Cognitive Psychology Exam 2 Ohio University Dr. Gennadiy Gurariy

attention

the ability to focus on specific stimuli or locations

Selective attention

attending to one thing while ignoring others

Distractors

Stimulus that competes for attention

Divided attention

concentrating on more than one activity at the same time

Attention capture

a rapid shifting of attention usually caused by a stimulus such as a loud noise, bright light, or sudden movement

Visual scanning

A shift of attention across a visual display or image

Dichotic listening study

assesses the ability to process and selectively attend to auditory information presented to both ears

Broadbent's Attention Model

Sensory memory to filter to detector to memory

Sensory memory

Captures all incoming information for a brief moment before passing it into the filter

Filter

Selects the attended message based on physical characteristics and filters out other messages

Detector

Processes higher-level characteristics of the attended message

Memory

the ability to store and retrieve information over time

Short term memory

activated memory that holds a few items briefly, such as the seven digits of a phone number while dialing, before the information is stored or forgotten

Long term memory

the relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system. Includes knowledge, skills, and experiences.

attenuation model of attention

Anne Treisman's model of selective attention that proposes that selection occurs in two stages. In the first stage, an attenuator analyzes the incoming message and lets through the attended message—and also the unattended message, but at a lower (attenuated) strength.

attenuator

analyzes incoming messages in terms of physical characteristics, language, and meaning

Dictionary unit

contains words, stored in memory, each of which has a threshold for being activated

Late selection findings

Final processing does not occur until after info has been analyzed for meaning

Load theory

The higher the perceptual load, the more difficult cognitive/executive tasks. Our ability to attenuate distractors depends on the load.

Stroop task

harder to name ink color of words than to say word names

Overt attention

shifting attention from one place to another by moving the eyes

Saccades

Rapid voluntary movements of the eyes.

Fixation

Pauses

Bottom-up Determinants of Eye Movement

Stimulus salience: areas that stand out and capture attention

Top-down determinants of eye movements

~Scene schema: knowledge about what is contained in typical scenes. A scene schema helps guide fixation from one area of a scene to another.

~ Eye movements are determined by task & eye movements proceeded motor actions by a fraction of a second

Attention location

frontal and parietal lobes

attention to objects

1. attention can enhance our response to objects

2. when attention is directed to one place on an object, the enhancing effect of that attention spreads to other places on the object

Attention affects perception

attended objects are perceived to be bigger and faster, and to be more richly colored and have better contrast than non-attended objects

Attention affects physiology

Attention strengthens neural responses to attended stimuli and weakens responses to others

divided attention

concentrating on more than one activity at the same time

inattention

lack of attention

inattentional blindness

failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere

Inattentional deafness

failing to hear an auditory message when attention is elsewhere

Change blindness

failing to notice changes in the environment

Binding

the process by which features such as color, form, motion, and location are combined to create our perception of a coherent object

Binding problem

how features are linked together so that we see unified objects in our visual world rather than free-floating or miscombined features

Feature integration theory

the idea that focused attention is not required to detect the individual features that comprise a stimulus, but is required to bind those individual features together

Attention networks

dorsal and ventral attention networks

Dorsal attention network

A network that controls attention based on top-down processing.

Ventral attention network

A network that controls attention based on stimulus salience.

Attention synchronization

How easy it is to transfer activity flows along brain pathways

Modal model of memory

sensory memory, short-term memory, long-term memory

Sensory memory

initial stage that holds all incoming information for seconds or fractions of a second

Sperling Studies of Sensory Memory

Participants were briefly shown a grid of letters and then asked to recall as many as possible (whole report). In the "partial report" condition, a tone sounded immediately after the display, indicating which row of letters to report. peformance decreases rapidly

Digit span

The number of digits a person can remember. Digit span is used as a measure of the capacity of short-term memory.

Change detection approach

STM capacity is approx. 4 items

Chunking

organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically

Working memory

A newer understanding of short-term memory that involves conscious, active processing of incoming auditory and visual-spatial information, and of information retrieved from long-term memory.

phonological loop

the part of working memory that holds and processes verbal and auditory information

phonological similarity effect

confusion of letters or words that sound similar

Word length effect

The notion that it is more difficult to remember a list of long words than a list of short words.

Articulary suppression

reduces memory due to speaking interfering with rehearsal

visuospatial sketchpad

holds visual and spatial information

Central executive

the part of working memory that directs attention and processing

PFC

Associated with personality, planning, and various mental functions

Delayed response task

function in which information is provided, a time-gap is imposed, and then memory is tested

Singal cell studies

-recordings from monkeys' prefrontal cortex during a delayed response task.

-Found that memory involves more than just the PFC

-found distributed representation between areas

WM capacity

differs between individuals

Vogel

Measured ERP responses, High capacity participants were more effective at ignoring the distractors

Cognitive control

Effective control of thinking in a number of areas, including controlling attention, reducing interfering thoughts, and being cognitively flexible.

Primacy effect

tendency to remember words at the beginning of a list especially well

Recency effect

tendency to remember words at the end of a list especially well

Serial position effect

our tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list

Coding

the from in which information is represented in the mind

LTM coding

Visualizing what the statue of liberty looks like, repeating a song heard many times, semantic= recalling plot of a novel

STM coding

Visualizing a pattern just seen, repeating something you just heard, Semantic= categorizing something you just learned

proactive interference

the disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information

Short term Memory in the brain

Short term memories are scattered throughout the prefrontal cortex.

Long term memory in the brain

hippocampus

Episodic memory

memory for one's personal past experiences

Semantic memory

memory for knowledge about the world

Autobigoraphical memories

combines both episodic and semantic

Familiarity

associated with semantic memory

Recollection

associated with episodic memory

Remember know procedure

A procedure in which subjects are presented with a stimulus they have encountered before and are asked to indicate whether they remember the circumstances under which they initially encountered it or know if the stimulus seems familiar, but they don't remember experiencing it earlier.

Memory and future imagination

ability to remember the past and imagine future scenarios

constructive episodic simulation hypothesis

episodic memories are extracted and recombined to construct simulations of future events

Procedural memory

the gradual acquisition of skills as a result of practice, or "knowing how" to do things

Expert induces amnesia

When a expert performs a highly practiced skill automatically

Priming

presentation of priming stimulus changes persons response to a test stimulus

Repition priming

Response changes to the same stimulus over time

Propoganda affect

More likely to rate statements read or heard before as being true

Classical conditioning

Could elicit emotional reactions, for instance experiencing anxiety when revisiting a location where a negative event occurred