PY 385 Exam 2: Ch. 4

How was the dichotic listening procedure used to determine how well people can focus on the attended message?

-one message is presented to the left ear and another to the right -participant "shadow" one message to ensure he is attending to that message

How much information can be taken in from the unattended message?

-participants could not report the content of the message in unattended ear -knew that there was a message -knew the gender of the speaker

Treisman and Schmidt (1982)

-participants report combination of features from different stimuli -illusory conjunctions occur because features are "free floating" -ignore black numbers and focus on objects -participants can correctly pair shapes and colors

Object-Based Visual Attention: Egly (1994)

-participants saw two side-by-side rectangles, followed by a target cue -reaction time fastest when target appeared where indicated -reaction time was faster when the target appeared in the same rectangle

Broadbent's Model of Selective Attention: Short-Term Memory

-receives output of detector -holds information for 10-15 seconds and may transfer it to long-term memory

Strayer and Johnston (2001)

-simulated driving -participants on phone missed twice as many red lights and took longer to apply the brakes -same results using "hands-free" cell phone

Bottom-up Determinants of Eye Movement

-stimulus salience: areas that stand out and capture attention -bottom-up process -depends on characteristics of the stimulus -color and motion are highly salient

Object-Based Visual Attention: Location-based

moving attention from one place to another

Attention Processing Distributed Across the Cortex

-using fMRI to detect cortical activity during a search task -attention to an expected direction of motion caused brain activity to increase in a number of brain areas

_____ is the process by which features such as color, form, motion, and location are combined to create perception of a coherent object.

Binding

The use of a machine that tracks the movement of one's eyes can help reveal the shifting of one's ______ attention.

overt

The Stroop effect occurs when participants...

try to name colors and ignore words

Anne Treisman's attenuator analyzes the incoming message in terms of all of the following except...

whether the perceptual load is low or high

Eye tracking studies investigating attention as we carry out actions such as making a peanut butter sandwich found that a person's eye movements...

are determined primarily by the task

Treisman's Attenuation Model: Dictionary Unit

-contains words, each of which has a threshold for being activated -words that are common or important have low thresholds -uncommon words have high thresholds

Schneider and Shiffrin (1977)

-divide attention between remembering target and monitoring rapidly presented stimuli -memory set: one to four characters called target stimuli -test frames: could contain random dot patterns, a target, distractors

Object-Based Visual Attention

-enhancing effect of attention spreads throughout the object -attention can be based on the -environment: static scenes or scenes with few objects -specific object: dynamic events

Selective Attention

attending to one thing while ignoring others

Overt Attention

-eyes movements, attention, and perception -saccades: rapid movements of the eyes from one place to another -fixations: short pauses on points of interest -studied by using an eye tracker

Broadbent's Model of Selective Attention: Sensory Memory

-holds all incoming information for a fraction of a second -transfers all information to next stage

Broadbent's Model of Selective Attention: Filter

-identifies attended message based on physical characteristics -only attended message is passed on to the next stage

Change Blindness

-if shown two versions of a picture, differences between them are not immediately apparent -task to identify differences requires concentrated attention and search

R.M.: Patients with Balint's Syndrome

-inability to focus attention on individual objects -high number of illusory conjunctions reported

Object-Based Visual Attention: Object-based

attention being directed to one place on an object

Feature Integration Theory

-mostly bottom-up processing -top-down processing influences processing when participants are told what they would see -top-down processing combines with feature analysis to help one perceive things accurately

The Stroop Test

-name of the word interferes with the ability to name the ink color -cannot avoid paying attention to the meanings of the words

Covert Attention: Attention Without Eye Movements

-Precueing: directing attention without moving the eyes -participants respond faster to a light at an expected location than at an unexpected location -even when eyes kept fixed

Top-Down Determinants of Eye Movements

-Scene schema: knowledge about what is contained in typical scenes -help guide fixations from one area of a scene to another -eyes movements are determined by tasks -eyes movements preceded motor actions by a fraction of a second

Treisman's Attenuation Model: Attentuator

-analyzes incoming message in terms of physical characteristics, language, and meaning -attended message is let through the attenuator at full strength -unattended message is let through at much weaker strength

McKay (1973)

-attended ear, participants heard ambiguous sentences -unattended ear, participants heard either "river" or "money"

Treisman's Attenuation Model: Intermediate Selection Model

-attended message can be separated from unattended message early in the information-processing system -selection can also occur

Physiology of Attention

-attention enhances neural responding -attentional processing is distributed across a large number of areas in the brain

Focused Attention stage

-attention plays key role -features are combined

Preattentive Stage

-automatic -no effort or attention -unaware of process -object analyzed into features

Attentional Capture

a rapid shifting of attention usually caused by a stimulus such as a loud noise, bright light, or sudden movement

What is the cocktail party effect?

ability to attend to only one voice among many

Which of the following is the process by which features such as color, form motion, and location are combined to create our perception of a coherent object?

binding

Illusory conjunctions are...

combinations of features from different stimuli

Colin Cherry's experiment in which participants listened to two different messages, one presented to each ear, found that people...

could focus on one message and ignore the other one at the same time

Which of the following is an experimental procedure used to study how attention affects the processing of competing stimuli?

dichotic listening

Which of the following is most closely associated with Treisman's attenuation theory of selective attention?

dictionary unit

Load Theory of Attention: Perceptual Load

difficulty of a given task -high load (difficult) tasks use higher amounts of processing capacity -low load (easy) tasks use lower amounts of processing capacity

Which of the following best describes the result of attention in the context of perception?

enhancement

Broadbent's Model of Selective Attention: Early Selection

filters message before incoming information is analyzed for meaning

Each time you briefly pause on one face, you are making a...

fixation

Load Theory of Attention: Processing Capacity

how much information a person can handle at any given moment

Scanning

identifying early signals of environmental changes and trends

A high threshold in Treiman's model of attention implies that...

it takes a strong signal to cause activation

If you are folding towels while watching television, you may find that you don't have to pay much attention to the act of folding while keeping up with the storyline on the TV show. Folding the towels would be an example of a ______ task.

low-load

Divided Attention

paying attention to more than one thing at a time

The "filter model" proposes that the filter identifies the attended message based on...

physical characteristics

Broadbent's Model of Selective Attention: Detector

processes all information to determine higher-level characteristics of the message

As the ____ of a stimulus increases, _____ tends to ______.

salience; fixation; increase

The notion that faster responding occurs when enhancement spreads within an object called...

same-object advantage

Late Selection Model

selection of stimuli for final processing does not occur until after information has been analyzed for meaning

When Sam listens to his girlfriend Susan in the restaurant and ignores other people's conversations, he is engaged in the process of ____ attention.

selective

Distraction

something that draws attention away

Inattentional Blindness

stimulus that is not attended is not perceived, even though a person might be looking directly at it

Strayer and Johnston's (2001) experiment involving simulated driving and the use of "hands-free" vs. "handheld" cell phones found that...

talking on either kind of phone impairs driving performance significantly and to the same extent

Placing tomatoes, onions, jalapenos, garlic, cilantro, and lime juice into a blender and turning it on to produce salsa is similar to which of the following?

the focused attention stage of feature integration theory

Binding

the process by which features such as color, form, motion, and location are combined to create our perception of a coherent object