Attention
taking possession of the mind. Concentrating on some things and withdrawing from others in order to effectively deal with the task.
Aspects of attention
Focusing: attend to a specific stimuli
Shifting: demonstrate flexibility with changing stimuli
Sustainability: ability to sustain an alert state for a period of time
Encoding: what you do with info from stimuli (manipulation of stimuli)
Selective Attention, Divided Attention & Automaticity
Selective: difficulty attending to more than one thing
Divided: multitasking, attending to more than one thing at once
Automaticity: do without think, well learned skills
Attention pools are effected by…
whether 2 tasks are derived from same stimulus type
-complex/novel tasks require large pools–>only a small amy of attention leftover for second task
Stimuli processed in parallel
stimuli being processed at the same time–>can take in more resources at once
some exceed attention limits–>can switch b/t competing resources
some require long processing periods–>dec attention
Limitations in identification stimuli
Stoop effect: visual selective attention
Cocktail party effect: auditory selective attention
Stroop effect
2 conditions: neutral word & color word
congruent: word and color of word are the same
incongruent: inc reaction time b/c of interference b/t 2 stimuli
Cocktail Party Effect
when “unattended” stimuli is processed in parallel with “attended” stimuli during early stimulus identification
–>stimulus typically “passes through” even though not attending to it b/c it relevant and familiar to the person
Inattention Blindness
Inability to recognize certain visual stimuli when attention is directed at other stimuli
- ->the intentional processing of specific visual stimuli leads to inability to process unattended stimuli
- ->looking for a parking spot & almost hit pedestrian
Limitations in response selection
controlled vs automatic
Controlled vs Automatic
controlled:serial processing, usually of a novel task, slow selective requirement of attention
Automatic: processing in parallel, fast, typically with familiar stimuli/tasks, simultaneous tasks w/out interruption of performance
Limitations in response programming
organization & initiation of a motor plan
double stimulation paradigm
Double stimulation Paradigm
2 similar stimuli initiate 2 separate responses
interference of programming 1st and 2nd stimuli
