Chapter 4: Attention

dual-task method

(divided-attention) the description of attention is supported by this; compare performances bt two tasks performed and single task performed showed there are not enough attentional resources for both tasks

Which of the following is NOT an analogy your textbook uses to describe attention?

A key fitting into a lock

What is not known to influence the cocktail party effect?

A person's intelligence

What is classified as a dual-task method?

A subject works on a Sudoku puzzle while listening to a recording, then responds whenever an animal name comes up in the recording

Walking is to _____ as learning a new language is to _____.

Automatic processing; controlled processing

Processing that is not controlled and does not tax cognitive resources is _____, whereas processing due to an intention that consumes cognitive resources is _____.

Automatic; controlled

After watching a video of an interview, you are told that the interviewee changed parts of his outfit throughout the interview. You never noticed the outfit changes. What is this an example of?

Change blindness

Participants in Simons & Levin's (1998) study did not notice when a person asking them for directions was switched with another person. This illustrates _____.

Change blindness

You are participating in an experiment in which you are told to locate the letter "T" among a field of digits. What is this an example of?

Consistent mapping

In a study, subjects are asked to perform an arithmetic task while also attempting to remember lists of words for later recall. The researchers in this study compared the performance on the memory task with and without the accompanying arithmetic task to determine if the arithmetic task interferes with one's performance on the memory task. This study used the ____________ methodology to study attention abilities.

Dual-task

Which of these is NOT known to influence the cocktail party effect?

Early processes in filtering

If you are into a deep conversation with someone at a party, you won't hear someone calling your name from across the room. True or false?

False

In Simons & Chabris' (1999) famous study, most people noticed the gorilla walk across the scene. True or false?

False

Not noticing a change in the environment from moment to moment is called ______.

Inattentional blindness

What fits the description of Filter Theory of Attention?

Information passes a filter with some given more importance than others; however, even less important information can potentially be recalled

What is not true about controlled processing?

It never becomes automatic.

You are a biology major but must take at least one business class in order to graduate. The fact that you tend to find biology-based courses much more entertaining than the required business class supports _____.

Kahneman's capacity model of attention

In which lobe of the brain is visual information first processed?

Occipital

Schneider and Shiffrin's (1977) experiments showed that when the targets and distractors were ___________, the task became automatic for the subjects.

Of the same types

Perhaps one of the most important ways to turn a controlled task into an automatic one is _____.

Practice

Zaretskaya et al. (2013) found activity in the _____ during a task involving a global percept.

Right parietal cortex

In the ______ a subject attends to one of two competing messages in each ear. People usually can't recall the information in the unattended ear with the exception of ______.

Shadowing task, cocktail party effect

In experiments where subjects visually search for a target, the targets in the _______ condition seemed to pop out of the displays.

Single-feature

If you had to turn your car wheel left to make a right turn, you would likely get confused. This illustrates _____.

The Simon effect

Noticing a red flower among a field of purple flowers illustrates _____.

The attention capture phenomenon

The two mechanisms hypothesized to underlie the Simon effect are _____ and _____.

The attentional-movement hypothesis; the referential-coding hypothesis

Which of the following theories could be discounted when taking the results of Simon's invisible gorilla study into account?

The cocktail party effect

According to Treisman's dictionary unit, the lower the threshold of information, _____.

The more likely the information is attended to

Which of the following scenarios best illustrates the notion that our attention is like a spotlight?

Tony's focus on his video game

According to the theory of unconscious inference, we aren't aware of the feature identification process because it is automatic. True or false?

True

Strayer & Johnston (2001) found that people have a harder time maintaining a conversation on a cell phone while driving than they do listening to the radio while driving.

True

In finding neural evidence for processing environmental information, it is theorized that the _______ is responsible for recognizing an object and the _______ is responsible for locating an object.

Ventral pathway , Dorsal pathway

What would an example of a conjunction target be?

Yellow circle among green squares

Talking to your friend during class while you are supposed to be listening to your professor's lecture is most similar to _____.

a shadowing task

Strayer and Johnston

also studied dual-task method visual attention in driving showed that cognitive resources are not sufficient for good performance of tasks; attentional resources are limited

the stroop task

assesses role of interference of automatic processing congruent vs. incongruent conditions

Kahneman

attention as a limited resource (mental capacity) limited cognitive resource that can allocate to different tasks based on intentions arousal can influence mental resource capacity

LaBerge

attention as a limited resource (spotlight) attention moves from the center to the target like how a spotlight would move to focus

Broadbent

attention is limited by what we can focus on at a time "bottleneck" in processing filters out everything except information being attended to early processor of information

the simon effect occurs due to either:

attentional-movement hypothesis or referential-coding hypothesis

Our attention has been said to involve a _____ that filters out everything except the information we are attending to.

bottleneck

Subjects generally do not improve on the Stroop task because of the amount of stress put on their ability to inhibit automatic processing.

false

Treisman - attention as a feature binder

feature integration theory of attention; separate stages of processing contribute to focused attention first stage: automatic identification and processing of environment features second stage: conscious, focused attention to combine features of scene to understand it (attention is viewed as glue that binds objects together)

neural basis of selective attention

feature-integration model consistent with brain localization of function components of theory match with activity in occipital, parietal, and temporal lobes

views of attention

filter of information spotlight focused on aspect of environment glue that binds features of environment together

Treisman's modified filter model of attention suggests that some information passes through, but only after it has been ranked in terms of _____.

importance

the simon effect

incompatibilities tax attention; interference in response due to inconsistency between response and stimulus

Conway, Cowan, & Bunting

investigated cocktail party effect with shadowing tasks

Zaretskaya

local vs. global feature movement

Treisman - attention as filter

proposed modifications to filter model early filter allows some info to pass thru, but only after it has been attenuated

cocktail party effect

sometimes competing info does get through you may hear your name at a party despite whatever you're focusing on

attention as filter of information

supported by shadowing tasks

Localization of function in the brain is consistent with _____.

the feature integration theory

The dual-task method compares performance on two simultaneous tasks to performance on one task at a time to see which scenario produces better results.

true

Letter targets and distractors in Schneider & Shiffrin's (1977) task is an example of a _____.

varied mapping condition