Chapter 4: Attention - Deploying Cognitive Resources

Vocabulary flashcards covering key concepts from Chapter 4 on attention, selective filtering models, processing styles, and attentional limitations.

Early Processing Model

A model of selective attention where filtering decisions are based on physical characteristics of stimuli (such as brightness, color, loudness, or pitch) before semantic meaning is processed.

Late Processing Model

A model of selective attention where selection decisions are based on both the physical features and the semantic meaning of the stimuli.

Bottleneck Theories

Theories proposing that an attentional filter selects out a single message to process early in perception before its meaning is extracted.

Dichotic Listening Task

An experimental auditory task introduced by Cherry (1953) in which different auditory stimuli are presented to each ear simultaneously while subjects repeat one message out loud.

Cocktail Party Effect

The phenomenon of being able to focus one's selective auditory attention on a single speaker or conversation while filtering out surrounding ambient chatter.

Shadowing

The task procedure requiring subjects in a dichotic listening experiment to repeat out loud the message presented to a specific ear as they hear it.

Attenuation Theory

An alternative attention model proposing that unattended messages are not completely blocked, but rather turned down or attenuated, allowing high-priority or expected words to breach awareness.

Inattentional Blindness

A psychological phenomenon in which an individual fails to perceive an unexpected stimulus that is in plain sight because their attention is hyperfocused on another task.

Change Blindness

A perceptual phenomenon where a observer fails to notice a substantial change made to a visual stimulus or scene.

Visual Neglect

An attentional deficit typically caused by damage to the right parietal lobe, causing a patient to ignore or fail to direct attention to the left visual field.

Automatic Processing

Fast, effortless cognitive processing of well-practiced tasks that occurs without capacity limitations or conscious awareness and is difficult to modify.

Controlled Processing

Conscious, deliberate cognitive processing that requires attention, has limited capacity, and can be flexibly modified.

Consistent Mapping

A condition in memory search experiments where targets and distractors always come from distinct, fixed categories across trials, leading to automatic processing.

Varied Mapping

A condition in memory search experiments where target and distractor roles interchange across trials, requiring controlled processing.

Global Processing

The automatic perceptual processing of an overall large structure, which occurs rapidly and can interfere with the local processing of smaller features.

Stroop Effect

A demonstration of cognitive interference where reading a printed color word is automatic and delays the process of naming the ink color when the two conflict.

Feature Integration Theory

A theory proposing that single features are identified automatically in parallel, whereas combining multiple features into complete objects requires serial processing and focused attention.

Divided Attention

The distribution of cognitive resources to perform multiple tasks at the same time, which generally impairs overall performance.

Schema Theory

Neisser's attentional framework postulating that unselected or unattended stimuli are never acquired in the first place, rather than being filtered out.