Use LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys to navigate between flashcards;
Use UP and DOWN arrow keys to flip the card;
H to show hint;
A reads text to speech;
72 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
|
What is attention? What is perception? What is pattern recognition? What is memory? |
Attention: mentally focusing on a stimulus Perception: interpreting sensory information to yield meaningful information Pattern recognition: classifying a stimus into a known category Memory: storage facilities and retrieval processes of cognition |
|
|
How much value do rigorously controlled experiments have? |
Limited if the phenomenon being studied doesn't occur or occurs in significantly different ways outside the lab |
|
|
What 2 philosophers wrote extensively on the nature of memory? |
Aristotle (empiricism) and Plato (nativism) |
|
|
What is empiricism? How is this achieved? What factor plays an important role (according to empiricism) in determining one's intellectual abilities? |
The idea that knowledge comes from an individual's own experience (the empirical information that people collect from their senses and experiences - association : by making mental associations of 2 ideas (even if they have nothing to do with each other, they could just occur at the same time) Environment |
|
|
What is nativism? |
This idea emphasizes the role of native abilities over the role of learning in the acquisition of abilities and tendencies - suggest that some cognitive functions come built in as part of our legacy (hard-wired functions such as working memory) |
|
|
What are the 6 schools of experimental psychology? |
1. Structuralism 2. Functionalism 3. Behaviorism 4. Gestalt psychology 5. Study of individual differences 6. Cognitive science |
|
|
What is structuralism? Who was it applied by? |
Focuses in on the elemental components of the mind rather than on why the mind works the way it does - Wundt's student, Titchener -- using introspection, trying to figure out the principles that make up our immediate conscious experience (4 components: mode, quality, intensity and duration) |
|
|
What is functionalism? Who was it carried out by? What else did he talk about? What theory do functionalist draw on? |
Figuring out the way the mind works through its functions (the purpose of its various operations) - William James -- establishing good habits and avoiding bad ones Darwinian evolutionary theory |
|
|
What does behaviorism believe should be banished from psychology? Why? What did Watson believe about mental phenomena? |
References to unobservable subjective mental states (consciousness) and processes (believing, expecting) and introspection, and we should focus more on observable behaviour - because they're untestable Believed that they are reducible to behavioural and physiological responses |
|
|
What did Skinner say about mental representation? What behaviourist felt the opposite? |
He argued that mentalistic entities shouldn't be excluded solely because they're difficult to study - but also believed mental representations are internal copies of external stimuli, and gave rise to behaviour (mental events shouldn't be treated differently from behavioural events) Tolman: rats and cognitive map (internal representation) |
|
|
What is Gestalt psychology? What do Gestalt psychologists usually study? Do they agree with the previous theories? |
Gestalt (means configuration/shape in German): believes that psychological phenomena shouldn't be reduced to simple elements but rather needed to be analyzed in its entirety - perception and problem solving - no, they rejected all of them |
|
|
Who investigated the study of individual differences? Why and how did they investigate it? Where did he start? |
Sir Francis Galton - was inspired by his cousin's (Darwin's) writings on evolution - analyzed data and invented statistical tests that assessed mental abilities Started with investigating if intellectual talents could also be inherited |
|
|
What is the cognitive revolution? What was one of the first findings? What were humans known as when it came to how much information they can transmit? What was another finding and what was it due to? |
Following the years of WWII, is a new series of psychological investigations, mainly a rejection of the behaviourist assumption that mental events didn't exist/beyond scientific study - human factors engineering: the need to design equipment to suit the capacities of the people operating it, which lead to the concept of a -- person-machine system: machinery operated by a person must be designed to interact with the operator's physical, cognitive, and motivational capacities Limited capacity processors: people can do only so many things at once (limited multitasking) - the computer metaphor: the comparison of people's cognitive activities to an operating computer -- due to the development of computers and AI systems |
|
|
True or False: Chomsky's work showed that behaviourism explains most (if not all) of how we acquire language. What is generative grammar? |
False: behaviourism doesn't explain language - parents respond to content not form, and if corrected their form, they wouldn't see the error Generative grammar: an implicit system of rules for learning language - we don't really know what the rules are, but we implicitly use them to form proper phrases |
|
|
What did Donald Hebb say about localization of function? |
Some kind of functions are constructed over time by the building of cell assemblies (connections of sets of cells in the brain)
|
|
|
What do cognitive scientists focus on? What are levels of representation? |
The representations of information rather than on how nerve cells in the brain work or on historical/cultural differences - level of representation: stuff that's found between input and output (constructs like symbols, rules, images etc.) |
|
|
What is ecological validity? What type of study has high ecological validity? What is a disadvantage of this type of study? |
That whatever is being studied is consistent to what happens in the real world - naturalistic observation/observational studies -- lack of experimental control |
|
|
What is the difference between controlled observations and clinical interviews? |
CO: manipulating a variable/condition to see how participants will be affected CI: participants are asked a series of open ended questions, which are followed by another set of questions based on the answers given to the first set |
|
|
What is an advantage and disadvantage of introspection? |
Advantage: - observing your own reactions may give you better insight into an experience and the factors that influenced it Disadvantage: - you may be more biased in regard to your own cognition, and might unconsciously distort observations if they're flawed/don't make sense |
|
|
What is a paradigm? What are the 4 major paradigms that cognitive psychologists use in planing and executing their research? |
A body of knowledge structured according to what its proponents consider important and not (assumptions made about a phenomenon and experimental methods used to investigate it) 1. Information-processing approach 2. Connectionist approach 3. Evolutionary approach 4. Ecological approach and embodied cognition |
|
|
Describe the information-processing approach (PICTURE ON PG 18). What type of process is it? What school is it rooted in and what techniques are used in their investigation? |
This approach assumes that information is processed in stages and that it's stored in specific places while being processed (uses the computer metaphor) [SERIAL- in discrete stages] - our cognitive abilities are thought of as systems of interrelated capacities, and how people have different cognitive capacities -- try to find the relationship between these capacities - information is stored symbolically, and the way it's coded and stored greatly affects how easy it is to use later - shown using flowcharts: recoding and retrieval (memory storage), reasoning and concept formation (putting info together in new ways)
Structuralism (but focuses researchers on the functional aspects of cognition) Experimental or quasi-experimental |
|
|
Describe the connectionism approach. What type of process is it? What else can it be called? Where is knowledge stored according to this model? What school is it rooted in? |
An alternative to the information processing approach [PARALLEL: cognitive processes occur many at the same time] - models depicting cognition as a network of connections among simple and numerous processing units - compared to neurons (so also sometimes called neuronal networks) - the connections between nodes have weight, and the level of activation depends on how many units are connected to it - within connections between units (instead of transmitting large symbolic info, they're connected to similar units and compute that way) - structuralism (but focuses on the underlying hardware)
THERE IS NO CENTRAL PROCESSOR THAT DIRECTS FLOW OF INFO |
|
|
Describe the evolutionary approach. What has the human mind responded to? |
People have special-purpose mechanisms specific to a certain context or class of problems (explaining how a system of reasoning works is much easier if we know how evolutionary forces shaped the system) - Evolutionary pressures (physical, ecological and social) to adapt in certain ways in their particular environment -- such as creating social contracts regarding social issues |
|
|
Describe the ecological and embodied cognition approach. Which school influences the ecological approach? What new school holds the same thoughts as the embodied cognition approach? |
EA: cognitive activities are shaped by the culture and context in which they occur - eg. People solved arithmetic differently based on their context - influenced by both functional and Gestalt schools (depends more on naturalistic observation) ECA (a version of the ecological paradigm): minds are encased in bodies, and those bodies influence how we perceive, nagivate and behave - radical embodied cognitive science |
|
|
What does cognitive neuroscience say about cognition? |
That the brain shapes, directs, enables and constraints human cognition |
|
|
What is perception? How much of the cortex is responsible for visual processing? What did J.J Gibson say about when we look at objects? Distal vs Proximal stimulus. Is a proximal stimulus the same as percept? |
Taking in sensory input and interpreting it meaningfully (interpreting proximal stimulus meaningfully): involves classification, recognition (including pattern recognition) - half of cortex space Gibson argued that you immediately acquire info about the object's function Distal: things to be perceived from real world Proximal: reception of information and its registration by a sense organ (retinal images) - no |
|
|
What is figure-ground organization? What type of perception is used to do this? What are subjective contours? |
Segregation of a whole display into objects (figure) and the background (ground) is an important process of visual perception - parts of the figure is seen as having definite shape and is better remembered than the ground, which is seen as more shapeless and farther away in space -- uses form perception When a complex display is subject to a simplifying interpretation without even being aware - this perception requires perceiver's active attention |
|
|
What did Gestalt psychologists believe about how we perceive? What are the 5 major Gestalt principles of perceptual organization? What are most Gestalt principles subsumed under? |
They believed that perceivers follow certain principles of organization when making interpretations - also asserted that the gestalt is not the same as the sum of its parts 1. Principle of proximity/nearness: we group together things that are nearer to each other 2. Principle of similarity: grouping together things that have similar elements 3. Principle of good continuation: grouping together things whose contours form a continuous line 4. Principle of closure: subjective contours/filling in gaps 5. Principle of common faith: elements that move together will be grouped together Law of Pragnaz: states that of all ways of interpreting a display, we will tend to select the organization that yields the simplest and most stable shape (simple shapes are seen more easily) |
|
|
What is emergence? What task best describes this and what was found from it? |
A possible principle underlying Gestalt: it's the idea that qualitative differences in percepts appear as parts are added such that wholes take on properties that are novel - odd quadrant discrimination task: configured superiority effect appears (perception of odd stimulus out is faster in composite stimulus (2 stimuli) than the base) -- because odd stimulus seems to pop out more |
|
|
What is bottom-up processing? What are 2 problems that all bottom-up processes cannot explain? |
Perceiver starts with small bits of information from the environment and combines them in various ways to form a percept - perception only from information in the distal stimulus - no way of going back to an earlier point and make adjustments (whatever happens at given point is unaffected by later processing): like continuing to draw a picture after last person drew a part - uninfluenced by expectation and previous learning - is automatic and reflexive (takes place when perceiver is passively regarding info) 1. Context effect 2. Expectation effect - the context in which a pattern appears sets up certain expectations in the perceiver as to what objects will occur (faster to recognize utensils and food in the scene depicting a kitchen) |
|
|
What is top-down processing? |
Perceiver's expectations and theories guide the selection and combination of the info in the pattern recognition - expectations guide where you look, what you look at and how you put the information together |
|
|
What is template matching? What is an analogy for templates? What if there are many templates that match? Can this explain perception? What can template matching not explain? What assumption does this theory make? What is an example of a template model? |
A type of bottom-up processing: - kind of like a stencil but reverse: unknown patterns come in and are placed under stencil, and is identified by best matched stencil -- has to go through further processing to find best match No, because they don't explain how and when templates are even made and how we keep track of so many of them How people perceive very different stimuli (not the same template) as the same - different ways of writing letters, blurred/blocked objects Assumes that perceivers don't know ahead of time what the object is, which means they won't know an item needs to be adjusted before template matching The Pandemonium Model: image demon (sensory input), feature demon (relaying features of input), cognitive demon (finding matches), decision demon |
|
|
What is feature analysis? What has a study with frog's retina found? What are limitations? |
A bottom-up process - searching and recognizing for features builds up to recognition of the whole object By implanting micro electrodes in individual cells, they found that specific cells fire for specific stimuli (detect feature=fire) - edge detectors: fired when seeing edges - horizontal line detectors and vertical line detectors Limitations: no good definition as to what is considered a feature - how do perceivers know which features to use to perceive object? |
|
|
What are 3 types of feature analyses? |
1. Recognition of components: Biederman (consistent with Gestalt principles) - when people look at objects, they segment them into geons (geometric components) -- total of 36 geons found -- we pay attention not just to what the geons are, but also where and how they're placed - analogous to phonemes 2. Using features to recognize letters (visual search task): Neisser - similarity between target letters and non target letters makes the task harder - also shown in auditory perception ("da" and "ta" are more likely to be confused) 3. Categorical perception (to interpret speech sounds): using features of a sound and grouping them into distinct categories - letters that share same consonantal features (b and p) only differ in voice onset time (VOT) -- VOT: how quickly vocal chords begin to vibrate after consonant sound is released --- 2 syllables close in VOT but fell on opposite sides of boundaries (0 and -0.05) were 100% distinguishable as opposed to VOT on same side of boundary - has also been demonstrated by non speech sounds |
|
|
What is prototype matching? How does it differ from template and feature analysis? Where do prototypes come from? |
A bottom-up process: attempts to correct shortcomings of template and feature analysis - matching an input to a stored representation (like template models), except the representation is a prototype (the idealized representation of input), NOT a template -- the most stereotypical version of something - So, when sensory device registers a new stimulus, it compares it with previously stored prototypes -- only an approximate match is expected, which allows for discrepencies Doesn't require that an object contain any one specific feature/set of them to be recognized - instead, the more features it shares with prototype, the higher the match Shown in an experiment, participants learned to classify distortions into groups, based on the original pattern/prototype, that they actually haven't even seen - Posner and Keele proposed that during the classification task, people form some sort of mental representation of each class of item |
|
|
Which perceptual model incorporates both bottom-up and top-down processes? How did this model explain visual perception? |
David Marr's: proposed that perception proceeds in terms of several different, special-purpose computational mechanisms and that each mechanism operates autonomously without regard to real world knowledge - module to analyze colour Visual perception proceeds by constructing 3 mental representations: 1. Primal sketch (2D images): allows perceiver to detect boundaries between areas - BOTTOM-UP 2. 2 and 1/2 D sketch: once primal sketch is created, perceiver uses it to create a more complex representation (shading, texture, edges, depth) - BOTTOM-UP 3. 3-D sketch: when information from real world knowledge and expectations is incorporated (involves understanding the meaning of scene) - TOP-DOWN |
|
|
What is perceptual learning? |
Top-down process Perception changes with practice (both Gibsons): a perceiver's experience helps guide what aspects of the stimulus to focus on and facilitate the pickup of more information - when analyzing errors made in task, they realized that errors weren't random -- the number of errors made seemed to depend most on the number of similarities a stimulus shared with the original -- overtime, they seemed to notice more about the figures and responding to the newly found features (more analysis, better discrimination) |
|
|
What is the word superiority effect? What is an uncertain aspect of this effect? How does context affect letter detection? |
A top-down process - Study by Reicher: participants could much more accurately identify letters presented in a context of words than those same letters being presented alone or in the context of non words -- not sure whether people detect more features in the letter when it occurs in a word OR whether people make inferences about the letter that would best complete the word Letter detection works differently depending on context: - missing letter effect: when reading text, people quickly divide words into content words (have meaning) and function words (structure sentence) -- which is why letter detection fails for highly familiar function words (For, From) but works for moderately familiar content words (Function, Future) |
|
|
Explain the connectionist model of word perception. What do the lines between nodes signify? What is this an alternate theory for? |
Model assumes that input is processed at several levels (whether in terms of features, letters, phonemes) - different levels of processing also feed into each other: each level is assumed to form a representation of the info at a different level of abstraction -- features less abstract than letters, letters less abstract than words Also assumes different node for each distinct feature, and when it shows activity, we can assume that that feature is perceived Lines between nodes are connections that can either be excitatory or inhibitory - when excitatory: the 2 nodes suggest each other (and when activated, all excitatory connections send info to nodes) - when inhibitory: 2 nodes don't suggest each other, become less active Word superiority effect |
|
|
How is face perception done? What is the composite faces phenomenon? |
Using holistic processes (of the sort Gestalt psychologist talk about) - holistic perception: ability to see a face immediately as a whole configuration Composite face: formed by placing upper half of one person's face with lower half of second person's face - it's harder to perceive that 2 different composite faces have the same top half when both bottom halves are different (disappears when composite faces of the halves are offset, which interrupts the Gestalt-ness of the face) - only works if the faces are upright |
|
|
What is the common assumption underlying models of perception? What is the constructivist approach to perception? What is the direct perception view? |
Perceiver does something to the proximal stimulus (we use our knowledge to fill in the gaps of the proximal stimulus) Constructivist approach: the construction of mental representations of objects (by using proximal stimulus and info from LTM) - people are seen as active selectors and constructors of information Direct perception: consists of direct acquisition of info from the environment - perceiver does very little work mainly cause the world offers so much information and there's less need to make inferences -- the light hitting retina already contains highly organized information -- certain aspects remain invariant despite changes overtime (piano playing the same song in different keys, still recognizable as same song)- VERY CIRCULAR REASONING |
|
|
True or False: the pattern of motion provides a great deal of info to the perceiver. What is an important idea in Gibson's theory? What are affordances? |
True - idea of optic flow - textures to motion: nearer things move quicker and the direction that the object moves depends on the angle you move Information available to an organism exists not merely in the environment but also in an animal-environment ecosystem (we adjust to our environments) - affordances: the acts/behaviours permitted by objects, places and events (chairs afford sitting) -- affordances are also directly perceived (and we pick up on them and act accordingly) |
|
|
What is visual agnosia? What seems to be the problem? What are 3 types of agnosia and what damages cause it? |
Impairment in the ability to interpret visual information, despite being able to see it - can't even tell the objects they drew themselves
The problem seems to lie in understanding the visual pattern/object presented (in other words, inability to create a percept from proximal stimulus)
1. Apperceptive agnosia: able to process very limited amount of info (contours and outlines) - trouble in recognizing objects in unusual orientations - usually damage to one hemisphere 2. Associative agnosia: able to match objects with drawings and copy drawings, but do so very slowly and step by step, but cannot name them - drawing details first, and then bigger features - bilateral damage 3. Prosopagnosia: inability to recognize familiar faces, but are able to see details of the face (just not put them together) - damage to particular region in right hemisphere |
|
|
What is selective attention? What is the dichotic listening task? |
We usually focus our attention on one or few tasks rather than many - we process information differently depending on whether or not we've been actively focusing on in Dichotic listening task: listener hears 2 messages (one from each ear) and is asked to repeat ("shadow") one of them - info is presented at a rapid rate - Cherry: his participants could nearly always report accurately whether the message was either a speech or noise, AND whether the voice was a man's or a woman's |
|
|
What is the filter theory? Does this theory mean that people can't pay attention to 2 things at once? What did Broadbent describe attention as? |
Broadbent: there are limits on how much info a person can attend to at any given time (protects us from information overload) - if the info exceeds its capacity, then the person uses an attentional filter (let some info in and block others) -- this attentional filter selects which info to process early in the processing (typically before the meaning is identified No, 2 messages that contain little info/presented slowly can be processed simultaneously (repeating the same word over and over) Broadbent and attention: it's like a bottleneck that squeezed some info out of the processing area (the wider the bottleneck, the more info can spill through) |
|
|
What is a contradicted filter theory and what did this theory conclude? What was one problem with the contradictory filter theory? What is the big mystery behind this theory then? What was one opposition against this theory and how does this pose a problem for filter theory? |
Moray: cocktail party effect- shadowing is disrupted when one's own name is embedded in attended/unattended message - concluded that only "important" material can penetrate the filter that blocks messages - participants didn't always hear their name in the unattended message (only when cued) -- this concluded that shadowing tasks don't always takes 100% attention, attention occasionally lapses and shifts to unattended message
How the filter knows which messages are important enough to pass Treisman: 2 messages switched ears, and many participants repeated one or two words from the "unattended ear" (and most didn't notice they switched) - reasoned that participants base their selection of which message to attend in part on their meaning (which filter theory doesn't allow) |
|
|
So, can information from unattended channel be recognized? What did this study conclude? |
Yes: study showed that people who noticed backwards speech in unattended message showed a disruption in their shadowing of the attended message (was disrupted even if they didn't notice the backwards speech) - concluded that attentional shift to the unattended message was unintentional and completed without awareness, and the participants who noticed the backwards speech had their attention captured by it |
|
|
True or False: participants who detected their name in the unattended message are those who have a higher working memory span |
False: they have a lower working memory span - which means, less ability to actively block the unattended message/less able to focus |
|
|
What is the attenuation theory? What are the 3 analysis that an incoming message goes through and how are they differently processed? What types of messages have lower thresholds (can be easily recognized)? What does it mean when a word is "primed"? |
Treisman's modified version of filter theory - instead of messages being blocked, their volume is turned down, thus the unattended info might still be available 1. The message's physical properties (pitch, loudness): easier able to reject unattended message if both attended and unattended differ in loudness 2. Linguistic (words, syllables) 3. Semantic (meaning of message): if words differ semantically, we process the meanings and decide which one to attend to Words/phrases that have subjective importance (names) or that signal danger - they require little mental effort to recognize The word is especially ready to be recognized - the context of a word in a message can lower the threshold |
|
|
What is the spotlight approach to attention (2 characteristics)? What is an opposing theory? |
Attention is like a spotlight that highlights whatever information the system is currently focused on - attention can be directed and redirected to various kinds of incoming information (just like a spotlight's focal point) - also has fuzzy boundaries: can focus on one object at a time, depending on its size Kahneman: attention is a set of cognitive processes for categorizing and recognizing stimuli - the individual "deposits" mental capacity to one or more tasks - the more complex, the harder the processing (level of arousal also affected by task's difficulty) -- people have some control over where they direct their mental resources, and its availability is affected by overall "arousal" --- more arousal=more resources available |
|
|
What did Kahneman say about "allocation policies" and what are they affected by (3)? What did he conclude about attention? What are the other 2 factors that play into attention? |
Individuals have different allocation policies, which are affected by: 1. Enduring dispositions (preference for certain tasks over others): where our interest is 2. Momentary intentions (doing something before you do anything else): what is important 3. Evaluations of the demands on one's capacity (how much attention a task will demand of you): what we're in the mood for Attention is part of mental effort: the more effort expended, the more attention we're using 1. Resource-limited processing: performance which is constrained by the mental resources allocated to them (ex. taking a midterm) 2. Data limited processing: depends entirely on the quality of the incoming data (can't do better no matter how hard one tries) |
|
|
What is the schema theory? |
Neisser: we never acquire unwanted material (analogous to apples that we don't pick while apple picking) - participants ignored occurrences of the target event in the unattended film |
|
|
What is inattentional blindness? Describe the main experiment and what did it conclude? What was another experiment that proved this and how did it affect students? Who does this affect the most? |
The phenomenon of not perceiving a stimulus or change in a stimulus that might be literally right in front of you unless you're paying attention to it - experiment with random gorilla while there was a white and black team passing a ball around -- the number that noticed the gorilla was higher for people monitoring the black team (similar features) -- concluded that people only perceive those events to which we attend, especially if the unexpected event is dissimilar to the focus of our attention/when our attention is tightly focused on something else Experiment of switched people asking for directions - only 50% noticed that the person was replaced by another one - students were more likely to see a change, only when the switched people looked like students -- if they were dressed up as construction workers, fewer than half noticed the change in people Concluded that this phenomenon affects older adults (which concludes that lower working memory capacity predicts susceptibility) |
|
|
Explain the dual-task performance and the experiment. What were the 3 hypotheses? (confusing, look at pg 86-87) |
1. One hypothesis: participants alternated their attention between 2 tasks - authors argued that reading speeds were comparable whether or not they were taking dictation (suggested that if they were alternating attention, they were doing it w/o lag) - However, once the tasks were switched (short stories->encyclopedias), 6/7 performed well
2. One of the 2 tasks are being performed automatically (occurs w/o comprehension) - however, participants were clearly aware of the words being dictated and recognized most of them (and also process their meaning)
3. Participants learned to combine 2 separate tasks: reading and taking dictation through enough practice |
|
|
What is the attention hypothesis for automatization? |
Attention is needed during the practice phase of a task and determines what gets learned during practice - 2-word displays: would participants have an advantage if the 2 words were always paired together rather than the words were paired with different words each time? -- yes, only when participants were forced to focus on both words instead of one (when only told to focus on one, is when they had no advantage, even if they had a lot of practice) |
|
|
True or False: as we become more practiced doing something, it takes less of our attention to perform. What affects the capacity any given task requires? |
True The difficulty of the task (practice decreases the amount of mental effort the task requires) - if that practiced task is affected by a complicated situation, then it requires more attention than usual |
|
|
Explain the Stroop task. Who does this affect the most/least? |
Naming the font colour of the typed out colour - after 8 days of practice, the naming task showed less interference in performing the task and became faster at naming the colours - stroop interference begins when children learn to read, and then decline over the adult age |
|
|
What is automatic processing and its 3 criteria? What was the task used to test it? What were the 2 conditions and the 3 factors that differed throughout the task? What did this experiment conclude? |
1. Must occur without intention 2. Must occur without involving conscious awareness 3. Must not interfere with other mental activity Visual search task: participants see different arrays of letters/numbers and are asked to search for one or more targets - 2 conditions -- varied-mapping set: the memory set (set of target stimuli), in which the targets can become distractors in another trial (differed throughout all 3 factors) -- consistent-mapping condition: memory set was one type and the frame were another type, and the targets were never distractors, required automatic processing (only differed in frame time) - 3 other factors affected the task -- frame size (how much stimuli was displayed) -- frame time (how long it was shown) -- memory set (how many targets) Searching for one type of target in an array of other types (distractors), the task is easy (looking for a number in a group of letters) - however, if the target and the distractors are the same type, the number of distractors does make a difference |
|
|
What is controlled processing and its 4 requirements? |
Used for difficult tasks and those that involve unfamiliar processes (non-routine tasks) 1. operates serially (step by step, one set at a time) 2. requires attention 3. is capacity limited 4. under conscious control |
|
|
Can controlled processing be replaced by automatic processing? |
Yes, through extensive practice |
|
|
What is feature integration theory? How was this theory supported? What are illusory conjunctions? |
We perceive objects in 2 distinct stages - Stage 1: we register features of objects such as their colour and shape (automatic/preattentive) - Stage 2: attention allows us to glue the features together in a unified object (controlled/requires mental capacity) Shown in experiment where participants were shown a series of simple objects that differed in several features - searching for a combination of features (red A) requires controlled processing while searching for individual features was automatic (A) Illusory conjunctions: when attention is diverted/overloaded, participants make integration errors (seeing a red A and a blue G, then mixing them up as seeing a blue A and a red G) |
|
|
What is attentional capture? What type of processing is it, and can it be the other type? Who is more susceptible to this? |
A bottom-up process: because this process is driven by the properties of stimulus rather than the perceiver's goals - A certain stimuli causes an involuntary shift of attention (caused by the "pop-out" phenomena) Can become top-down if given enough time and warning about where the new stimulus would be - it can be intentionally controlled by a participant, which can override the reflexive attentional capture Both people with high and low working memory - the only difference is that high-working memory capacity people recovered more quickly from initial attentional capture |
|
|
What is mindfulness meditation? What brain parts does it activate? |
A way of controlling attention: used by clinicians to improve overall well-being, reduce anxiety and improve the regulation of behaviour - includes periods of non judgementally accepting one's moment-to-moment experience - broad activation of prefrontal cortex and lowered activity of the amygdala |
|
|
What brain part have researchers suspect is most active while attending to a stimulus? How did they make this conclusion? How many brain areas have been shown to be active surfing visual processing of attended stimulus? |
Partietal lobe - phenomenon of hemineglect (more attentional than sensory) in patients who have parietal lobe damage (damage to left side= neglecting sensory info on right/neglect right side of the body) 32 |
|
|
What are 2 networks that are used in visual attention? What is said about patients with ADHD? What have ERPs found about selective attention? |
1. Operational/ enhancing-of-processing network (called the implementation of attention): it is used when a person has already decided where and what to focus the attention on - frontal and parietal lobes: generate top-down processing to visual system to guide focus on relevant stimuli
2. Controlling attention by frontal, parietal and subcortical areas - redirecting focus on a new stimulus
ADHD: they don't suffer from the inability to be alert, but more the inability to sustain vigilance on boring and repetitive tasks - and they have an inability to inhibit an ongoing response (stop one task to do another)
Found that info is processed very differently in the attended vs non attended channels - amplitude is much higher for attended stimulus |
|
|
What is a real life example of divided attention? |
Cellphone use while driving - not as dangerous as talking to a person who is also in the car (since they modulate their conversation styles cause they see the same things as the driver) |
|
|
What is cognition? What is the dual representation theory? What is a representation? What is the principle of neural representation? |
A study of mental (internal) representations - making connections to models from real life Representation: everything we experience is the result of something that stands for something else Principle: everything a person experiences is based not on direct contact with stimuli, but on representations in person's NS |
|
|
True or False: once a representation is established in the mind, we no longer require sensory info to activate the representation. Line perception is? |
True Learned through experience |
|
|
Compare the nativism and empiricism view of the mind. What was Donder's mental chronometry? |
Nativism: Socrates and Plato - the mind is innately prepared to construct reality (knowledge= logical analysis) Empiricism: Aristotle, Locke - experience constructs the mind (knowledge= empirical evidence and experience) What is involved in making decisions (takes a longer time to respond, around 200ms longer, when task involves making decisions |
|
|
Describe the cognitive revolution. |
1. 1953: cherry's attention experiment (dichotic listening) 2. 1956: computer analogies 3. 1957: skinner's verbal behaviour (book that explained that language is learned in the same way that any other learned behaviour is) 4. 1958: broadbent's flow diagram 5. 1959: chomsky's review of skinner's book (and disagreement) |
|
|
What depends on early or late selection in attention tasks (3)? What is the Flanker task (HUH)? |
1. Adding something to the environment (captures attention more than something disappearing) 2. Heavy load tasks stop you from noticing changes (early selection) 3. Easy tasks (late selection) The Eriksen Flanker Paradigm measures the effect of conflicting information within a stimulus set. The subject must focus on a target stimulus while ignoring adjacent flanker stimuli. Besides the Stroop and Simon paradigm, the Eriksen Flanker paradigm is one of the three popular tasks to study effects of conflicting stimulus information Compatible tasks vs Incompatible tasks - faster reaction time for compatible tasks |
|
|
What is the load theory for selective attention? |
Researchers Lavie and Cox were able to show that an irrelevant distractor failed to capture the attention of someone working under a high perceptual load when compared to someone working under a low perceptual load. This goes to show that perceptual load is a necessary condition for selective attention. This load theory of selective attention says that high-load tasks use up all the available resources for prioritized relevant processing. This way, irrelevant information remains unattended and is eventually excluded from any and all processing. |
