attention

what is William James definition of attention

taking posession by the mind in clear and vivid form, implying withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively, it is the opposite state of confused, dazed and scatter brain state

what is the center of the concept of William James definition

Selection

what does it mean when someone says attention is an active process

actively selecting where to focus your attention

what is selection

the act of attending to an object to select it apart from the unattended objects, allowing us to focus on what matters

match the word to definition: “triggered involuntary by external events which often trigger the “capture” of attention”

automatic processes

what are controlled processes

guide attention voluntarily and conciously

which operate more slowly, automatic or controlled processes and why?

controlled processes operate more slowly because they require more cognitive effort

is driving an automatic or controlled process

driving is a controlled process

fill in the blank: it is difficult to pay attention to ________ controlled processes at the same time.

it is difficult to pay attention to multiple controlled processes at the same time

what is saliance

something that naturally pops out at you and grabs your attention

can conciously effortful tasks ever become automatic? how?

can become automatic with practice

what is the spotlight model

refers to visual attention focusing like a spotlight, focusing on one part of the envionrment at a time

how does attention enhance processing of visual info?

by making objects standing out in a background

what are cueing paradigms

tests if manipulating attention can influence behavior

what shifts faster, your eyes or attention

attention

fill in the blank attention is automatically ________ to cues

attention is automatically attracted to cues

what are auditory cues

they filter out target sounds from background noise

what characteristics do auditory cues rely on?

physical characteristics such as gender, pitch and speed of the speaker

what is the filter model

how attention helps us ignore or block out visual information from the background, highlighting the object needed for attention

what is the filter model most often used for

noise attention

what is the single filter model

attentional filter that selects important information on the basis of physical characteristics and allows information to continue on to further processing

with the single filter model, what happens to information that does not pass the early filter

the attention becomes unavailable from simple processing or meaning

who expanded single filter model with a diachotic listening paradigm

Donald Broadband

what is Donald Broadband’s model of attention

by giving messages in both ears but having attention in only one ear and ignore the other ear. He found out that people could repeat back info heard from attended ear but could not from the unattended ear- only attended information gets processed

what is a limitation of Donald Broadbands model

assumes no additional processing in unattended infromation, but untrue

what did Von Wright and Colleges suggest

suggested that some information is processed even in the unattended ear

how did Von wright and colleges prove their theory of information being still processed in the unattended ear

through fear conditioning

what is the treasmans model/dual filter model

where importance of cues are evaluated then rest is ignroed. based on one physical, one semantic filter that first passes through physical filter where it is evaluated based on phsyical cues (intensity/pitch). The physical filter weighs the importance of the cue and then passes it onto the semantic filter where it is also evaluated based on meaning

what is the stroop task

where participants are presented with a word that is a certain colour, some are congruent and some are incongruent, and measures how long it takes to identify the colour

what processes does the stroop task measure

measures the effects of both controlled and automatic processes of information

what is poportion congruent manipulation

how attention and control can change the effects of the stroop effect, depending on the trials you get. Congruent trails will be easier (bigger stroop effect) than incongruent trials (smaller stroop effect)

what is the set size effect

as the number of items you are looking at increases, the task gets harder and slower because there are more distractions

what is the pop-out effect

how a target pops out quickly, allowing you to find it quickly no matter how many objects there are, so size does not effect it

what are conjunction searches

involves identifying a target by consitering two or more features