Week 4 - Attention

Question 1

The ability to focus on specific features, objects, or locations or on certain thoughts or activities.

Answer 1

attention

Question 2

The ability to focus on one message and ignore all others.

Answer 2

selective attention
( focus on his math homework while ignoring the people talking)

Question 3

Occurs when one stimulus interferes with attention to or the processing of another stimulus.

Answer 3

distraction

Question 4

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

Answer 4

divided attention
(Roger listening in on the conversation while simultaneously playing the game)

Question 5

A rapid shifting of attention, usually caused by a stimulus such as a loud noise, bright light, or sudden movement.

Answer 5

attentional capture

Question 6

Movement of the eyes from one location or object to another.

Answer 6

visual scanning
(Roger’s attempt to identify the people across the room, looking from one person’s face to another)

Question 7

Model of attention that proposes a filter that lets attended stimuli through and blocks some or all of the unattended stimuli.

Answer 7

(Broadbent’s) filter model of attention,

Question 8

Collin Cherry experiment presenting different stimuli to the left and right ears

Answer 8

dichotic listening
(the participant’s task in this experiment is to focus on the message in one ear, called the attended ear, and to repeat what he or she is hearing out loud)

Question 9

The procedure of repeating the words as they are heard is called _________.

Answer 9

shadowing

Question 10

The ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli, especially at a party where there are a lot of simultaneous conversations (e.g. hearing your name at the noisy party).

Answer 10

cocktail party effect

Question 11

model of information processing:

Answer 11

1. Sensory memory holds all of the incoming information for a fraction of a second and then transfers all of it to the filter.
2. The filter identifies the message that is being attended to based on its physical characteristics—things like the speaker’s tone of voice, pitch, speed of talking, and accent—and lets only this attended message pass through to the detector in the next stage. All of the other messages are filtered out.
3. The detector processes the information from the attended message to determine higher-level characteristics of the message, such as its meaning. Because only the important, attended information has been let through the filter, the detector processes all of the information that enters it.
4. The output of the detector is sent to short-term memory, which holds information for 10–15 seconds and also transfers information into long-term memory, which can hold information indefinitely.

Question 12

In Broadbent’s model of attention, the _________identifies the message that is being attended to based on its physical characteristics—things like the speaker’s tone of voice, pitch, speed of talking, and accent—and lets only this attended message pass through to the detector in the next stage.

Answer 12

filter

Question 13

In Broadbent’s model of attention, the __________ processes the information from the attended message to determine higher-level characteristics of the message, such as its meaning.

Answer 13

detector

Question 14

Broadbent’s model is called an early ________ _________ because the filter eliminates the unattended information right at the beginning of the flow of information.

Answer 14

selection model

Question 15

According to Broadbent’s theory, the filter is supposed to let through only one message but Moray’s experiment showed that information presented to the unattended ear is processed enough to provide the listener with some awareness of its meaning. True/False

Answer 15

True (“Dear Aunt Jane” experiment in which participants were told to shadow the message presented to the left ear. But they reported hearing the message “Dear Aunt Jane,” which starts in the left ear, jumps to the right ear, and then goes back to the left ear.

Question 16

Dear Aunt Jane is an example of ___-______ processing!)

Answer 16

top-down (occurred because they were taking the meaning of the words into account)

Question 17

Treisman proposed that selection occurs in two stages, and she replaced Broadbent’s filter with an _________.

Answer 17

attenuator

Question 18

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

Answer 18

attenuator

Question 19

Answer 19

(1) physical characteristics—whether it is high-pitched or low-pitched, fast or slow;
(2) language—how the message groups into syllables or words; and
(3) meaning—how sequences of words create meaningful phrases.

Question 20

According to Treisman’s model, once the attended and unattended messages have been identified, both messages pass through the attenuator, but the attended message emerges at full strength and the unattended messages are attenuated—they are still present but are weaker than the attended message. Because at least some of the unattended message gets through the attenuator, Treisman’s model has been called a “ ____ ______ _______’.

Answer 20

“leaky filter” model

Question 21

A component of Treisman’s attenuation model of attention. This processing unit contains stored words and thresholds for activating the words.

Answer 21

dictionary unit

(The dictionary unit helps explain why we can sometimes hear a familiar word, such as our name, in an unattended message)

Question 22

A _________ is the smallest signal strength that can barely be detected.

Answer 22

threshold
(a word with a low threshold might be detected even when it is presented softly or is obscured by other words)

Question 23

According to Treisman, words that are common or especially important, such as the listener’s name, have ______ thresholds, so even a weak signal in the unattended channel can activate that word, and we hear our name from across the room.

Answer 23

low

Question 24

Uncommon words or words that are unimportant to the listener have _______ thresholds, so it takes the strong signal of the attended message to activate these words. Thus, according to Treisman, the attended message gets through, plus some parts of the weaker, unattended messages.

Answer 24

higher

Question 25

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 been analyzed for meaning.

Answer 25

late selection models of attention (MacKay)

Question 26

The idea that the ability to selectively attend to a task can depend both on the distracting stimulus and on the nature of the task has been studied by Nilli Lavie (2010), who introduced the concepts of processing capacity and perceptual load.

Question 27

The amount of information input that a person can handle,___________ capacity. This sets a limit on the person’s ability to process information.

Answer 27

processing

Question 28

Related to the difficulty of a task. Low-load tasks use only a small amount of a person’s processing capacity. High-load tasks use more of the processing capacity, ___________ load.

Answer 28

perceptual

Question 29

Theory that proposes that the ability to ignore task-irrelevant stimuli depends on the load of the task the person is carrying out. High-load tasks result in less distraction, ______ theory of attention.

Answer 29

load
(This means that resources are available to process the task-irrelevant stimulus (like the cartoon character), and even though the person was told not to pay attention to the task-irrelevant stimulus, it gets processed and slows down responding)

Question 30

The load theory of attention:

Answer 30

(a) Low-load tasks that use few cognitive resources may leave resources available for processing unattended task-irrelevant stimuli, whereas
(b) high-load tasks that use all of a person’s cognitive resources don’t leave any resources to process unattended task-irrelevant stimuli.

Question 31

An effect originally studied by J. R. Stroop, using a task in which a person is instructed to respond to one aspect of a stimulus, such as the color of ink that a word is printed in, and ignore another aspect, such as the color that the word names. The _________ effect refers to the fact that people find this task difficult when, for example, the word RED is printed in blue ink.

Answer 31

Stroop
(This effect occurs because the names of the words cause a competing response and therefore slow responding to the target—the color of the ink. In the Stroop effect, the task-irrelevant stimuli are extremely powerful, because reading words is highly practiced and has become so automatic that it is difficult not to read them)

Question 32

Central vision is the area you are looking at. Peripheral vision is everything off to the side. Because of the way the retina is constructed, objects in central vision fall on a small area called the fovea, which has much better detail vision than the peripheral retina, on which the rest of the scene falls. True/False

Answer 32

True

Question 33

In problem solving, people’s tendency to focus on a specific characteristic of the problem that keeps them from arriving at a solution. In perception and attention, a pausing of the eyes on places of interest while observing a scene.

Answer 33

fixation

Question 34

Eye movements from one fixation point to another.

Answer 34

saccadic eye movement
(a rapid, jerky movement from one fixation to the next)

Question 35

Eyes move about _______ times per second.

Answer 35

three

Question 36

Shifting of attention by moving the eyes.

Answer 36

overt attention

Question 37

The physical properties of the stimulus, such as color, contrast, or movement,___________ salience.

Answer 37

stimulus
(Bottom-up process that determine attention to elements of a scene)
e.g. finding the people with blonde hair would involve bottom-up processing because it involves responding to the physical property of color, without considering the meaning of the image

Question 38

The meaningfulness of the images, which is a top-down factor, does not contribute to stimulus salience. True/False

Answer 38

True

Question 39

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

Answer 39

saliency map
(e.g. the person in red would get high marks for salience, both for the brightness of the color and because it contrasts with the expanse of white, which has lower salience because it is homogeneous)

Question 40

Scanning influenced by knowledge and preferences a person brings to the situation, __________ schemas.

Answer 40

scene
(an observer’s knowledge about what is contained in typical scenes -
top-down processing)
e.g. printer in the kitchen

Question 41

“Just in time” strategy—eye movements occur just before we need the information they will provide. True/False

Answer 41

true
(the eye movement usually preceded a motor action by a fraction of a second, as when the person first fixated on the peanut butter jar and then reached over to pick it up)

Question 42

scanning is influenced by people’s predictions about what is likely to happen. True/False

Answer 42

True

Question 43

Overt attention that is associated with eye movements, shifting attention by moving our eyes enables us to see places of interest more clearly. True/False

Answer 43

True

Question 44

Occurs when attention is shifted without moving the eyes, commonly referred to as seeing something “out of the corner of one’s eye.” Contrasts with Overt attention.

Answer 44

covert attention
(involves shifting attention “with the mind” as you might do when you are paying attention to something off to the side while still looking straight ahead)

Question 45

Posner’s procedure in which participants are given a cue that will usually help them carry out a subsequent task. This procedure has been used in visual attention experiments in which participants are presented with a cue that tells them where to direct their attention

Answer 45

precueing
(e.g. fixation on a cross and square appearing on the right)

Question 46

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

Answer 46

same-object advantage

Question 47

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, attentional ____________.

Answer 47

warping
(e.g. looking for people also affects responding to groups and clothing)

Question 48

According to Schneider and Shiffrin, practice made it possible for participants to divide their attention to deal with all of the target and test items simultaneously. True/False

Answer 48

true

Question 49

Constant switching from one activity to another has been described as “continuous ______ ________”

Answer 49

partial attention

Question 49

Processing that occurs automatically, without the person’s intending to do it, and that also uses few cognitive resources.

Answer 49

automatic processing

Automatic processing is associated with easy or well-practiced tasks.
(e.g. driving somewhere and not remembering the trip, or locking house door, touch typing, messaging)

Question 49

Divided Attention Becomes More Difficult When Tasks Are Harder. True/False

Answer 49

True
(e.g. driving is automatic but if road conditions suddenly change more attention is needed)

Question 49

Thoughts that come from within a person, often unintentionally. In early research this was called daydreaming.

Answer 49

mind wandering/daydreaming
(people daydream half of the wake time)

Question 49

A procedure that was developed to answer the question, “what percentage of the time during the day are people engaged in a specific behavior?” One way this has been achieved is by having people report what they are doing when they receive signals at random times during the day.

Answer 49

Experience sampling

Question 49

mindless reading or zoned-out reading

Answer 49

while reading, when you suddenly realize that you have no idea what you’ve just read because you were thinking about something else

Question 50

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, _____________ blindness.

Answer 50

Inattentional
(e.g. woman carrying an umbrella or a person in a gorilla suit)

Question 51

Occurs when inattention causes a person to miss an auditory stimulus. For example, experiments have shown that it is more difficult to detect a tone when engaged in a difficult visual search task, _____________ deafness.

Answer 51

inattentional

Question 52

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

Answer 52

change detection

Question 53

Difficulty in detecting changes in similar, but slightly different, scenes that are presented one after another. The changes are often easy to see once attention is directed to them but are usually undetected in the absence of appropriate attention, ___________ blindness.

Answer 53

change

Question 54

In film, changes that occur from one scene to another that do not match, such as when a character reaches for a croissant in one shot, which turns into a pancake in the next shot, _____________ errors.

Answer 54

continuity

Question 55

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

Answer 55

binding
(e.g. “rolling red ball” is combination of color, movement, shape but perceived as just rolling red ball)

Question 56

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

Answer 56

binding problem

Question 57

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

Answer 57

feature integration theory

Question 58

The first stage of Treisman’s feature integration theory, in which an object is analyzed into its features.

Answer 58

preattentive stage
(occurs before we focus attention on an object, e.g. visual system noticing the red colour of the ball)

Question 59

The second stage of Treisman’s feature integration theory. According to the theory, attention causes the combination of features into perception of an object.

Answer 59

focused attention stage
(e.g. becoming aware that the red ball is rolling to the right)

Question 60

Answer 60

“visual alphabet”
(from individual letters to words)

Question 61

A situation, demonstrated in experiments by Anne Treisman, in which features from different objects are inappropriately combined.

Answer 61

illusory conjunctions
(e.g. interchanging colors - crime scene)

• due to ‘free floating’ of objects in preattentative stage which in the next stage can be incorrectly paired.

Question 62

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

Answer 62

Balint’s syndrome
(parietal lobe damage)

Question 63

Searching among distractors for a target that involves two or more features, such as “horizontal” and “green.”

Answer 63

conjunction search

Question 64

Searching among distractors for a target item that involves detecting one feature, such as “horizontal.”

Answer 64

feature search

Question 65

A network that controls attention based on stimulus salience.

Answer 65

ventral attention network

Question 66

A network that controls attention based on top-down processing.

Answer 66

dorsal attention network

Question 67

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

Answer 67

effective connectivity

Question 68

Occurs when neural responses become synchronized in time, so positive and negative responses occur at the same time and with similar amplitudes.

Answer 68

synchronization
(It has been proposed that synchronization is a mechanism responsible for enhanced effective connectivity and enhanced communication between two areas that accompany shifts of attention)

Question 69

A number of processes that involve controlling attention and dealing with conflicting responses.

Answer 69

Executive functions

Question 70

A mechanism involved in dealing with conflicting stimuli. Related to executive function, inhibitory control, and willpower.

Answer 70

cognitive control

Question 71

Suppose you’re studying in the library and you hear someone else’s cell phone conversation, which, in turn, causes you to lose your focus on your work. This example illustrates ___.
a. attentional capture
b. divided attention
c. selective attention
d. distraction

Answer 71

d. distraction

Question 72

Yvonne is attempting to listen to a conversation from her friend while simultaneously being alert for an expected cell phone call. This example illustrates ___.
a. divided attention
b. attentional capture
c. selective attention
d. distraction

Answer 72

a. divided attention

Question 73

Suppose you’re at a loud party where you’re trying really hard to listen to a conversation that you’re having with a friend. In doing so, you’re showing ___.
a. divided attention
b. distraction
c. selective attention
d. attentional capture

Answer 73

c. selective attention

Question 74

What is the key difference between distraction and attentional capture?
a. load
b. intensity
c. sensation
d. meaning

Answer 74

b. intensity

Question 75

Which of the following should have the lowest threshold for being activated to attention according to Treisman?
a. an unfamiliar foreign phrase
b. an important technical term used at your father’s work
c. a medical condition that you’ve never heard of
d. your name

Answer 75

d. your name

Question 76

Low-load tasks are to high-load tasks as _____ is to _____.
a. difficult; easy
b. easy; difficult
c. attention; practice
d. practice; attention

Answer 76

b. easy; difficult

Question 77

Which of the following is the key factor in the cocktail party effect?
a. dictionary unit
b. scene schema
c. filter
d. attenuator

Answer 77

c. filter

Question 78

Suppose you’re scanning a photograph of a class picture and you briefly pause on one face. In doing so, you are showing ___.
a. a saccadic eye movement
b. a saliency map
c. fixation
d. processing capacity

Answer 78

c. fixation

Question 79

Which component of Broadbent’s model of attention is focused on the meaning of a stimulus?
a. filter
b. detector
c. dictionary unit
d. attenuator

Answer 79

b. detector

Question 80

Which term has been used to describe Treisman’s attenuation model?
a. warped
b. salient
c. late
d. leaky

Answer 80

d. leaky

Question 81

In the context of attention, perceptual load is focused on which concept?
a. physiology
b. difficulty
c. salience
d. quantity

Answer 81

b. difficulty

Question 82

Marvella is able to shell peas from her garden while watching TV because shelling peas is a ________ task.
a. high salience
b. low load
c. inattentional
d. precued

Answer 82

b. low load

Question 83

Who developed a test that demonstrates the distractive power of some task-irrelevant stimuli?
a. Balint
b. Stroop
c. MacKay
d. Treisman

Answer 83

b. Stroop

Question 84

If someone is suffering from Balint’s syndrome, then they would likely have damage to the ___ lobe of the brain.
a. frontal
b. parietal
c. temporal
d. occipital

Answer 84

b. parietal

Question 85

Because Robbie will be late to the big outdoor concert, he tells Serena to wear that ugly lime green top. This will increase Serena’s ________ so Robbie can find her in the crowd.
a. schema
b. load
c. salience
d. binding

Answer 85

c. salience

Question 86

Marisol was pleasantly surprised when she walked into the hospital to visit her father and saw an espresso bar and a four-piece jazz quartet playing. What caused Marisol’s response?
a. a low-load in her salience map
b. a deviation from her scene schema
c. a shift in her convert attention
d. a warping of her overt attention

Answer 86

b. a deviation from her scene schema

Question 87

Which term best reflects the act of scanning to direct attention?
a. subjective
b. illusory
c. anticipatory
d. fixated

Answer 87

c. anticipatory

Question 88

Rashid is working on the car in the garage when his son James rides down the driveway on his bike. Without looking up from under the hood, Rashid calls out, “You know you’re grounded, James. Get back in the house and wash the dishes!” How did Rashid know James was breaking the rules?
a. covert attention
b. change detection
c. inattentional blindness
d. experience sampling

Answer 88

a. covert attention

Question 89

Which of the following best reflects the function of human attention?
a. fishing pole
b. magnifying glass
c. flash drive
d. blender

Answer 89

b. magnifying glass

Question 90

Attentional warping involves which of the following?
a. a switch to peripheral vision
b. an expansion of brain maps
c. a shift in overt attention
d. an excess of daydreaming

Answer 90

b. an expansion of brain maps

Question 91

Which of the following best reflects the amount of learning required for participants to engage in automatic processing during Schneider and Shiffrin’s “divided attention” experiment?
a. none
b. a small amount
c. a moderate amount
d. a large amount

Answer 91

d. a large amount

Question 92

Which of the following is NOT required for a person to engage in automatic processing?
a. sense memory
b. intent
c. cognition
d. attention

Answer 92

b. intent

Question 92

Peter was so stressed about his presentation tomorrow that he was surprised to find himself pulling into his driveway after work. He didn’t remember one bit of what is usually a nasty commute on packed roads. What enabled Peter to make it home safely?
a. attentional warping
b. automatic processing
c. experience sampling
d. brain mapping

Answer 92

b. automatic processing

Question 93

Based on research, the driver’s lack of attention 3 seconds before an accident plays a role in how many traffic accidents?
a. about a third
b. more than half
c. nearly two-thirds
d. over three-fourths

Answer 93

d. over three-fourths

Question 94

When you check WhatsApp on your phone and see two new messages, you will be more likely to check WhatsApp again later—even if you’re in a classroom or at dinner—because your behavior has been ________.
a. sampled
b. automatic
c. mapped
d. reinforced

Answer 94

d. reinforced

Question 95

Many students claim that they are highly skilled at multitasking. What would a cognitive psychologist call this activity?
a. divided perceptual salience
b. continuous partial attention
c. allocated attentional capture
d. attenuated load processing

Answer 95

b. continuous partial attention

Question 96

When is a person most likely to engage in mind wandering?
a. while eating
b. at church
c. at work
d. during sex

Answer 96

c. at work

Question 97

For decades, children waiting to see the dentist have done a familiar challenge in Highlights magazine. They compare two illustrations that look almost identical and try to identify 15 things that are different. What are the children engaging in?
a. dichotic viewing
b. divided attention
c. Stroop testing
d. change detection

Answer 97

d. change detection

Question 98

When Skylar was young, he loved his favorite toy clown. It had a rainbow polka-dot suit, fuzzy green hair, long brown shoes, and a big red nose. Which of the following enabled Skylar to see a clown and not just a collection of bright colors?
a. sampling
b. warping
c. binding
d. conjunction

Answer 98

c. binding

Question 99

Which of the following controls the attention of someone who is trying to locate a blonde friend wearing a red shirt in a crowd?
a. limbic attention network
b. dorsal attention network
c. parietal attention network
d. ventral attention network

Answer 99

d. ventral attention network