Chapter 14

Overt Attention

Occurs when the focus coincides with the sensory orientation

Covert Attention

The focus is independent of sensory orientation

Cocktail Party Effect

Selective attention filters out stimuli not being attended to

Inattentional Blindness

A failure to perceive non attended visual stimuli

Attentional Bottleneck

Works as a filter to select only the most important stimuli for processing

Perceptual Load

The immediate processing demands presented by stimulus; determines how much of our perceptual resources are used

Inhibition of Return

longer intervals interfere with processing of valid cues.

Voluntary Attention

directed towards aspects of the environment according to our interests and goals

Reflexive Attention

The involuntary reorienting of attention toward a sudden or important event

Neuroeconomics

The study of brain mechanisms during economic decision making

ERP

Evoked potential

P3

May reflect higher-order processing

Intraparietal Sulcus

A region in the human parietal lobe, similar to the monkey lateral intraparietal area, that is important to human control of attention

Superior Colliculus

Guides movement of eyes toward objects of attention

Frontal Eye Field

Directs gaze according to cognitive goals rather than characteristics of stimuli

Hemispatial Neglect

No attention paid to one side of the body or things presented to that side

Balint’s Syndrome

A disorder, caused by damage to both parietal lobes, that is characterized by difficulty in steering visual gaze, in accurately reaching for objects using visual guidance, and in directing attention to more than one object or feature at a time.

Easy Problems of Consciousness

understanding how particular patterns of neural activity create specific conscious experiences.

Hard Problems of Consciousness

understanding brain processes that produce people’s subjective experiences of their conscious perceptions

Default Mode Network

A circuit of brain regions that is active during quiet introspective thought