Attention

What is focused attention?

Attention to only one source of information while ignoring all others, also known as selective attention.

What is divided attention?

Performing two tasks at the same time, commonly referred to as multi-tasking.

What did Cherry (1953) study in relation to attention?

The cocktail party phenomenon and the dichotic listening task, where participants shadowed one message while hearing simultaneous messages.

What is the 'invisible gorilla' task an illustration of?

A limited-capacity system that requires selective attention.

What does the term 'inhibition of return' (IOR) refer to?

The biasing of limited processing resources away from previously attended locations.

According to the Attentional Spotlight theory, how does attention operate?

Attention traverses the visual world like a spotlight, selecting everything within the illuminated boundary for further processing.

What is the premise of object-based theory of attention as demonstrated by Egly, Driver + Rafal (1994)?

Attention selects objects over space, where reaction times are shorter to targets within a cued object than to targets in uncued objects.

What role does the fovea play in vision?

It is the central part of vision with high resolution; further from the fovea, vision becomes blurry.

What did Tinbergen and Perdeck (1950) demonstrate with gull chicks?

Chicks only peck at stimuli containing a red spot, indicating they respond to red-yellow contrast rather than recognizing their parents.

What do validity manipulations in attention studies measure?

They assess how predictive a cue is of the target location, affecting attentional cueing.

How does a flat search function differ from a steep search function in visual searches?

A flat search function indicates easy target detection regardless of set size, while a steep search function indicates difficulty, impacting detection speed.

What is the significance of the Irrelevant Singleton Paradigm?

It shows how a distractor (like a uniquely colored item) can either hinder or help target detection depending on its presence.

What two types of visual search are identified?

Parallel search (or pop-out search) and serial search.

What is the Feature Integration Theory (FIT) proposed by Treisman & Gelade (1980)?

A two-stage process where scenes are processed in parallel as composite parts, then bound into meaningful objects serially.

What evidence suggests that humans respond preferentially to social cues?

Looking up can direct attention based on other people's gaze direction, indicating social attentional mechanisms.

What does Meltzoff & Brooks (2007) suggest about infants' gaze-following behavior?

Infants as young as 12 months can follow gaze, indicating a precursor to Theory of Mind (ToM).

Why is joint search more efficient than solitary search according to Brennan et al. (2008)?

People utilize their partner's search abilities efficiently without explicit instruction.

What is the overarching conclusion about attention from the lecture?

The visual system is sensitive to specific visual cues associated with threat, and multiple theories are underway to explain attention processing.