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Psych > wk 9-10 attention and consciousness > Flashcards

wk 9-10 attention and consciousness Flashcards

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1
Q

selective attention

A

focusing on the most relevant/important aspects of the environment

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2
Q

filtering

A

sometimes we try to pay attention to two things at once, but it is difficult to accurately attend to two categories of stimuli simultaneously, so you select one

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3
Q

broadbent (1958) suggests…

A

attention works like a filtering process

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4
Q

attention

A

cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment whilst ignoring other things

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5
Q

components of attention (posners 1995)

A
  1. orienting- turning sensory organs towards a stimulus spreading additional cortical activation to regions associated with processing that stimulus, and inhibiting other activation
  2. controlling the contents of consciousness: unconscious attentional mechanisms focus conscious awareness, helping you to decide how carefully/how long to focus on a given stimulus
  3. maintaining alertness: staying focussed on important stimuli is vital eg, focussing on exam questions in spite of stress
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6
Q

top down v bottom down

A

top down- concentrate attention on a specific stimulus. bottom down- attention is captured by a stimulus in the environment

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7
Q

selective inattention

A

can be adaptive (diverting attention away from anxiety related to exam)

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8
Q

early selection hypothesis

A

attended stimuli are priveldged from the start, so unattended stimuli are never percieved

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9
Q

late selection hypothesis

A

all stimuli are percieved, but only those attended to reach consciousness

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10
Q

divided attention

A

The limited capacity of attention demonstrated in divided attention tasks, pay attention to two or more stimuli and respond to each appropriately

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11
Q

duncan (1993) found…

A

you can make 2 judgments on 1 stimulus, but had difficulty when the same questions were simultaneously asked about different stimuli

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12
Q

what experiment did strayer (2003) do (divided attention)

A

had participants conduct a hands-free phone conversation while in a driver simulator, took longer to brake in dangerous situation

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13
Q

dichotic listening

A

test of selective attention is the dichotic listening task, wearing headphones hearing 2 different stimulus in different ears and they must repeat what they hear

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14
Q

cocktail party effect

A

moray (1959) found that people could identify their name in an unattended stream in a dichotic listening task

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15
Q

stroop effect

A

attentional interference effect in which it takes longer to name the colour in which a word is printed when that colour is incongruent (colour of writing doesnt match what is says)

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16
Q

change blindness

A

failure to detect a change in an object or a scene resulting from overuse of top down processing leads us to assume that the basic meaning of the scene will remain stable, rational assumption. Eg, not noticing soemthing weird as youre not expecting it

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17
Q

inattentional blindness

A

Failure to notice when an unexpected, but completely visible object appears in a scene, involving the addition of a new object in the scene, resulting from top-down processing

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18
Q

spatial attention- spotlight

A

focussing our attention on a specific location within the visual field enhances our perception of information appearing at that location

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19
Q

attentional spotlight

A

attention moves around a visual field and things falling within its beam are processed preferentially, conscious or unconscious

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20
Q

posner et al (1980) and eye movements

A

demonstrated that eye movements play an important role in selective attention, they can be seperated from movements of attention

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21
Q

visual search task

A

-target (in a display of distracting stimuli)
-distractor (any stimulus that is nit the target)
-set size (number of items in the display)

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22
Q

feature search

A

involves a target that can be distinguished by a single, unique feature

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23
Q

conjunction search

A

involves a target that is defined by a combination of features, serial search

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24
Q

feature inegration theory- treisman and colleagues

A

they put forward integration theory of attention
-When viewing scene you automatically and effortlessly register the features in your enviornment in parallel, using distributed attention

-when you attend to a particular object, you must engage focussed attention to bind the features together

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25
illusory conjunction
miscombination of features, such as the form of one distractor with the colour of another,leading to the illusory percept of the target. For example, you see a red circle and blue square, but when you have to recall you think you saw a red square
26
eye movement
eye movements recording rely on infrared tracking of the position of your iris: can be head mounted or can be freestanding
27
saccades
eyes move in jumps called saccades, saccades move the centre of the retina into position over the word you want to read
28
attention differing when looking at eye movements
different readers can be shown through different eye movements
29
what does someone with dyslexia have in terms of saccades
more fixations, longer fixations, smaller saccades
30
single fixation
there is a limit of info (perceptual span)
31
why does context effect eye movements
depends on how predictable a word is on how long we spend fixating. EG, moustache in a sentence is unexpected so we fixate
32
consciousness (1890) william james
constantly moving stream of thoughts, feelings and emotions
33
why is consciousness typically described as
subjective awareness of mental events
34
3 types of consciousness
1. awareness of sensory qualities (qualia) eg, the redness smell and shape of rose 2. awareness of things (external reference) eg, awareness that a cat is there 3. awareness of self (internal reference)
35
how much can we be conscious about at one time
we can only be conscious of a small number of the myriad stimuli surrounding us at any time,
36
consciousness and attention
consciousness is closely related with attention, attention allows us to focus our conscious awareness
37
3 things consciousness allows us to do
1. Monitor self and the environment 2. Regulate thought and behaviour 3. Formulate and reach goals
38
states of consciousness- occur spontaneously
daydreaming, drowsiness and dreaming
39
states of consciousness- physiologically induced
hallucinations, orgasm, food/oxygen starvation
40
states of consciousness- psychologically induced
sensory deprivation, hypnosis, medication
41
daydreaming
are shifts in attention away from an external stimuli and toward internal thoughts and imagined scenarios
42
how can you meaure daydreaming
experience sampling techniques- which requires participants to report the contents of their consciousness
43
what were beepers used for
type of experience sampling technique, participants wear a beeper which beeps at various times throughout the day
44
conscious v unconscious cognitive processes
unconscious processes refer to those information processing mechanisms that operate outisde awareness
45
kihlstrom (1996) divedes consciousness processes into 2 parts
1. unconscious processes (operate without any awareness) 2. preconscious processes (are associations that are activated below the threshold of consciousness and thta influence conscious thought and behaviour)
46
subliminal perception
refers to the perception of stimuli that are below the threshold of consciousness,
47
how can subliminal perception be tested
by presenting images too quickly for conscious recognition, but sufficiently slowly to be recognised outside of awareness
48
subliminal manipulation of emotion
some studies show how subliminal perception can effect peoples emotion and therefore sales.
49
unilateral neglect
damage to different parts of the right hemisphere especially the pariatal lobe, this person then fails to attend to the left side of space eg, ignoring people on the left side, not eating left side of plate, groom one side of body
50
line bisection tasks
tests unilateral neglect\, drawing an image (the left side would be left out)
51
can pateint perceive left side info with unilateral negelct?
they can when someone draws their attention to it, but theyre not natural drawn to it
51
unilateral representation neglect
bisiach and luzzatti first demonstarted that some patients with unilateral neglect also neglect the left hand side in their mental representations of objects and scenes
52
balints syndrome
described a patient with unusual symptoms following bilateral lesion, patients with Balint's syndrome perceive the world differently, and are incapable of joining their perceptions: they perceive the world as a series of disjointed single objects
53
pateints symptoms in balints syndrome
objects compete for our attention: patients are unable to see more thna one thing at a time, patients have sticky visual fixation and exhibit severe difficulties voluntarily moving fixation. Patients are unable to reach towards the correct location of percieved objects.
54
how do the symptoms of balints syndrome make patients functionally blind
they lose spatial information outside their own bodies, meaning that they cannot locate an item they percieve, nor can they tell when an item is moved towards them or away from them, they are functionally blind except for the perception of one object
55
what happens without the intact functioning parital lobes
deployment of spatial attention to form individual representations of objects, integrating their parts and properties, appears impossible
56
how does emotion influence perception in patients with balints syndrome
the patient could regonise different emotions of different faces, however the task took significantly longer. The patient could detect the angry faces easier
57
blindsight
phenomenon in which people who are cortically blind (damage in primary visual cortex)respond to visual stimuli without consciously perceiving them
58
how does blindsight happen
thought to result from information through secondary neural pathways
59
synaesthesia
a fascinating phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory modality leads to reports of extra experiences in a second modality eg, letters or digits give you a perception of colour
60
synaesthesia and attention
synaesthesia is thought to occur in much the fashion as normal perception, it requires more attention to bind the perceived form features with the internally generated colour features
61
synaesthesia and shapes
shape detection can be done more easily by people with synaesthesia, due to their colour assocition with numbers
62
thought suppression
conscious effort to avoid or push away unwanted thoughts, feelings, or memories, has paradoxical consequences. EG, white bears experiment
63
negative physiologial consequences of thought suppression and addiction
more likely to suffer major diseases, astham, heart disease etc. You are more likley to relapse if you try to suppress thoughts of cigarettes
64
wegner (1994) ironic process theory, when suppressing a thought...
1. Distract yourself by thinking about something else 2. Begin an unconscious monitoring processing to check whether youre still thinking the thoughts youre not supposed to be thinking (ie, checking that the conscious process is working)
65
what is OCD and what correlation is there with thought suppression
thought suppresion is especially difficult for people with OCD. OCD includes Obsessions (persistant thought or image that is intrusive, inducing anxiety), and Compulsions (repetitive behaviours designed to reduce anxiety created by obsessions) that are deemed excessive and uncontrollable. The white bear experiment is more extreme for people with OCD, therefore people with OCD are more sensitive to intrusive thoughts and more likely to suppress thoughts.

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