Cognitive Psychology (Ch.4 Attention)

What is attention?

the ability to focus on specific stimuli or locations in our environment

What are 4 ways to separate attention?

Selective, divided, overt, & covert

Selective attention

attending to ONE thing while ignoring others

Divided Attention

paying attention to MORE THAN one thing at a time

Overt Attention

shifting attention from one place to another by moving the eyes

Covert Attention

shifting attention from one place to another while keeping the eyes STATIONARY

What is the Early Selection Model?

Unattended info is filtered out early in processing (Broadbent's filter model)

What is the dichotic listening task?

Method for studying selective attention. 2 auditory messages in each ear; a message is repeated in 1 ear (attended) while hearing a message in the other ear (unattended)

Broadbent's Filter Model

Filters message before incoming information is analyzed for meaning, "bottleneck model"

- only attended info passes through selective filter

Cocktail Party Effect

ability to focus on ONE attended conversation (Dear Aunt Jane experiment)

Treisman's attenuation model

Info is 1st attenuated based on physical properties then filtered out based on meaning (leaky filter model)

Attenuator

assigns different strengths to info based on physical characteristics, language, and meaning

Dictionary Unit

determines the threshold needed to detect information based on word frequency or importance

T or F: Low threshold easily attends to important words like your name or "fire!"

T

What is the Intermediate Selection Model?

Unattended information is filtered out early AND late in processing (Treisman's attenuation model)

What is the Late Selection Model?

Unattended info is filtered out LATE in processing (McKay's late stage model)

What is McKay's late stage model?

Info filtered out after being analyzed for meaning (based on whether info is pertinent/relevant)

What does McKay's late stage model suggest?

That even the meaning of unattended info can capture our attention (Dichotic listening task)

Processing Capacity

how much information a person can handle at any given moment

Load

Amount of info to process, related to difficulty of a given task

Low-load (easy)

tasks use lower amounts of processing capacity

High-load (difficult)

tasks use higher amounts of processing capacity

Load Theory of Attention

ability to ignore task-irrelevant stimuli depends on the load of the task

Responses are slowed when?

We have more available processing capacity

What type of attention can be improved with practice?

Divided attention (Responds less accurately to high load (hard) tasks)

Automatic processing

Occurs without intent & only minimal cognitive resources

Spotlight theory of attention

attention is like a movable "spotlight" that focuses on targets in a serial manner

Saccade

Rapid Eye Movement

Fixation

Brief pause on points of interest

What are 3 ways that overt attention is guided?

stimulus salience, task demands, and cognitive factors

Stimulus Salience

the physical properties of the stimulus, such as color, contrast, or movement

Task Demands

attending to objects and places needed for a task

Cognitive Factors

Violations of scene schemas

What is the Precuring method?

Present a cue to direct attention to a target without moving the eyes

- Respond FAST when attention is directed to a stimulus even w/o moving our eyes

- Respond SLOW when attention is directed away from a stimulus, even w/o moving our eyes

Same Object Advantage

directing attention enhances performance to other parts of the same object

What is inattention?

Lack of attention; distraction

- cell phone, internet, mind-wandering, change blindness

- inattentional blindness & deafness

What is Mind-Wandering?

Internal thoughts that drift from the task at hand

Inattentional Blindess

visual stimuli not attended to are not perceived

- attention is necessary but not sufficient to detect changes

What is Binding?

process by which features are combined to create perception of coherent objects

What is the Feature Integration Theory?

Proposes features are 1st analyzed (preattentive stage) and combined (focused attention stage)

Preattentive Stage

automatically separates objects into their features w/o effort or attention

Focused Attention Stage

features are recombined in a way that's guided by attention

Single Feature Search Task

Search an array for a target that differs by a single feature.

Conjunction Search Task

Search an array for a target that differs by two or more features.

- difficult, attention demanding

- easier to detect target w/ fewer distractors