Attention and Automaticity Lecture Review

Flashcards based on lecture notes covering divided attention theories, empirical studies, controlled versus automatic processes, and automaticity.

Divided Attention

The capacity to attend to two sensory features of a single perceptual stimulus at once or to multitask by performing two or more activities simultaneously.

True Multitasking

Performing two or more activities at once just as well as performing a single activity alone, with no decrease in performance or accuracy.

Perceptual Mask

Visual noise presented after a brief stimulus display (e.g., for 2 seconds) to block any visual afterimage.

Disjunction Search

A visual search task defined by Treisman & Gelade (1980) involving searching for a single feature (e.g., a blue letter), where reaction time is not slowed down by display size.

Conjunction Search

A visual search task defined by Treisman & Gelade (1980) involving searching for two combined features (e.g., a brown X), where reaction time increases as the display size grows between 1–30 items.

Modality Specific Theory

A theory of attention proposing that cognitive capacity is divided by sensory modalities (e.g., vision, hearing), allowing successful multitasking if tasks utilize different senses.

Modality General Theory

A theory of attention proposing that all attentional resources come from a single overall pool, making multitasking performance dependent on task difficulty.

Controlled Processes

Mental operations that require a lot of effort, occur only with voluntary action/intent, and consume substantial attentional resources.

Automatic Processes

Mental operations that require little effort, consume few attentional resources, and can occur involuntarily or outside of awareness.

Consistent Mapping Condition

A visual search condition in Schneider & Shiffrin (1977) where target items remain the same across trials, enabling participants to develop automaticity.

Varied Mapping Condition

A visual search condition in Schneider & Shiffrin (1977) where target items change across trials and target items can become distractors, preventing the development of automaticity.

Stroop Effect

A task demonstrating competition between automatic processes (reading) and controlled processes (naming the ink color), resulting in slower response times on incongruent trials.

Action Slips

Attentional lapses or everyday mistakes (e.g., looking for keys while holding them or throwing a granola bar in the trash instead of the wrapper) caused by well-practiced, automatic behaviors.

Quasi-Experiment Design

A study structure used in Cooper and Strayer where researchers evaluate a subject variable that cannot be randomly assigned or controlled, such as prior real-world frequency of talking on a cell phone while driving.

Allport (1971) Study

An investigation showing equal accuracy in single and dual task conditions when participants reported colored shapes presented briefly for 50–100 milliseconds followed by a perceptual mask.

Duncan (1984) Study

A study demonstrating equal accuracy between single and dual task conditions when participants evaluated line stimuli that differed in tilt and texture.

Byrne and Anderson (2001) Study

A multitasking experiment showing that participants were faster when performing a single math task (verification or production) than when performing both in a dual task condition.

Strayer and Johnston (2001) Study

A driving simulation study finding that cell phone use (handheld or hands-free) increased red light miss rates and slowed braking reaction times, whereas listening to the radio or a book on CD did not impair driving performance.

Cooper and Strayer Study

A realistic driving simulation study demonstrating that even after 4 days of practice, participants talking hands-free on a cell phone exhibited worse braking reaction times, following distances, and speed compliance than single-task drivers.

Spelke, Hirst, & Neisser (1976) Study

An automaticity study where participants practiced reading short stories while taking dictation for 1 hour/day, 5 days/week for 17 weeks, achieving high story comprehension without extra task time after 30 training sessions.

Barshi & Healy (1993) Study

A study showing that when sets of math problems always had errors in the same order, participants detected fewer errors due to automaticity compared to when errors occurred in varied orders.