Psychology - Attention

Attention

describes our ability to selectively bring certain stimuli/cognitions into conscious awareness, while ignoring others

3 main roles of attention

1. maintain alertness

2. orient toward important information

3. control behavior and contents of consciousness

cocktail party phenomenon

describes the ability too focus on a single stimulus, such as a conversation, while filtering out other sounds

divided attention

Process by which attention is split between two or more sets of stimuli 

inattentional blindness

we fail to attune to aspects of the environment that should get our attention (an unexpected stimulus) 

change blindness

inability to recognize large changes in environment when they are coupled with a momentary disruption (detection)

category

group that is based on similar quantities

categorization

process of recognizing when something is similar to other examples, thus it falls under the same category 

concept

serves as the primary mental representation of a category

defining features

features that tend to be similar across all examples of the category thus are included in the concept of that category

prototype

abstraction that serves as a mental representation for a specific category

exemplar

ideal representation of a category based on our own experience with the category

basic level of categorization

birds, cats, dogs

superordinate (broader) level of categorization

animals

subordinate level of categorization

robin, cheshire, collie

schema

metal framework that helps people organize and interpret information and understand new situations based on past experiences

scripts

allow us to enter a novel situation and behave in a way that is appropriate, even if we have never been in that exact situation before

Rational Thinking Steps

1. define the problem

2. identify criteria for evaluation

3. weight criteria in terms of importance

4. generate options

5. evaluate all options using criteria in steps 2 and 3

6. choose the option with the best ranked score

reasoning

process of generating and evaluating beliefs, arguments, and solutions to problems 

inductive reasoning

process of projecting specific instances to a more general population 

deductive reasoning

process of reasoning out a specific claim, from more general assumptions, using logic  

analogical reasoning

process of understanding a novel event, situation or stimulus by comparing it to a known or familiar one

anchoring

tendency to rely on initial information as a reference point 

heuristics

process of using informal “rules” to make quick decisions

availability heuristic

tendency to make a decision/judgment based on how easily available cognitive information is 

representative heuristic

tendency to make a decision/judgement based on how well something matches our prototype of the category