chapter 5: attention

Question 1

what aspect of cognition does attention most directly control?
a. behavioral response
b. memory
c. information processing
d. sensory transduction

Answer 1

c. information processing

Question 2

define inattentional blindness

Answer 2

inability to perceive new information outside of the attentional spotlight

Question 3

define change-blindness

Answer 3

inability to detect differences in two alternating flashed images, or as they occur

Question 4

define inattentional deafness

Answer 4

auditory information is not perceived when a different high-load task is being performed

Question 5

define selective attention

Answer 5

occurs when someone pays attention to one thing at the expense of all others

Question 6

what is the cocktail party effect

Answer 6

ability to attend to a specific voice in an environment where other competing voices are present as well

Question 7

describe the experimental method called the dichotic listening task

Answer 7

participants are presented, via headphones, two different audio streams to each of the two ears and tasked with repeating only one of the streams while ignoring the other

Question 8

explain the early-selection model

Answer 8

model of attention that posits that only the basic physical characteristics of a sensory input are processed without attention, which is just enough to reject those inputs from further processing

Question 9

explain the late-selection model

Answer 9

model that posits that unattended information is first processed in terms of its meaning, and then filtered based on irrelevance to the current task

Question 10

which two research allowed the proposition of the late-selection model

Answer 10

1. Moray’s (1959) study that showed participants were able to process unattended information if their name was spoken in the ignored channel
2. Grey and Weddeburn (1960) study that showed if a meaningful narrative was played alternatively between the ears, people would follow the narrative

Question 11

according to the late-selection model, how does attentional filtering work

Answer 11

based on if information fits semantically with process or task at hand.
once deemed irrelevant, it is rejected from further processing

Question 12

what is the attenuator model

Answer 12

model that states that unattended stimuli are processed but at a reduced level relative to attended stimuli

Question 13

define attentional load

Answer 13

measure of how much processing resources are needed in order to perform a task

Question 14

differentiate between controlled and automatic tasks

Answer 14

controlled: tasks that require efforts and voluntary top-down attention
automatic: tasks that are highly familiar and well-practiced and do not require voluntary top-down attention

Question 15

what is divided attention

Answer 15

attending to multiple objects at the same time, commonly referred as multi-tasking

Question 16

when allocating our attention to moving objects, about how many items can we simultaneously track?
a. 1
b. 10
c. 7+/- 2
d. 4

Answer 16

d. 4

Question 17

what is one possible purpose of attention

Answer 17

attention prepares the mind for processing specific stimuli. it makes us more sensitive to stimuli and quicker to respond to them

Question 18

define feature-integration theory

Answer 18

theory which states that attention is needed in order to combine distinct features into coherent perceptual objects

Question 19

what are conjunction errors

Answer 19

failure to accurately bind together the discrete features of a single object

Question 20

define the experimental paradigm called visual search

Answer 20

participants must look for a certain target object among a group of distractors

Question 21

what is the single-feature search

Answer 21

when a property “pops out”: the target is so different from others that it actually attracts attention

Question 22

what is the conjunction search

Answer 22

a version of the visual-search task in which the target is distinguished from the distracters based on several features

Question 23

differentiate between exogenous attentional control and endogenous attentional control

Answer 23

exogenous: some property of the environment drives us to pay attention to it
endogenous: when a person chooses what to pay attention to based on their goals or intentions

Question 24

differentiate between overt attention and covert attention

Answer 24

overt: selective attention of a location that is accompanied by eye fixation of the same region
covert: ability to move your attention around even though your gaze is fixed in a particular location

Question 25

which area of the brain has been shown to process motion

Answer 25

medial temporal lobe

Question 26

which area of the brain has been associated with endogenous attention network to prepare neural activation for pre-processing?

Answer 26

intraparietal sulcus

Question 27

which hemisphere is associated with exogenous attention and orienting you to unexpected stimuli

Answer 27

right hemisphere

Question 28

what is the retinotopic map

Answer 28

location of pattern stimulation is preserved at the cortical level

Question 29

what do the frontal eye fields do

Answer 29

associated with allocation of attention via eye movement

Question 30

true or false? stimulating the cells in the FEF will move the eyes to the location in space represented by that part of the retina

Answer 30

true

Question 31

describe the go/no-go task and the observations/conclusions that were drawn from it

Answer 31

subject has to press a button as quickly as possible when a target is present but stops pressing it when a different target appears

Ps with ADHD completed more errors. frontoparietal regions were inefficiently activated which shows a dysregulation in attention control networks

Question 32

what is the Balint syndrome

Answer 32

neurological disorder caused by damage to both parietal lobe that carries several attentional deficits

Question 33

define occulomotor apraxia

Answer 33

inability to draw their eyes to an object that grabs their attention

Question 34

define simultanagnosia

Answer 34

inability to identify or use more than one object or property in a scene at a time

Question 35

what is spatial neglect

Answer 35

occurs when patients have damage to their right hemisphere, causing them to not notice or neglect their entire left side

Question 36

the finding that the color of a printed word interferes with naming that word aloud suggests that reading involves ___
a. divided attention
b. endogenous attentions
c. automatic processing
d. attenuation

Answer 36

c. automatic processing

Question 37

to account for how subjects could follow a meaningful message that switched between ears in a dichotic listening task, Anne treisman added a/an ___ to the filter model to explain how unattended information still leaks past the filter but is relatively weaker

Answer 37

attenuator

Question 38

what are the three types of top-down attention

Answer 38

• sustained attention
• divided attention
• selective attention

Question 39

why do we have selective attention

Answer 39

• limited resources
• must prioritize what to process to act effectively
• what you attend to will depend on given goal

Question 40

define the load theory

Answer 40

filter placement will depend on how much of your resources are required for your currently attended-to task
- if low resource load, process non-attended info in later stage
- if high resource load, process non-attended info in early stage

Question 41

define inhibition of return (IOR)

Answer 41

attention is inhibited from going to a recently attended space after a long duration between space cue and target

Question 42

what is the difference between pre-attention phase and focused attention phase in the feature-integration theory

Answer 42

pre-attention:
- object features are separately coded, automatically
- bottom-up processing
focused attention:
- object features are integrated together to guide a search
- top-down processing

Question 43

what captures our attention

Answer 43

• info important for survival
• personally relevant stimuli (name)
• addictive stimuli
• fearful stimuli

Question 44

what is the cost to task switching

Answer 44

decline in performance after switching tasks

Question 45

differentiate between the overload and underload theory

Answer 45

overload: increase attentional demands with time
underload: boredom → mind-wandering → divided attention

Question 46

true or false? westerners attend to both central object and background compared to east asian who mainly focus on central object

Answer 46

false, east asians tend to focus on both the central object and the background whereas westerners mainly focus on the central object

Question 47

describe the posner cuing task

Answer 47

1. fixate on the center of a screen
2. cue display
3. target display: reaction time is measured

short time interval:
- lower RT for valid trial
- higher RT for invalid trial
long time interval:
- higher RT for valid trial
- lower RT for invalid trial

Question 48

what is the arousal type of attention

Answer 48

• alertness and awareness
• controlled by reticular activating system
• optimal level

Question 49

what are the three functions/theories of attention

Answer 49

1. attention prepares us for processing of stimuli
2. attention is necessary to integrate features of an object into a whole
3. eye movements help detect visual attentional goal