Ch. 5: Attention and Selective Processing

Flashcards covering key terms and concepts related to attention, selective processing, and related phenomena.

Unilateral Neglect

A failure of attention caused by damage to the right parietal cortex, leading to ignoring inputs from one side of visual space.

Selective Attention

The ability to selectively extract information from the environment, controlling the orienting of attention to prioritize certain perceptual inputs.

Look-but-Fail-to-See

A phenomenon where individuals fail to notice a prominent stimulus in their field of vision.

Inattentional Blindness

Failing to notice a prominent stimulus even when it is in plain view.

Change Blindness

The failure to notice changes to a visual scene between different instances.

Priming

A process through which exposure to a stimulus influences a response to a subsequent stimulus.

Attentional Capture

When a salient stimulus breaks through controlled filtering, causing a swift orientation of attention.

Cocktail Party Effect

The ability to detect semantically relevant words from an unattended channel, demonstrating selective attention.

Spatial Attention

The ability to focus attention on a specific location in space, often likened to a spotlight.

Divided Attention

The capacity to attend to more than one task or stimulus simultaneously.

Executive Control

The cognitive process that oversees and regulates other cognitive functions, crucial for managing attention.

Feature Integration Theory

A theory explaining how visual features are processed separately and then integrated for object recognition.

Attentional Filtering

The process of suppressing irrelevant information to focus on relevant information.

Bottom-Up Attention

Attention driven by external stimuli, typically automatic and involuntary.

Top-Down Attention

Attention driven by prior knowledge and expectations, requiring cognitive effort.

Ultra-Rare Item Effect

Phenomenon where rare items are often overlooked in a visual scene due to limited attentional resources.