Attention (Chapter 4- Test Questions)

Which of the following illustrates how we can miss things even if they are clearly visible?

Inattentional blindness

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.

The technique where the participant's task is to focus on the message in one ear, called the attended ear, and to repeat what he or she is hearing out loud is known as

dichotic listening

A bottom-up process is involved in fixating on an area of a scene that

has high stimulus salience

When we search a scene, initial fixations are most likely to occur on __________ areas.

high-saliency

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

overt

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

physical characteristics

Broadbent's model is called an early selection model because

the filter eliminates unattended information at the beginning of the information flow.

Saccadic eye movement is a ______________.

a rapid, jerky movement from one fixation to the next

Which of the following options would NOT be an important factor in automatic processing?

close attention

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.

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," divided attention was easier

once processing had become automatic.

How does perceptual load differ from processing capacity?

Perceptual load is individual and processing capacity is universal.

The ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli is called

cocktail party effect

As the ________ of a stimulus increases, ________ tends to ________.

salience; fixation; increase

In which concept is an individual's knowledge most important?

schema

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

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

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

According to your text, the ability to divide attention depends on all of the following EXCEPT

task cueing

During a visit to the local museum, you appreciate the incredible beauty of the paintings displayed. Your ability to see the paintings as complete pictures rather than individual, disconnected dots of color, texture, and location occurs through a process called __________.

binding

Imagine that lawmakers are considering changing the driving laws and that you have been consulted as an attention expert. Given the principles of divided attention, in which of the following conditions would a person have the most difficulty with driving and therefore pose the biggest safety risk on the road?

When the person is driving an unfamiliar vehicle that is more difficult to operate

The difficulty we have in recognizing even an obvious alteration in a scene is called __________ blindness.

change

What contains the words, stored in memory, each of which has a threshold for being activated?

dictionary unit

Proponents of multitasking would note ________ to support their opinion, whereas opponents of multitasking would point to ________ to justify their perspective.

divided attention; distraction

Lan has no idea what she just read in her text because she was thinking about how hungry she is and what she is going to have for dinner. This is a real-world example of

mind wandering.

According to Treisman's feature integration theory, the first stage of perception is called the __________ stage.

preattentive

A high threshold in Treisman's model of attention implies that

it takes a strong signal to cause activation.

Suppose you are in your kitchen writing a grocery list, while your roommate is watching TV in the next room. A commercial for spaghetti sauce comes on TV. Although you are not paying attention to the TV, you "suddenly" remember that you need to pick up spaghetti sauce and add it to the list. Your behavior is best predicted by which of the following models of attention?

late selection

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(n) ________ task.

low-load

The Stroop effect demonstrates people's inability to ignore the __________ of words.

meaning