attention
concentrating on information that is either internal or external to oneself
selective attention
attending to one thing and ignoring the other
divided attention
paying attention to more than one thing at a time
dichotic listening task
involves participation of 2 different messages at the same time (message #1 in left ear and message #2 in right ear)
“filter”
attention serves as a filter in which only some of the incoming info passes to the detector for higher-level recognition
“detector”
processes all incoming information for higher-level characteristics (meaning)
“sensory memory”
holds incoming unanalyzed sensory stimuli for a brief duration
iconic memory
holds visual stimuli for 0.24-0.50 seconds
echoic memory
holds auditory stimuli for 1-3 seconds
short-term memory
- incoming information from the detectors is held here for 10-15 seconds without rehearsing the information
- 7+/-2 chunks of information
- can transfer information to long-term memory which can hold unlimited amounts of information for an unlimited duration
early selection model
- information selected before its meaning is analyzed
- selection is based on physical properties of the message
broadbent’s filter model
attention acts as a filter that blocks to-be-ignored information
problem with broadbent’s filter model
it does not explain why the meaning of the ignored message can still be processed
dear aunt jane study
- dichotic listening experiment
- participant instructed to shadow left ear (dear, 7, jane) and to ignore right ear (9, aunt, 6)
- participants would report “dear aunt jane”
- indicated that the to-be-ignored information was still processed
treisman’s attentuation model
- attention acts as an attentuator that attentuates (weakens) ignored information
- contains a dictonary unit that consists of words in memory
- words with low activation thresholds (i.e. meaningless words) are likely to be detected
lavie’s load theory of attention
focuses on the amount of information that can be processed at one time
mackay’s late selection model
information selected for further processing occurs after the meaning of the message is analyzed
processing capacity
amount of information one can process at a time
processing load
difficulty of the task (high-load tasks vs low-load tasks)
visual scanning
eye movement from one stimulus to another
overt attention
shift of attention with eye movement
fixation
short pauses on points of interest
saccadic eye movement
rapid movements of the eyes between fixations
stimulus salience
bottom-up processes in which physical properties of the stimuli captures attention
