Cognition Ch. 4

Front 1

selective attention

Back 1

attending to relevant information an ignoring irrelevant information

Front 2

cocktail party phenomenon

Back 2

the capacity for attending to one conversation in a crowded room in which many other conversations are going on

Front 3

shadowing task

Back 3

exposing the subject to two messages simultaneously while repeating them

Front 4

filter

Back 4

a stage of information processing that admits some messages but blocks others

Front 5

stroop task

Back 5

a list of colour names, each of which is printed in a colour other than its name

Front 6

selective looking

Back 6

occurs when one is exposed to two events simultaneously, but attends only to one

Front 7

early selection

Back 7

the hypothesis that attention prevents early perceptual processing of distractors

Front 8

late selection

Back 8

they hypothesis that both relevant and irrelevant stimuli are perceived, so that person must actively ignore the irrelevant stimuli in order to focus on the relevant ones

Front 9

controlled versus automatic processing

Back 9

processes to which we must pay attention it order to execute them properly versus themselves without the necessity of our paying attention

Front 10

dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

Back 10

an area of the brain that may exert a top-down bias that favours the selection of task-relevant information

Front 11

anterior cingulate cortex

Back 11

an area of the brain that may detect conflicting response tendencies of the sort that the stroop task elicits

Front 12

attention capture

Back 12

the power of some stimuli on some occasions to elicit attention in spite of the fact that we did not intend to pay attention to them

Front 13

inattentional blindness

Back 13

our failure to attend to events that we might be expected to notice

Front 14

flanker task

Back 14

an experiment in which participants may be influenced by an irrelevant stimulus beside the target

Front 15

domain-specific modules

Back 15

the hypothesis that parts of the brain may be specified for a particular tasks, such as recognizing faces

Front 16

capacity model

Back 16

the hypothesis that attention is like a power supply that can only support that can only support a limited amount of attentional activity

Front 17

structural limits

Back 17

the hypothesis that attentional tasks interfere with one another to the extent that they share similar activities

Front 18

central bottleneck

Back 18

the hypothesis that there is only one path though which information relevant to only one task at a time can pass

Front 19

divided attention

Back 19

the ability to attend to more than one thing at a time

Front 20

set

Back 20

temporary, topdown organizations that facilitate some responses, while inhibiting others, in order to achieve the person's goals

Front 21

anterior cingulate cortex

Back 21

an area of the brain that may detect conflicting response tendencies of the sort that the stroop task elicits

Front 22

attention capture

Back 22

the power of some stimuli on some occasions to elicit attention in spite of the fact that we did not intend to pay attention to them

Front 23

inattentional blindness

Back 23

our failure to attend to events that we might be expected to notice

Front 24

flanker task

Back 24

an experiment in which participants may be influenced by an irrelevant stimulus beside the target

Front 25

domain-specific modules

Back 25

the hypothesis that parts of the brain may be specified for a particular tasks, such as recognizing faces

Front 26

capacity model

Back 26

the hypothesis that attention is like a power supply that can only support that can only support a limited amount of attentional activity

Front 27

structural limits

Back 27

the hypothesis that attentional tasks interfere with one another to the extent that they share similar activities

Front 28

central bottleneck

Back 28

the hypothesis that there is only one path though which information relevant to only one task at a time can pass

Front 29

divided attention

Back 29

the ability to attend to more than one thing at a time

Front 30

set

Back 30

temporary, topdown organizations that facilitate some responses, while inhibiting others, in order to achieve the person's goals

Front 31

task switching

Back 31

people must change from working on one task to working on another. usually studied in situations in which the switch is involuntary

Front 32

switch cost

Back 32

the finding that performance declines immediately upon switching tasks

Front 33

encoding

Back 33

the process of transforming information into one or more forms of representation

Front 34

subliminal perception

Back 34

cases in which a stimulus has an effect on behaviour even though it has been exposed too rapidly or at too low an intensity for the person to be able to identify the stimulus

Front 35

limen

Back 35

threshold

Front 36

backward masking

Back 36

presenting a stimulus, called the target, to the participant and then covering or masking, the target with another stimulus

Front 37

stimulus onset asynchrony

Back 37

the time difference between the first stimulus and masking stimulus

Front 38

priming

Back 38

the tendency for some initial stimuli to make subsequent responses more likely

Front 39

dissociation paradigm

Back 39

an experimental strategy that attempts to show that it is possible to perceive stimuli in the absence of any conscious awareness of these stimuli

Front 40

perception without awareness

Back 40

a stimulus that has an effect even though it is below the participant's subjective threshold of awareness

Front 41

objective and subjective threshold

Back 41

the point at which a participant can detect a stimulus at a chance level versus the pint at which a participant says she or he is unaware of a stimulus

Front 42

direct versus indirect measures

Back 42

participants' report that they have seen a stimulus versus the effects of an undetected stimulus on a subsequent task

Front 43

process dissociation procedure

Back 43

an experimental technique that requires participants not to respond with items they have observed previously

Front 44

implicit perception

Back 44

the effect on a person's experience though, or action of an object in the current stimulus environment in the absence of, or independent of, conscious perception of that event

Front 45

attentional blink

Back 45

when two stimuli are presented within 550 milliseconds of each other, the probability of the second stimulus being reported is much less than it would be for longer intervals

Front 46

deja vu

Back 46

the impression of having previously experienced the situation in which one finds oneself accompanied by the sense that this may not be the case

Front 47

ecologically valid

Back 47

studies that generalize to conditions in the real world

Front 48

embodied

Back 48

to be within a body, the term comes from the general view that cognition depends not only on the mind, but also on the physical constraints of the body in which the mind is placed

Front 49

overt attention

Back 49

attending to something with eye movements

Front 50

covert attention

Back 50

attending to something without eye movements

Front 51

sequential attention hypothesis

Back 51

a model of the relationship between overt and covert attention that posits a close relationship between the two whereby covert attention leads and overt eye movements follow

Front 52

fixation

Back 52

the process of keeping an image on the fovea

Front 53

physiological nystagmus

Back 53

small but continuos movements that the eye makes during fixation

Front 54

regressions

Back 54

during reading, right to left eye movement to previously read text

Front 55

moving window techniques

Back 55

a method of determining how much visual information can be taken in during a fixation where the reader is prevented from seeing information beyond a certain distance from the current fixation

Front 56

entry points

Back 56

the locations to which a viewer directs her or his eyes before starting to read a section in a piece of complex reading material such as a newspaper

Front 57

smooth pursuit movements

Back 57

movements of the eye that enable a moving object to remain fixated

Front 58

task-related knowledge

Back 58

an observer's knowledge of the goals and the task at hand used to guide the eyes during a visual task

Front 59

quiet eye

Back 59

sustained and steady eye gaze prior to an action or behaviour

Front 60

location suppression hypothesis

Back 60

a two-stage explanation for the occurrence of Quiet Eye that posits that in the preparation stage, quiet eye occurs to maximize information about a target object, and ruing the location stage, vision is suppressed to optimize the successful execution of an action or behaviour