Chapter 4: Attention Vocabulary Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards covering core definitions, models, theories, and concepts of attention from Chapter 4.

Attention

Refers to several different ways that we select and prioritize information.

Selective Attention

The process of focusing on one specific stimulus or message while ignoring competing stimuli.

Distraction

The interruption or diversion of attention caused by a task-irrelevant stimulus.

Divided Attention

Attending to more than one task or stimulus at the same time.

Attentional Capture

A rapid, involuntary shift of attention caused by a sudden external stimulus.

Visual Scanning

Moving the eyes from one location or object to another to inspect a scene.

Endogenous Attention

Top-down, goal-directed, voluntary allocation of attention.

Exogenous Attention

Bottom-up, stimulus-driven, involuntary shift of attention caused by external stimuli.

Cocktail Party Effect

The ability to focus on a single auditory conversation while filtering out surrounding background noise.

Processing Capacity

The total amount of information a person can process or handle at any given time.

Perceptual Load

The difficulty or cognitive resource demands of a given task.

Automatic Processing

Processing that occurs without conscious intention and consumes minimal cognitive resources.

Dichotic Listening

An experimental procedure where different audio messages are presented simultaneously to the left and right ears.

Attended Ear

The ear in a dichotic listening task that a participant is instructed to focus on.

Unattended Ear

The ear in a dichotic listening task that a participant is instructed to ignore.

Shadowing

The procedure of repeating an attended audio message out loud word-for-word as it is heard.

Broadbent's Filter Model

An early-selection model proposing that sensory memory holds information, a filter selects the attended message based on physical characteristics, and a detector processes it for meaning.

Sensory Memory

A stage in Broadbent's model that holds all incoming sensory information for a fraction of a second before passing it to the filter.

Filter (Broadbent's Model)

A mechanism that identifies the attended message based on physical characteristics and lets only that message pass through to the detector.

Detector (Broadbent's Model)

A processing stage that receives the filtered message and processes it to determine higher-level characteristics, such as meaning.

Treisman's Attenuation Model

A selection model proposing an attenuator that replaces Broadbent's strict filter with a flexible mechanism ('leaky filter') that turns down unattended messages without completely blocking them.

Attenuator

A component in Treisman's model that analyzes incoming messages in terms of physical characteristics, language, and meaning.

Dictionary Unit

A component in Treisman's model containing stored words, each with a specific threshold for activation.

Early Selection Model

A model proposing that attentional selection occurs before incoming sensory information is analyzed for meaning.

Late Selection Model

A model proposing that incoming information is processed to the level of meaning before the attended message is selected.

Low-Load Task

A task that uses a small amount of processing capacity, leaving available resources to process task-irrelevant stimuli.

High-Load Task

A task that uses a large amount of processing capacity, leaving few cognitive resources to process task-irrelevant stimuli.

The Stroop Effect

A phenomenon where reading color words printed in mismatched ink colors causes interference, slowing response times because word reading is automatic.

Productivity Illusion

The feeling of efficiency and productivity experienced when rapidly switching between tasks, despite actual work efficiency decreasing.

Central Vision

The area in the middle of your visual field that you look at directly and fall upon the fovea.

Peripheral Vision

The area of vision outside of central direct vision line.

Fovea

The small area of the retina that provides high-acuity central vision.

Fixation

A brief pause of the eyes on a specific stimulus or point during visual scanning.

Saccadic Eye Movement

Rapid, jerky movements of the eyes from one fixation point to another.

Overt Attention

Shifting attention from one location to another by physically moving the eyes.

Covert Attention

Directing attention to a location or object without moving the eyes.

Endogenous Shift

A voluntary shift of attention directed internally by goals or expectations.

Exogenous Shift

An involuntary shift of attention caused automatically by an external stimulus.

Stimulus Salience

Bottom-up physical properties of a stimulus, such as color, contrast, or movement, that attract visual attention.

Scene Schema

A person's top-down knowledge about what objects are typically found in a specific scene.

Just-In-Time Strategy

An eye-movement strategy during task execution where fixations occur immediately before an action is taken on an object.

Attentional Warping

A neural mechanism where searching for a specific visual category tunes and expands representation areas in the brain for that category.

Dorsal Attention Network

A brain network primarily associated with top-down, voluntary, endogenous attention.

Ventral Attention Network

A brain network primarily associated with bottom-up, involuntary, exogenous attention.

Mind Wandering

Thoughts that drift away from the primary task toward internal thoughts or daydreaming.

Experience Sampling

A research method used to study mind wandering by prompting individuals at random times to report their current thoughts.

Inattentional Blindness

Failing to notice a fully visible object or event because attention is directed elsewhere.

Inattentional Deafness

Failing to hear an auditory stimulus when cognitive attention is focused on a demanding task.

Change Blindness

Difficulty or failure in detecting visual changes between two scenes presented with a brief disruption.

Feature Integration Theory

A framework stating that perception occurs in two stages: an automatic pre-attentive stage that processes individual features, followed by a focused attention stage that binds features together.

Binding

The process by which features such as color, form, and motion are combined to perceive a coherent unified object.

Binding Problem

The question of how the brain combines individual features processed in separate brain regions into a single object perception.

Pre-attentive Stage

The first stage of Feature Integration Theory where features are analyzed automatically and independently without conscious attention.

Focused Attention Stage

The second stage of Feature Integration Theory where features are bound together using focused attention to perceive a unified object.

Feature Search

A visual search task where a target is identified by a single distinct feature, operating rapidly and in parallel.

Conjunction Search

A visual search task where a target is defined by a combination of two or more features, requiring focused, serial attention.

Illusory Conjunction

A perceptual error where features belonging to different objects are incorrectly combined due to lack of focused attention.

Balint Syndrome

A neurological condition resulting from parietal lobe damage, characterized by an inability to focus attention on individual objects and a high occurrence of illusory conjunctions.