Chapter 5 : Paying Attention Cartes

Which of the following is a failure of selective attention?

A) You are in the basement ironing, and you hear the phone ringing upstairs.

B) You are able to talk on a cell phone while driving.

C) While you are working hard on your homework in the living room, you are thrown off track when your sister changes the TV channel.

D) While upstairs talking to your best friend, you pretend not to hear your mother calling you to dinner.

C) While you are working hard on your homework in the living room, you are thrown off track when your sister changes the TV channel.

Which of the following statements on how people direct the "beam" of attention is FALSE?

A) People are likely to attend to interesting or important information.

B) There are cultural differences in how people direct attention, such that people from Eastern cultures tend to spend more time looking at individuals while people from Western cultures view scenes more holistically.

C) Events or items that are especially rare in a particular context are unlikely to be noticed.

D) There are gender differences in the information that people attend to in visual scenes.

B) There are cultural differences in how people direct attention, such that people from Eastern cultures tend to spend more time looking at individuals while people from Western cultures view scenes more holistically.

Expectation-based priming suggests that

A) even when a misleading cue is ignored, it is costly.

B) the perceptual system gives input to, but does not receive output from, higher brain areas.

C) perception works within a limited-capacity system.

D) visual perception works like a searchlight.

C) perception works within a limited-capacity system.

Fire alarms are designed to control attention __________, but outside such demanding stimuli, one can often control his or her own attention __________.

A) exogenously; endogenously

B) endogenously; exogenously

C) exogenously; externally

D) endogenously; internally

A) exogenously; endogenously

When completing a Stroop task, participants are often shown a list of color words printed in conflicting ink colors (e.g., the word "blue" printed in red ink). Naming the ink color (red) instead of reading the word (blue) is more difficult because reading simple words in one's native language is an example of a(n) __________ task, and saying the color of the ink in which that word is printed is an example of a(n) __________ task.

A) automatic; shadowing

B) automatic; interference

C) controlled; exogenous

D) exogenous; interference

B) automatic; interference

Participants in a dichotic listening task are

A) usually unable to describe physical features such as the pitch of the stimulus in the unattended channel.

B) usually unable to report the semantic content of the stimulus in the attended channel.

C) usually able to report most of the semantic content of the stimulus in the unattended channel.

D) often able to notice personally relevant words such as their names in the unattended channel.

D) often able to notice personally relevant words such as their names in the unattended channel.

Suppose you are at a party conversing with a friend. In this situation, you are LEAST likely to hear whether...

A) the person behind you is speaking intelligently or foolishly.

B) it is a man's voice or a woman's voice coming from behind you.

C) the couple beside you is talking about a movie you just saw and loved.

D) there is music in the background.

A) the person behind you is speaking intelligently or foolishly.

What is the main reason why both late and early selection models can be true?

A) Individuals with brain lesions exhibit early selection behaviors, but healthy individuals exhibit late selection behaviors.

B) Current neuroimaging data can't distinguish between attended and unattended stimuli, so neither late nor early selection models can be ruled out yet.

C) Early selection occurs for stimuli that people are looking directly at, while late selection occurs for stimuli in the background.

D) Some tasks require lots of resources, while other tasks require fewer.

D) Some tasks require lots of resources, while other tasks require fewer.

Which of the following is NOT consistent with the concept of task-specific mental resources?

A) It is more difficult to complete two verbal tasks at once than one verbal task and one spatial task.

B) It is generally easier to read a magazine while listening to classical music than it is to read a magazine while listening to a podcast.

C) Texting a friend while listening to a lecture is likely to lead to poorer memory of the material than listening to the lecture while knitting.

D) If someone is speaking to you, you will still remember a list of words just as well as you remember a series of images if the words are presented to you visually.

D) If someone is speaking to you, you will still remember a list of words just as well as you remember a series of images if the words are presented to you visually.

When listening intently to one message, you are likely to detect your name if it is spoken in a different audio stream. This is likely because one's name...

A) is unlike other English sound patterns, so it stands out

B) is a stimulus for which you are well primed.

C) is not "filtered" in any way by attention.

D) is said loudly enough to be clearly perceived.

B) is a stimulus for which you are well primed.

What do patients suffering from unilateral neglect syndrome demonstrate about visual attention?

A) People have both space-based and object-based attention.

B) If the brain is damaged a certain way, the focus of attention cannot move back to a previously ignored visual space.

C) We primarily pay attention to objects and are only loosely guided by their locations in space.

D) The brain damage in unilateral-neglect patients is too severe to make them comparable to people with healthy brains.

A) People have both space-based and object-based attention.

According to your textbook, which of the following statements applies to expectation-based priming but not to stimulus-based priming?

A) It has an immediate effect on attention.

B) It has a cost attached.

C) It leads to faster recognition of subsequent related stimuli.

D) It is bottom-up.

B) It has a cost attached.

Which of the following drivers is most likely to get into an accident?

A) a novice driver engaged in an important phone interview

B) an experienced driver talking on a cell phone with a good friend

C) a novice driver talking on a cell phone with a good friend

D) an experienced driver on a cell phone who is engaged in an important phone interview

A) a novice driver engaged in an important phone interview

Successfully dividing one's attention across two tasks requires enough mental resources to attend to both tasks. These limited mental resources include all of the following EXCEPT

A) task-specific resources.

B) task-general resources that act like a bank account.

C) task-general tools like executive control.

D) object-based resources; space-based resources are unlimited.

D) object-based resources; space-based resources are unlimited.

Which statement about visual attention is most accurate?

A) Stimuli that are entirely unexpected are always very likely to catch our attention.

B) By pointing our eyes to an area, we automatically point our attention there.

C) By priming our detectors, we make expected visual stimuli more likely to be noticed and remembered.

D) Attention can be directed toward specific areas of space but not specific objects.

C) By priming our detectors, we make expected visual stimuli more likely to be noticed and remembered.

In a study of spatial attention, participants were given a neutral, correct, or misleading cue about where on the screen a stimulus would appear. What is the best explanation for what happened in trials with misleading cues?

A) There were no costs because spatial attention is not a limited-capacity system.

B) There were no costs because, although spatial attention is limited, the resources required for the task did not exceed its limits.

Correct!

C) There were costs because the spotlight of attention had moved to the misled location in anticipation of the stimulus and had to move back.

D) There were costs because the eyes had moved to the misled location and had to move back.

Participants are asked to report the shape of a visual stimulus that appears on the left side of a screen. Simultaneous with the presentation of this target stimulus, a second visual stimulus is flashed on the screen. Based on our understanding of inattentional blindness, which of the following would NOT be sufficient to make the participants notice the second stimulus?

A) Participants are told beforehand where, but not when, the second stimulus will appear.

B) Participants are told beforehand only that something else might appear.

C) Participants' attention is directed to the place where the second stimulus will appear.

D) Participants' eyes are oriented toward the place where the second stimulus will appear.

D) Participants' eyes are oriented toward the place where the second stimulus will appear.

Which of the following is true of ADHD?

A) It is consistently more severe than unilateral neglect syndrome.

B) It involves multiple attentional systems, including "alerting," "orienting," and "executive" systems.

C) It is a simple disorder that is highly localized in the brain.

D) It only happens in children.

B) It involves multiple attentional systems, including "alerting," "orienting," and "executive" systems.

Some resources are task-specific and others are task-general. Which of the following is a task-specific resource?

A) memory

B) an energy supply needed for mental tasks

C) verbal resources for tasks involving words

D) executive control to override habitual responses

C) verbal resources for tasks involving words

Evidence suggests that...

A) unattended stimuli are more fully processed if the attended input is particularly complex.

B) unattended stimuli are more fully processed if the attended input is particularly simple.

C) early brain activity in response to attended input is indistinguishable from brain activity for unattended input.

D) unattended stimuli are processed fully and make it into consciousness, but they are not remembered.

B) unattended stimuli are more fully processed if the attended input is particularly simple.

In the absence of attention,...

A) there is no perception.

B) participants still consciously perceive stimuli if the stimuli are simple enough.

C) participants can perceive most aspects of the world but are never influenced by what they perceive.

D) stimuli may not be consciously perceived but can still have an influence on the perceiver.

D) stimuli may not be consciously perceived but can still have an influence on the perceiver.

Some patients with unilateral neglect resulting from damage to the right hemisphere will

A) fail to perceive anything in the right visual field.

B) disengage from a visual stimulus as it moves from the left to right visual field.

C) read only the right half of words shown to them.

D) only complete half of everything they set out to do.

C) read only the right half of words shown to them.

In one experiment, participants were tasked with detecting the location of a stimulus on the screen. The stimulus was preceded by a neutral cue, a correct prime, or a misleading prime. For some participants, the primes were usually correct (high validity) across trials, and for other participants they were usually misleading (low validity). Which of the following was NOT a result of this experiment?

A) Participants in the high-validity condition showed no difference in response time between neutral and misleading trials, demonstrating that there is no cost of priming.

B) Participants responded faster in the low-validity condition than in the neutral condition, demonstrating repetition priming.

C) Participants responded faster in the high-validity condition than in the low-validity condition, demonstrating that expectation influences priming.

D) Participants in the high-validity condition were slower to detect the target after a misleading prime than were participants in the low-validity condition, demonstrating that the expectation-based priming, but not repetition priming, has a cost.

A) Participants in the high-validity condition showed no difference in response time between neutral and misleading trials, demonstrating that there is no cost of priming.

Which of the following is NOT a reason why performance might improve with practice?

A) Practice allows us to find the best choice among competing responses.

B) With practice, individual elements of a task require more of our resources.

C) Practice reduces the likelihood of that task interfering with other simultaneous tasks.

D) As each aspect of a response becomes automatized, more resources become available for the next task.

B) With practice, individual elements of a task require more of our resources.