Cognitive Psychology Chapter 4

Executive action network

A complex network that is involved in controlling executive functions.

Dictionary unit

A component of Treisman's attenuation theory of attention. This processing unit contains stored words and thresholds for activating the words. The dictionary unit helps explain why we can sometimes hear a familiar word, such as our name, in an unattended message.

Balint's Syndrome

A condition caused by brain damage in which a person has difficulty focusing attention on individual objects.

Inhibitory control

A mechanism involved in dealing with conflicting stimuli. Related to executive function, cognitive control, and willpower.

Willpower

A mechanism involved in dealing with conflicting stimuli. Related to executive function, inhibitory control, and cognitive control.

Cognitive control

A mechanism involved in dealing with conflicting stimuli. Related to executive function, inhibitory control, and willpower.

Synchronizations

A mechanism that explains what happens to attention when effective connectivity between different structures in the network change depending on conditions. It has been hypothesized that this results in more effective communication between areas of the brain.

Late selection model of attention

A model of selective attention that proposes that selection of stimuli for final processing does not occur until after the information in the message has been analyzed for meaning.

Dorsal attention network

A network that controls attention based on top-down processing.

Ventral attention network

A network that that controls attention based on stimulus salience.

Executive functions

A number of processes that involve controlling attention and dealing with conflicting responses.

Scene schema

A person's knowledge about what is likely to be contained in a particular scene. This knowledge can help guide attention to different areas of the scene. For example, knowledge of what is usually in an office may cause a person to look toward the desk to see the computer.

Precueing

A procedure in which participants are given a cue that will usually help them carry out a subsequent task. This procedure has been used in visual attention experiments in which participants are presented with a cue that tells them where to direct their attention.

Experience sampling

A procedure that was developed to answer the question "what percentage of the time during the day are people engaged in specific behavior?" One way this has been achieved is by having people report what they are doing when they receive signals at random times during the day.

Attentional capture

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

Illusory conjunctions

A situation, demonstrated in experiments by Anne Treisman, in which features from different objects are inappropriately combined.

Low-load task

A task that uses few resources, leaving some capacity to handle other tasks.

High-load task

A task that uses most or all of a person's resources and so leaves little capacity to handle other tasks.

Feature integration theory

An approach to object perception, developed by Anne Treisman, that proposes a sequence of stages in which features are first analyzed and then combined to result in perception of an object.

Stroop effect

An effect originally studied by J. R. Stroop, using a task in which a person is instructed to respond to one aspect of a stimulus, such as the color of ink that a word is printed in, and ignore another aspect, such as the color that the word spells. The Stroop effect refers to the fact that people find this task difficult when, for example the word RED is printed in blue ink.

Attenuation model of attention

Anne Treisman's model of selective attention that proposes that selection occurs in two stages. In the first stage, an attenuator analyzes the incoming message and lets through the attended message—and also the unattended message, but at a lower (attenuated) strength.

Stimulus salience

Bottom-up factors that determine attention to elements of a scene. Examples are color, contrast, and orientation. The meaningfulness of the images, which is a top-down factor, does not contribute to stimulus salience.

Change detection

Detecting differences between pictures or displays that are presented one after another.

Change blindness

Difficulty in detecting changes in similar, but slightly different, scenes that are presented one after another. The changes are often easy to see once attention is directed to them, but are usually undetected in the absence of appropriate attention.

Saccadic eye movement

Eye movements from one fixation point to another. See also Fixation (in perception and attention).

Attention

Focusing in specific features, objects, or locations or on certain thoughts or activities.

Effective connectivity

How easily activity can travel along a particular pathway between two structures.

Detector

In Broadbent's model of attention, the detector processes the information from the attended message to determine higher-level characteristics of the message, such as its meaning.

Filter

In Broadbent's model of attention, the filter identifies the message that is being attended to based on its physical characteristics - things like the speaker's tone of voice, pitch, speed of talking, and accent - and lets only this attended to message pass through to the detector the next stage.

Attenuator

In Treisman's model of selective attention, the attenuator analyzes the incoming message in terms of physical characteristics, language, and meaning. Attended messages pass through the attenuator at full strength, and unattended messages pass though with reduced strength.

Continuity errors

In film, changes that occur from one scene to another that do not match, such as when a character reaches for a croissant in one shot. which turns into a pancake in the next shot.

Fixation

In problem solving, people's tendency to focus on a specific characteristic of the problem that keeps them from arriving at a solution.

Saliency Map

Map of a scene that indicates the stimulus salience of areas and objects in the scene.

Early selection model

Model of attention that explains selective attention by early filtering out of the unattended message. In Broadbent's early selection model, the filtering step occurs before the message is analyzed to determine its meaning.

Filter model of attention

Model of attention that proposes a filter that lets attended stimuli through and blocks some or all of the unattended stimuli.

Visual scanning

Movements of the eyes from one location or object to another.

Inattentional blindness

Not noticing something even though it is in clear view, usually caused by failure to pay attention to the object or the place where the object is located.

Visual search

Occurs when a person is looking for one stimulus or object among a number of other stimuli or objects.

Covert attention

Occurs when attention is shifted without moving the eyes, commonly referred to as seeing something "out of the corner of one's eye."

Inattentional deafness

Occurs when inattention causes a person to miss an auditory stimulus. For example, experiments have shown that it is more difficult to detect a tone when engaged in a difficult visual search task.

Distraction

Occurs when one stimulus interferes with attention to or the processing of another stimulus.

Same-object advantage

Occurs when the enhancing effect of attention spreads throughout an object, so that attention to one place on an object results in a facilitation of processing at other places on the object.

Attentional warping

Occurs when the map of categories on the brain changes to make more space for categories that are being searched for as a person attends to a scene.

Binding

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

Automatic processing

Processing that occurs automatically, without the person's intending to do it, and that also uses few cognitive resources. Automatic processing is associated with easy or well-practiced tasks.

Load theory of attention

Proposal that the ability to ignore task-irrelevant stimuli depends on the load of the task the person is carrying out. High-load tasks result in less distraction.

Perceptual load

Related to the difficulty of a task. Low-load tasks use only a small amount of a person's processing capacity. High-load tasks use more of the processing capacity.

Feature search

Searching among distractors for a target item that involves detecting one feature, such as "horizontal."

Conjunction search

Searching among distractors for a target that involves two or more features, such as "horizontal" and "green."

Overt attention

Shifting attention from one place to another by moving the eyes. In contrast to covert attention.

Selective attention

The ability to focus on one message and ignore all others.

Cocktail party effect

The ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli, especially at a party where there are a lot of simultaneous conversations.

Divided attention

The ability to pay attention to, or carry out, two or more different tasks simultaneously.

Processing capacity

The amount of information input that a person can handle. This sets a limit on the person's ability to process information.

Executive attention network

The attention network responsible for executive functions.

Preattentive stage

The first stage of Treisman's feature integration theory, in which an object is analyzed into its features.

Binding Problem

The problem of explaining how an object's individual features become bound together.

Dichotic listening

The procedure of presenting one message to the left ear and a different message to the right ear.

Shadowing

The procedure of repeating a message out loud as it is heard. Shadowing is commonly used in conjunction with studies of selective attention that use the dichotic listening procedure.

Focused attention stage

The second stage of Treisman's feature integration theory. According to the theory, attention causes the combination of features into perception of an object.

Mind wandering

Thoughts that come from within a person, often unintentionally. In early research it was called daydreaming.

Operant Conditioning

Type of conditioning championed by B.F. Skinner, which focuses on how behavior is strengthened by presentation of positive reinforcers, such as food or social approval, or withdrawal of negative reinforcers, such as a shock or social rejection.