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60 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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What will we study in Chapter 4?
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Attention: Multiple meanings
Mental Process VS Mental Resource Input Attention Controlled Attention Automatic VS Conscious Processing |
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Attention is a ... topic in cognitive psychology. what are some examples of things attention refers to?
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pervasive. Arousal and alertness
Consciousness and awareness |
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What are the two general metaphors used to describe attention?
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Attention as a mental process
Attention as a mental resource |
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What do we mean when we say attention is a process? What do we mean when we say that attention is a resource?
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It is an activity that occurs, something we do. It is a limited commodity, as we engage in cognition we use it up, we can only concentrate on so many things at a time.
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What are two types of attention. Give examples of each.
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Input Attention
Alertness or arousal Orienting reflex or response Spotlight attention and search Controlled Attention Selective attention Mental resources and conscious processing Supervisory attention/Working memory |
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What are the four interrelated idea pertaining ot the meanings of attention.
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Four interrelated ideas:
We are constantly presented with more information than we can attend to. There are serious limits in how much we can attend to at one time. We can respond to some information and perform some tasks with little, if any, attention. With sufficient practice and knowledge, some tasks become less demanding of attention. |
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What is input attention? When does it occur? Is it reflexive or not? Is it automatic or conscious? Low level or high level? In terms of what? Occur fast or slow? What does it include?
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Basic forms of attention
Occur EARLY in the stream of processing Reflexive or automatic Low-level in terms of informational content Occur very fast Include the basic processes of getting sensory information into the cognitive system |
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Why is alertness or arousal necessary? What part of the brain is important to this and what does it do?
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the system must be awake, responsive, and able to interact with the environment for maximum performance
Reticular Activating System (RAS)—lower brain stem, in charge of basic arousal and consciousness |
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Why do we need alertness?
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Alertness—we must also be able to monitor our environment for important, interesting, or changing stimulation
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What type of research is alertness related to? What have they found?
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Vigilence research, Performance declines over time
Performance is affected by neurological and physiological state of the person Performance depends somewhat on the task |
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Must one be conscious to store information?
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Not really, we have some implicit memory for things presented while we're unconscious; however, not very much
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Vigilence research is closely related to?
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sustained attention
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How long does it take for a decline in performance to occur? What do we mean by physiological state affected vigilence?
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20-25 minutes, we mean too hot too cold drugs etc.
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After the decline, what happens?
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We still notice what's going on, we're just less likely to respond.
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What helps with vigilence?
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more signals, longer signals, less busy background
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What is the Orienting Reflex & Attention Capture? Define together and then separately.
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Reflexive response of the nervous system where something unexpected grabs your attention
Orienting reflex—you orient your sensory organs and attention to it Attention capture—redirecting your attention/cognitive system to something (without orienting) |
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Can you have orienting without capture? Can you have capture without orient?
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no, yes
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Is the orienting/capture found in all animals? When does it present? What causes it? What is its evolutionary significance?
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yes, early in life, location finding response of the nervous system, it's a survival technique
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What pathway does it use? What are the two types of stimuli? What happens with the first one?
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The where pathway, (1) significant to organism (2) something novel; will associate negative emotions with distracters
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is it voluntary? what else can attention be captured by? example? What else can? What kind of a response was it?
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It's involuntary, the social cues of others, everyone looking in another direction, language; preperatory response to focus attention in a direction
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what is habituation?
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reduction in orienting response
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The where response goes through the... the what response goes through the
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parietal, temporal
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What is spotlight attention and visual search? What is it related to? it is like a ... Where do you focus the spotlight? This allows you to pick up information...
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A kind of visual attention; Related to spatial arrangement of stimuli in environment; Like a “Superman beam”, you focus a spotlight of attention on a region of visual space
This allows you to pick up information in that space more easily |
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Who researched spotlight attention and what did he do? what happened? what did they look at?
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posner, spatial cuing task; arrow directs attention, keep eyes the same, cue directs attention (20% invalid cue; 80% valid cue) looked at reaction time
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What did they find?
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valid trials: faster; neutral: middle, invalid: slower
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What's better, right or left? Why?
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right, probably because we read left to right
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What terms did they come up with posner?
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Benefit/Facilitation—Faster response because of useful advance information (Valid compared to Neutral)
Cost—Slower response because of the misleading cue (Invalid compared to Neutral) |
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What contributes to the cost?
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(1) disengage attention (2) move to the other side (3) engage the other side
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It is cognitive? why/why not?
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yes, eyes are held in place so it is actually voluntary attention
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Who conducted research on visual attention? What did we do in class?
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Treisman, we searched for similar and dissimilar letters
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What are the results? what kind of an effect? what uses parallel and what uses serial? These are also known as
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dissimilar-fast (same for any display size), parallel, input (popout); similar-slow (greater display size = greater time), serial, controlled
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What is the problem with these studies on visual search. define, is it true?
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ecological validity, does it apply to the real world, not really-there are real world examples
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what level of processing in dissimilar? What level of processing is similar? why?
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early/low levels; later, must scan one by one
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note that these two types of processing are... of each other?
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independence
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Describe spotlight attention? early or data? data or conceptual? operates parallel or serial? rapid or slow? basic or complicated? What is its responsibility?
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Spotlight (Input) attention—basic, rapid, operates in parallel across the visual field
Very data-driven, early visual processing Funnels information from the environment into the cognitive system |
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What is controlled attention? fast or slow? effortful or easy? control or not? serial or parallel? data or conceptual? what does it enable us to do?
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Controlled attention—slower, effortful, more under our control
Serial, conceptually-driven Enables us to respond to what comes in via spotlight/input attention in a deliberate way |
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Define controlled attention? Decide what?
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Deliberate, voluntary allocation of mental effort or concentration
Decide to pay attention to some stimuli and not others, which takes effort |
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What is selective attention?
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ability to attend to one source of information while ignoring others
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How is selective attention different in vision and in hearing? what does this mean?
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in vision you can stop looking at something, in hearing, you can't;that selective attention in hearing is purely cognitive
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What is an example of selective attention? define it
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cocktail party effect- can hear your conversation and ignore others
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What is a dual task procedure? What is it often used to study? What is one example? define
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any two tasks we ask you to do at the same time; selective attention; dichotic listening task; shadowing, ignore message 1 while repeating message two
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What two questions do we ask about selective attention?
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When does selection occur?
To what degree has a message been processed before it has been selected or ignored? |
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What is Broadbent’s filter theory of selective attention?
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messages inputted, selective filter, (one gets through), limited capacity decision channel, can go to long term memory store and back, response
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What are more questions about selective attention?
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identify words (early or late) identify loudness, pitch, location of voice (early or late)
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What was the early selection model? when is it filtered?
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Early selection—based on physical characteristics such as acoustic information; before getting to the working memory
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What can and can't people report?
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physical characteristics (gender, tone); do not notice backward speech; do not notice changes in language, can't report content, won't notice reported words
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According to Broadbend, what is the filter? How many messages get through?
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selective attention; only one
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What is the problem with early selection theory? example?
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Sometimes the unattended message DOES get through the filter (e.g., your name)
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What is the late selection model?
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Late selection—based on message content which requires further analysis than simple physical characteristics (e.g., identifying words and phrases);
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What did Treisman find and when? What did this mean? What did treisman suggest
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1960, He found that when switch ears people continue with the same story before noticing; they must be filtering by content; that we can switch the filter
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Which is easier? What is harder? Why
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early selection Requires less attention, late selection, takes more cognitive resources
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Selective attention can cause what two things?
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inhibition and negative priming
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define them
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Inhibition—an attentional mechanism that helps us suppress/ignore irrelevant information so we can focus on what we are trying to attend to
Negative priming—once something has been inhibited (think “actively ignored”), you are slower to process it immediately afterwards |
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What do we mean when we say that attention is a mental resource-
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attention is a mental resource that fuels cognitive activity;
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What are the four points about attention as a mental resource?
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When we attend to something and ignore something else, we are using up some of this fuel
The amount of fuel we have available to us (our pool of resources) is limited We have control over how to use our mental fuel—we voluntarily choose what to pay attention to We can pay attention to more than one task at a time if any one task doesn’t take up too much of our fuel (i.e., all the tasks together can’t exceed resources) |
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What are the criteria for automatic processing?
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Automatic processing criteria:
Occurs without intention—without a conscious decision, you can’t prevent it from happening or stop it once it starts Not open to conscious awareness—you cannot describe the process Consumes few (if any) resources—these processes require very little conscious attention (fuel) Process operates very rapidly (informal)—usually within 1 second |
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What are the criteria for conscious/controlled criteria?
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Conscious/Controlled processing criteria:
Occurs with intention—optional, can deliberately be performed or not Open to conscious awareness—we know they are going on and, to some extent, what is happening Use conscious resources—attention is required, they use up some of our pool of resources (fuel) Process operates slower (informal)—usually longer than a second or two |
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What is the stroop task?
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when you say the color of the word and ignore what the word says
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What is automatization? Are things either automatic or not? examples?
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Automatization—acquiring an automatic process, it occurs on a continuum;
driving a car playing a musical instrument tying one's shoes learning a second language |
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Is automaticity always a good thing? why/why not? What is the supervisory attentional system?
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Action Slips—unintended, automatic actions that are inappropriate for the current situation
You might not remember if you did something when it is automatic Supervisory Attentional System This is basically Short-term Working Memory |
