Chapter 5: Attention

Since she has been on vacation for a week, Natalie can hardly wait to talk to her best friend. Natalie is temporarily worried because they decided to meet at a restaurant that is notoriously crowded. After meeting, she realizes that it is actually easy to focus only on her friend's voice and block out of all of the other conversions. Natalie is experiencing the:

Cocktail party effect

In comparison to Austin Naber, how is David Eagleman completing the cup-stacking task?

Eagleman's brain appeared to be devoting more neural resources and attention to the task.

Which of the following regions showed ineffecient activation in children with ADHD compared to control sugjects while completing an impulse control task?

Frontoparietal network

__________________ is a common experimental procedure to test cognitive control in patients populations with impulse control issues such as ADHD.

Go/No-go

Attended message

The message that the subject is listening to

Shadowing

The repetition of the selected message

Unattended message

The stimuli that is supposed to be ignored by the subjects

The video above discussed research by Molloy et al. (2015). The researchers recorded neural activity while participants completed a high and low-load task. What did the neural results indicate about subjects' ability to process an auditory tone while completing a high-load task?

They did not appear to consciously hear the tone.

Conjunction Search

Using attention to find an object with more than one defining characteristic

Single-feature Search

Using attention to find an object with one defining characteristic

The task of finding Waldo in the popular childen's "Where's Waldo" books, would be an example of which task?

Visual search

If you casually scan the flower image above, your attention is automatically captured by the red flower. This would be an example _____________________ attention.

covert

True or false? Distractions while driving and talking on a cell-phone can be reduced if you use hand-held devices?

false

The reason we need attention is because our brains have insufficient _______ resources.

processing

Children with autism spectrum disorder have been found to display visual tracking deficits at which age?

6 months

Luke suffered a stroke which damaged his occipital and parietal lobe regions. He has struggled with matching his movements to what he sees and can only report one object in an array at a time. Luke is most likely experiencing

Balint's Syndrome

In the Where's Waldo task, you are looking for a character that has a striped shirt, striped hat, and possibly several accessories. Which type of search does this represent?

Conjunction

Realizing you forgot where you parked your car, you actively start scanning the parking lot with the goal of finding your car. This would be an example of which type of attention?

Endogenously controlled attention

Hearing a loud noise and then turning towards the source in an example of which type of attentional control?

Exogenous

Support from early selection models of attention came from dichotic listening tasks showing that participants were able to block out many of the following from their unattended ear. Which of the following did participants notice?

If the sex of the voice changed between female and male

Which of the following are examples of automatic processes? A) Teddy is learning to ride a bike for the first time B) Sherri is typing her term paper without looking at the keys C) Mike is riding his bike to work and doesn't have to think about his control of the bike D)Nona is learning a new dance routine for her dance squad

Mike is riding his bike to work and doesn't have to think about his control of the bike

According to Broadbent's early selection model of attention, when is the meaning of information processed?

Only after you've selected information to focus on and the attentional filter is applied

People with Balint's syndrome experience which of the following?

Optic ataxia

Which area of the cortex is associated with exogenous attention and orienting you to unexpected stimuli?

Right hemisphere

A subject is completing a Flanker task. Like the one mentioned above, they need to press the right arrow when the target is an H or K and the left arrow when it is an S or C. Based on what you know of attentional load, which of the following should have the slowest response time?

S S S H S S S

If you have to search for a red X among a bunch of distracter green Xs, what should we expect as we increase the number of distracters?

Search time should reamain about the same with more distracters

Attenuator Model

Selective attention provides a benefit for attended information and weakens the processing of unattended information.

Images like the one below are used to demonstrate which of the following?

Simultanagnosia

Some researchers have argued that humans are not capable of multi-tasking and, instead, may just be doing what?

Switching between tasks

Recall Natalie's conversation with her friend mentioned in Question 5.05. Imagine that while she is having a conversation with her friend at the restaurant, the neighboring table is talking about Natalie Portman's latest movie. If the early selection models always accurately predict what attention will block, which of the following would be true?

When the table mentions Natalie Portman, Natalie will not be distracted from her friend's voice unless the start shouting about the movie.

Multi-tasking, or focusing on more than one task at time, is called ____________________.

divided attention

Typing is probably something you've practiced for many years of your life. Now when you type a paper, you don't need to be thinking about, or looking at, the keys to be able to write your report. In this case, typing would be an example of: A) Controlled process B) Automatic process C) Overt process D) Inattentional blindness

no correct answer shown

In the study described above from Posner (1980), the majority of the trials were _________________________ and provided information about the location of the upcoming target.

valid

When allocating our attention to moving objects, about how many items can we simultaneously track?

4

Which area of the brain has been shown to process motion?

Area MT

The process of choosing which sensory information to process and which to exclude is termed:

Attention

The finding that the color of a printed word interferes with naming that word aloud suggests that reading involves:

Automatic Processing

After being shown the stimuli below, Mark is asked to describe what he saw. He reports that he saw a blue triangle and a yellow oval. He has completed which kind of error? (picture of a blue oval, a black circle with a white circle in the center, a yellow triangle upside down)

Conjunction error

Trying to multi-task, or focus your attention on more than one thing is referred to as:

Divided attention

The finding that recognizing your name being said in the unattended ear during dichotic listening tasks is evidence AGAINST which model of attention?

Early Selection

While you are studying, your phone dings with a text message alert. You involuntarily look towards your phone. This would be an example of which of the following?

Exogenously controlled attention

The inability to notice an unexpected stimulus due to focused attention is termed:

Inattentional blindness

Select the options that could describe attention.

Limited

In regards to the Stroop task, _______ has been argued to be more automatic while _______ is more controlled.

Reading the word; Reading the color of the ink

Early Selection Model

Selective attention acts as a filter and unattended information only gets through if physically distinct (louder).

Late Filter Theory

Selective attention acts as a filter that blocks most unattended information from further processing but personally relevant and meaningful information can also be processed.

When asked which of the following sentences best matches what they repeated in the experiment, which do you think participants were more likely to choose when "money" was repeated in the unattended channel?

They threw stones at the savings and loan.

William suffered a stroke which caused damage only to his right parietal lobe. Now when he goes to eat, he only eats the right side of his plate and tends to ignore stimuli on the left side of his visual field. Which of the following is William most likely suffering from?

Visual neglect

Allen is working on his math homework and is working through a particularly difficult problem while his mother is shouting for him to come downstairs for dinner. After yelling several times in a row, she goes upstairs to ask why he is ignoring her. Allen reports that he never even heard her because he was focusing so hard on his math problem. The math problem most likely is a ________________________ task for Allen due to difficulty and attentional demands it places on him.

high-load

Delaney is on the chapter of her book and is very engrossed in the chapter. She is so engrossed that she doesn't hear the oven timer go off. Due to her selective attention, she has not consciously processed the auditory information. Delaney has experienced

inattention

In the flanker compatibility task, the effect of an 'incompatible' flanker in the low-load condition was that it:

increased reaction time

Based on Posner (1980) what is one possible purpose of attention? A)To help us remember what task we are doing B) To help us see where to look and focus our eyes C) To prepare the mind for processing in a pre-attentive phase

no correct answer listed

Balint's syndrome is hallmarked by _____________________ or the inability to visually guide motor movements.

optic ataxia

Additionally, Balint's syndrome is hallmarked by __________________________ or the inability to see more than one item in a cluster at a time

simultanagnosia

The cognitive process of selecting information for further processing is called:

Attention

Bevalier et al. (2013) compared neural activity of video and non-video game players while completing a search task. Which of the following is true?

Both video game players and non-video game players were less likely to see the moving distractors when a high amount of attention and focus were needed.

When trying to identify emotions, how do controls tend to differ from subjects with autism spectrum disorder?

Control subjects tend to focus on the stimuli's eyes and central regions of the face compared to subjects with ASD.

Video game playing has been shown to have benefits for attention. Which of the following is a benefit discussed in the chapter? A) Social attention is improved B) Identification of items is quicker in video game players and attentional resources are activated more quickly C) Non-video game players experienced visual fatigue while completing tasks that video game players did not report D) Video game players appeared to be able to better multi-task

Identification of items is quicker in video game players and attentional resources are activated more quickly

Mary is talking on her cellphone while at the store and is devoting her full attention to her conversation. While she is walking down the aisle, a young women next to her trips and falls. Mary does not look at the woman and continues to talk and shop. The woman that fell things Mary is very rude and insensitive to not offer to help. While this may be true, it is also possible that Mary didn't see the woman fall because she was experiencing:

Inattentional blindness

Which area of the brain has been associated with an endogenous attention network to prepare neural activation for pre-processing?

Intraparietal sulcus

The process of narrowing your attention onto chosen stimuli is called:

Selective attention

Feature-integration theory

Suggested purpose of attention is to bind different characteristics of items together into a seamless perception

To account for how subjects could follow a meaningful message that switched between ears in dichotic listening task, Anne Treisman added a ________________ to the filter model to explain how unattended information still leaks past the filter but is relatively weaker.

attenuator