Psych(exam 1): History/attention :bottleneck and capacity

What are the 2 critical strands of cognition?

Representation and process

Structure/ Representation

knowledge you posses; info. in your memory

Static vs. Dynamic

Historical view: static (closed mindset)

current view: dynamic mind constantly changes

Process

an operation on external stimulus or on an internal representation

Executing a process can: use existing memory representation, update or reinterpret an existing representation, create a new representation

Cognition

collection of mental processes and activities used in:

-perceiving

-learning

-remembering

-thinking

-understanding

-how we use these processes

cognitive psychology

study of skills and knowledge ( how they are acquired, stored, transformed)

Diogenes of Apollonia

-shifts emphasis to the integration of sensory info.

Plato

-Rationalism: nature of reality, how we understand things

-find similarities

-Wax tablet metaphor: a lasting imprint/similarities

Aristotle

-active processing: only way to know a universal

-Doctrine of association: 2 components of mental life- ideas and associations

-contiguity, similarity, and contrast

-compare and contrast

Psychophysics

the systematic study of relation between the physical characteristics of stimuli and the sensations that they produce

(ex. Wear headphones and press a button when you hear a sound)

-Hemlholtz, Fechner, weber, donders

Hermann Von Helmholtz

-unconscious inference: the assumptions we make about how things work, even though we can’t see certain info.

Franciscus Donders

-conducted one of the first cognitive experiments (the button experiment)

-Reaction Time: simple (one choice) and choice (decision)

Wilhelm Wunt

-1st psychological laboratory

-problems: different people=different results, cannot introspect on all processes, introspections (structuralism) can be wrong (change blindness)

William James

-functionalism

-emphasis (process and structure) and relatively short lived

B.F Skinner

Behaviorism

Nothing in the “black box of the mind”

Behaviourism

-focus": stimuli and response

-goal: avoid “mentalism”

-advantages: entirely observable/well defined (ex. rat pressed a lever)

-problem: very simplistic

Fall of behaviorism led to:

-information/communication theory: Shannon and Weaver

-Linguistics and Psycholinguistics: Chomsky

-Computers and computer models: Newell, Shaw, and Simon

memory

capacity to aquire, preserve, and recover info.

encoding

getting info. into the memory system (learn/process info.)

storage

the retaining of encoded info. over time (memories are maintained)

Retrieval

getting encoded info. out of memory storage (control how memory is recovered)

Attention

a focusing of perception that leads to greater consciousness of a limited # of stimuli; the focusing of mental effort on sensory/mental events

focusing

selective orientation

consciousness

awareness

mental effort

concentration

4 kinds of attention

-alerting, vigilance, divided, selective (focused)

alerting

the ability to orient oneself to some critical/unexpected stimulus; specialized detectors with high priorities

-most primitive form of attention

-only form that infants have

vigilance

the ability to devote full attention to a single stimulus (complex); detection of change has high priority

selective (concentration)

• the ability to choose to focus on only one stimulus, excluding all others

• Attention: focusing attention; functions well within its capabilities, but can fail when overloaded

divided (concentration)

-the ability to focus on 2 or more stimuli (dimensions) at the same time

-Attention: the splitting of attention; difficult to take in more than one message)

Dichotic listening

listening to one message while 2 play at the same time

-Colin Cherry was the first to use it

-led to Broadbent’s filter theory

Filter Theory

-info. processing is limited by channel capacity, only so much info. can be conveyed along a channel at one time

Single channel hypothesis

only one channel can be processed at a time (filter theory)

Critical prediction

selective attention should not be affected by the identity of various messages (filter theory)

sensory store

(physical feature description) holds all incoming info. for a short period of time and transfers all of it to the filter (filter theory)

filter

identifies all the attended message based on its physical characteristics and lets only this message pass through the detector to the next stage (filter theory)

Interpretation

where the info. is processed to determine higher-level characteristics of the message (filter theory)

short-term memory

the output of the detector enters the memory system (filter theory)

Early Selection Model

(the filter theory)

filtering steps occurs before the incoming info. is analyzed to determine its meaning

Moray

-used the dichotic listening procedure and had participants shadow the message from one ear

-Hears your name and listens

Gray and Wedderburn

split messages over channels and showed that subjects put them back easily

-conclusion: info. presented to the unattended ear is processed enough to provide the listener some awareness of meaning

Treisman

-attenuation theory and late selection model

critical experiments on identification, meaning, and attention

Attenuation theory

-Treisman, late selection model

-proposed because info. from the unattended ear sometimes got through to consciousness

-selection occurs in 2 stages: attenuator and dictionary unit

Attenuator

(Instead of fiter)

-analyzes the incoming message in terms of physical characteristics, it’s language, it’s meaning

(Ex. Token pitch, volume)

-"leaky filter model": once attended and un attended messages are identified, both messages are left through the attenuator

Dictionary unit

-contains stored words, each of which have thresholds for being activated

Inattention blindness

-the failure to see consciously, caused by lack of attention

-we can miss perceiving very obvious changes if we are not attending

-ex. Basketball demo

-attention is elsewhere

Change blindness

-a remarkable inability to detect changes in displays, even when trying

-ex. Door srudy

Flicker paradigm

-mist common way to study change blindness

Necessity of change blindness

-we fill in the blanks off of past experiences and can predict about what will be in a scene

-if our perceptual system was required to register all details in a scene, we would be overloaded quickly

The new view of attention:

Capacity: limited resources available to us and how we allocate those resources are important

Capacity theories: amount of Capacity is influenced by level of _______

Arousal

Arousal

-a general state of activation with respect to our capacity to perceive sensory events

-an important aspect of attention/performance

-to little arousal= poor performance (lack of effort)

-to much arousal=poor performance (distracted)

Yerkes-Dodson Law

-arousal influences selectivity:

-low arousal=low selectivity

-high arousal= high selectivity but only to a point

-if arousal is too high= performance decreases

Daniel Kahneman

-capacity theory

-related arousal and performance using attentional control

-also a leader in the area of judgement and decision making

Capacity theory

-performance is influenced by both arousal and processing limitations

-we have some control over how capacity is allocated to various tasks

-all tasks compete for the same pool of resources but tasks vary how much attention is required

-limited control over allocating attention

Priming

-prior experience processing a sensory input leads to enhanced processing next time

-past experiences influence how we think of things/what you think of first

-a previous encounter with the identical stimulus or a related stimulus (the prime) makes subsequent processing of that stimulus (the target) easier

Who was known for the wax tablet metaphor?

Plato

Who created the 1st psychological laboratory?

Wundt

There were multiple theories that led to the downfall of behaviorism: t or f

True

When we assume a table has 4 legs but can’t see all 4, we are engaging in…

Unconscious inference

What was william james known for?

Functionalism

Psychophysics emphasize…

relationship between physical characteristics of stimuli and sensation/perception

When we access our memories we are engaging in…

Retrieval

A person maintains a memory of their highschool graduation. The process is known as…

Storage

As you study for the exam, the process you utilize is…

Encoding

Who did research in psychophysics?

Helmholtz, weber, donders

The flashing lights on an ambulance catch a persons attention. What type of attention is it?

Alerting

A person is attending a party and keeps looking around to see if their friend arrived. What type of attention is this?

Vigilance

According to Yerkes-Dodsons law, some stress/arousal is good: t or f

True

For attenuation theory, the last part of the filtering process doesn’t occur until words pass through the dictionary unit: t or f

True

Name the filter theory model in order

Physical feature description, filter, interpretation, either goes into short term or decays

Capacity theory performance is influenced by:

Arousal and processing limitations