal attention network

Answer 38

network that controls attention based on top-down processing.

Question 39

effective connectivity

Answer 39

how easily activity can travel along a particular pathway between two structures.

Question 40

synchronization

Answer 40

occurs when neural responses become synchronized over time so positive and negative responses occur at same time with similar amplitudes. proposed that it is responsible for enhanced effective connectivity and communications between two areas that accompany shifts of attention.

Question 41

cognitive control

Answer 41

mechanism involved in dealing with conflicting stimuli.