Cognitive Psychology Chapter 4: Attention

These flashcards cover key concepts related to attention as discussed in Chapter 4 of Cognitive Psychology, focusing on definitions and phenomena relevant to selective and divided attention.

Attention

The process of focusing on specific features, objects, or tasks while ignoring others.

Selective Attention

The ability to focus on one specific object in the presence of multiple stimuli.

Distraction

Interference that diverts attention from the primary task.

Divided Attention

The capacity to attend to multiple stimuli or tasks simultaneously.

Attentional Capture

The phenomenon where a novel or unexpected stimulus captures attention.

Visual Scanning

The process of moving one's gaze to inspect different parts of a visual scene.

Dichotic Listening

A psychological test that presents different stimuli to each ear; often used to study selective attention.

Shadowing

A task where participants repeat words as they hear them in one ear to focus attention.

Bottleneck Model

A theory suggesting that there is a limit on the amount of information that can be processed at one time.

Attenuation Model

A model proposing that unattended information is weakened but not completely eliminated.

High-load Task

A task that utilizes a significant portion of a person’s processing capacity.

Low-load Task

A task that requires minimal processing capacity, allowing attention to be diverted.

Stroop Effect

A demonstration of the difficulty in naming the ink color of words when the words themselves are color names.

Inattentional Blindness

Failing to notice an unexpected stimulus in one's visual field due to focused attention elsewhere.

Change Blindness

The phenomenon of failing to notice changes in a visual scene.

Binding Problem

The challenge of explaining how separate features of objects are integrated into a single perceptual experience.