Lectures 7 & 8 Flashcards
Attention (12 cards)
What is selective attention?
The ability to focus on a specific stimulus while ignoring others.
What is the cocktail party effect?
The ability to focus on one conversation despite background noise.
What is Broadbent’s filter theory?
Early selection model where attention filters information before meaning is processed.
What is Treisman’s attenuation theory?
Modified filter theory suggesting unattended info is weakened, not blocked.
What is change blindness?
Failure to notice changes in a visual scene due to disruption or lack of attention.
What is inattentional blindness?
Failure to notice a fully visible object because attention is elsewhere.
What is load theory of attention?
High perceptual load tasks reduce distractibility; low load increases susceptibility to distraction.
What is the target prevalence effect?
Rare targets are more likely to be missed (e.g., weapons in airport screening).
What did Wolfe et al. (2013) find?
That trained airport screeners still miss rare items due to low target prevalence.
What did Evans et al. (2013) study?
Cancer detection: radiologists missed more cases under realistic low-prevalence conditions.
What are the stages in Treisman’s Feature Integration Theory?
- Preattentive stage (automatic feature detection), 2. Focused attention stage (binding features into objects).
What is gist processing?
Rapid extraction of general scene layout or category in under 500ms.
