Chapter 5 - Attention

Question 1

What is focalization?

Answer 1

Concentration of consciousness.

Question 2

What is inattentional blindness?

Answer 2

The inability to perceive information outside of the attentional spotlight.

Question 3

What is change blindness?

Answer 3

The inability to detect differences in two alternating flashed images.

Question 4

What is inattentional deafness?

Answer 4

When high-load tasks overload our processing power and certain stimuli from our environment, such as audio, cannot be comprehended.

Question 5

What is selective attention?

Answer 5

When someone pays attention to one thing at the expense of all others. We specifically attend to one object or location in an environment filled with competitors.

Question 6

What is the cocktail party effect?

Answer 6

The ability to attend to a specific voice in an environment where other competing voices are present as well.

Question 7

What is a dichotic listening task?

Answer 7

Designed to simulate auditory filtering (cocktail party effect) when two different words or voices are directed to each ear. With these different sound streams, we receive too much information than we are able to process and must actively process only some of the auditory stream while ignoring the rest.

Question 8

What are early-selection models of listening?

Answer 8

Only the basic characteristics of sensory input are processed without attention. Just enough to reject them from further processing. We select sources with properties like pitch or direction and determine relevance from that. Understanding meaning creates additional processing we do not have. Meaning is applied after the filter.

Question 9

What are late-selection models of listening?

Answer 9

In which we assume the basic meaning of an unattended stimulus which is processed with the attended stimulus. Attentional filtering based on whether it fits semantically with attended information.

Question 10

What is the attenuator model of attention by Triesman?

Answer 10

A compromise between the early and late selection models which states there is some filtering of the incoming stimulus based on its physical properties, but some information still passes the filter. Based on contextual information and some physical properties. Contextual information can leak through based on the “throwing rocks at the bank” and “money” dichotic listening task.

Question 11

What is attentional load?

Answer 11

A measure of how much processing resources are needed to perform a task. As we have limited resources, we must limit what we choose to process.

Question 12

What is automatic processing?

Answer 12

When a certain task is so familiar to us that we do not need to pay attention to it to complete it. We develop automaticity.

Question 13

What is divided attention?

Answer 13

The task of dividing attention between different tasks, called multitasking.

Question 14

What is feature-integration theory?

Answer 14

The idea that attention is needed in order to combine distinct features into coherent perceptual objects.

Question 15

What are conjunction errors?

Answer 15

Errors in identifying unattended stimuli as a whole, as individual factors can be identified but not together.

Question 16

What is visual search? What is a single-feature search?

Answer 16

When a participant must look for a certain target among a group of distractors which share similar traits to it. Single feature is when we are looking for something based on a single differing property, which is easier.

Question 17

What is exogenous attentional control?

Answer 17

When some property of the environment drives us to pay attention to it.

Question 18

What is endogenous attentional control?

Answer 18

When a person chooses what to pay attention to without outwardly directing our attention to it (with our eyes). This is covert attention.

Question 19

What is the difference between overt and covert attention?

Answer 19

Overt when we are observably paying attention to something else. Covert when we are paying attention to something but cannot be detected or observed doing such.

Question 20

What are the frontal eye fields (FEF) responsible for?

Answer 20

Controlling eye movement and controlling where we direct our eyes in the frontal lobe with a retinotopic map which can preserve the spatial layout of something on the retina into the cortex.

Question 21

What is a go/no-go task?

Answer 21

When we must respond to one stimulus but withhold the response to another.

Question 22

What is Balint syndrome？

Answer 22

When a stroke simultaneously affects the parietal lobe of both hemispheres and suffer attention related deficits.

Question 23

What is Occulomotor apraxis?

Answer 23

The inability to execute visually guided movements.

Question 24

What is visual neglect?

Answer 24

When patients have damage to the right (or left) parietal lobe which causes patients to neglect or not notice their entire respective visual field.

Damage to right, neglect left field.
Damage to left, neglect right field.

Question 25

Which brain region is responsible for modulating the activity of other brain areas during goal-directed attention?

Answer 25

Posterior parietal lobes.

Question 26

What is simultanagnosia?

Answer 26

The inability to identify or use more than one object or property in a scene at a time.

Question 27

Which area of the brain processes motion?

Answer 27

The medial temporal lobes.

Question 28

What area of the cortex is associated with exogenous attention?

Answer 28

The right hemisphere.

Question 29

What area of the brain has been associated with endogenous attention network to prepare neural activation for pre-processing?

Answer 29

The intraparietal sulcus.