Chapter 3 Attention

_______ blindness occurs when people are unaware of clearly visible stimuli if they aren't directing attention to them. E.g. in movies ______ ______.

inattentional, continuity errors

Treisman's Attenuation Theory is an ________ selection model.

intermediate

Load theory of attention (Lavie) explains how people can ignore _____ stimuli when they are trying to focus attention on a task.

irrelevant

Feature integration theory (FIT) involves both bottom-up (analysing features) and top-down processing (______). E.g. of top-down processing is a carrot most likely being orange.

knowledge

In the dichotic listening task, participants are not able to recall the ______ and ____ used. This was taken as evidence for Broadbent's theory.

language, words

According to the _____ selection model, most of the incoming information is processed to the level of _____ before the message to be further processed is selected.

late, meaning

According to the ______ theory of attention, _____ ______ refers to the amount of info a person can handle at any given moment.

load

Treisman's Attenuation Theory vs Broadbent Filter Model

Instead of complete selective filter, have an attenuator - weakens but doesn't eliminate input from unattended ear. Then some gets to perceptual processes, so still assign meaning to stuff in unattended ear, just not high priority. Then switch if something important.

Other real-life evidence of automatic processing

Locking the door, driving, paying attention to our fingers while typing causes our movements to be off.

_______ is a late selection model.

McKay (1973)

Counter-evidence against Broadbent's early selection model: _____ detection in unattended ear during a dichotic listening task, although it works only about ____ of the time.

name; 1/3

______ _______ is a top-down influence on eye movement, referring to the observer's ______ about what is typically contained in scenes. People fixate _____ at things that seem out of place in a scene.

Scene schema, knowledge, longer

______ attention is when you attend to one thing while ignoring the others and ______ attention is paying attention to more than one thing at a time.

Selective, divided

______ ______ is a bottom-up influence on eye movement whereby physical properties of the stimulus like colour, contrast or movement, capture our attention.

Stimulis salience

An example of a situation of task-irrelevant stimuli being hard to ignore is the ______ _____, which occurs because the _____ of the words (irrelevant stimuli) compete with the colour of the ink.

Stroop effect; colour

More evidence for ________ attention: fMRI of overlapping ____/____ photos O'Craven, Downing and Kanwisher (1999)

object-based, house/face

On top of covertly attending to locations, we can also covertly attend to _______, as shown in Egly's et al. (1994) experiment.

objects

The Broadbent's filter prevents _____ of the limited-capacity mechanism beyond the filter.

overloading

Shifting attention from one place to another by moving the eyes is called _______

overt attention

According to the load theory of attention, _____ ______ refers to the difficulty of a given task, where difficult or _____ load tasks use greater processing capacity, compared to easy tasks that use lower processing capacity.

perceptual load; high

One of the inputs is then allowed through the Broadbent filter on the basis of its ______ characteristics, with the other input remaining in the buffer for later processing.

physical

The attenuator in Treisman's model analyses the incoming message in terms of ______ characteristics, _______ and ______.

physical, language, meaning

According to Treisman, illusory conjunctions occur because in the _______ stage, each feature exists independently of each other and are thus ________.

preattentive, free-floating

Feature integration theory explains object processing, where the first stage is the _______ stage, occurring before we focus our attention on an object. This stage is automatic, unconscious and effortless and features are being analysed ______ in separate areas of the brain, thus a rapid initial ______ process.

preattentive, independently, parallel

With low-load (easy) tasks , there is still ______ capacity left which means that resources are available to process the ______ stimulus, slowing down responding.

processing, irrelevant

Overt attention includes ______ and _______.

saccades, fixations

Egly et al. (1994) demonstrated ________ advantage which is the faster reaction that occurs when enhancement spreads within an object.

same-object

In Broadbent's Filter Theory, two or more stimuli or messages presented simultaneously gain parallel access to a ________.

sensory buffer

Conjunctive search = ______ processing - longer RT

serial

Feature vs. conjunction search: feature search involves looking for a target by a ____ feature while conjunctive search involves looking out for a combination of two or more features in the same stimulus.

single

Treisman's Attenuation Model explains ______

Accounts for cocktail party effect Attenuating filter "turns down" volume of unattended message, but it still enters working memory

illusory conjunctions are

Combinations of features from different stimuli

Treisman's Attenuation Theory stages

Messages arrive at the attenuator, attended message is admitted at full strength to the dictionary unit, which is committed to memory. Attenuator > Dictionary unit > Memory

Physiological evidence for the feature integration theory: patient _____ with parietal lobe damage resulting in Balint's syndrome who was unable to ______ attention on individual objects. This lack of focused attention would make it difficult to combine features correctly = high no. of illusory conjunctions

R.M., focus

How do we create an integrated perception of a "rolling red ball"? How an objects individual features become bound together is known as the ______ problem, which was addressed by Treisman in her _______ _________ theory.

binding, feature integration

Posner's _____ _____ task was used to investigate whether paying attention to a _____ improves a person's ability to respond to stimuli presented there. Location-based visual attention.

spatial cueing, location

The late selection model maintains that selection of stimuli for final processing only occurs _____ meaning has been analysed.

after

Evidence for MacKay's (1973) model - participants in a dichotic listening task presented with ______ sentences in the attended ear and _____ words in the unattended ear. Meaning of the biasing word in the unattended ear affected participants' choice, despite them being unaware.

ambiguous, biasing

Other evidence for Broadbent's theory includes findings from ERP studies, which showed enhanced response from _____ ear.

attended

In Cherry's (1953) experiment, the participant's task is to focus on the message in one ear, called the ______ ear, and to repeat what he or she is hearing aloud, a procedure known as _______.

attended, shadowing

The _____ message in Treisman's Attenuation Model is let through the attenuator at full strength and the _____ message at a much weaker strength.

attended, unattended

Results from shadowing task showed higher detection in attended than unattended ear, lending support to the _____ theory.

attenuation

Treisman's Attenuation Theory claims that the attended message can be separated from the unattended message early or later in the information-processing system. This model replaces the filter with ______.

attenuator

Schneider and Shiffrin (1977) showed that many trials of practice can lead to _______ ______, a type of processing that occurs _____ intention and at a cost of only some of a person's cognitive resources.

automatic, without

______ is the process by which features such as colour, form, motion and location are combined to create a ______ object.

binding, coherent

Failures of visual attention: ______ and _______ blindness

change, inattentional

The _________ effect refers to the ability to focus on one _____ stimulus even when several stimuli originate from the same location and time.

cocktail, auditory

Another approach to studying the role of attention in binding is through ______ search. Focused attention to ______ is needed for a conjunctive search.

conjunctive, location

______ attention is shifting attention while keeping the eyes still, involves shifting attention with the _____.

covert, mind

Broadbent's Filter Model of Attention was designed to explain the results of Colin Cherry (1953), who presented different stimuli to the left and right ears in a technique called _____.

dichotic

In Schneider and Shiffrin's experiment, in which participants were asked to indicate whether a target stimulus was present in a series of rapidly presented "frames," _____ attention was easier after ____ trials. This shows that divided attention can be achieved with practice.

divided, 600

Broadbent's Filter Model is an example of a ______ selection model.

early

Egly et al. (1994) experiment showed that attention can ______ our attention to objects, and that this effect also ______ to other places on the same object we are attending to.

enhancing, spreads

______ attention, AKA stimulus-driven attention, describes the redirection of attention toward an ______ stimulus, usually of sudden and high intensity.

exogenous, unexpected

The results from Posner's precueing experiment indicate that participants reacted to the target ______ when their attention was focused on the location where the signal was to appear in the _____ trials.

faster, valid

______ search = parallel processing = shorter RT

feature

In the ______ ________ stage of the FIT, attention is focused on an object and the independent features are combined, causing the observer to become consciously aware of the rolling red ball. This is a _____ process.

focused attention, serial

In the dichotic listening task, participants are only aware of _______ changes, and whether the sound was _______ or noise. This was taken as evidence for Broadbent's theory.

gender, voice

Attenuation vs late selection theory: Treisman and Geffen (1967) compared both with a shadowing experiment that required participants to _____ whenever a target word from either ear was heard. Attenuation theory predicts that detection is _____ in the attended ear, while late selection theory predicts _____ detection in both ears.

tap, better, equal

Eye movements are determined by _____ demands, and precede _____ actions by a fraction of a second. This is known as the "______" strategy, where eye movements occur just before we need the info they will provide.

task, motor, just in time

Dictionary Unit (Treisman) contains words, each with its own _____ for activation. Words that are ______ or important will have ____ thresholds, requiring less activation for the word to be passed into consciousness. Explains name detection in the unattended message.

threshold, common, low

According to the early filter model, everything, even the stimulus to the _______ ear, is processed for ______ characteristics. But only the attended stimulus is processed for _______.

unattended, physical, semantics