Section 2: Attention

Question 1

What is attention?

Answer 1

The process of focusing cognitive resources on certain information while ignoring others.

Question 2

What are the two main functions of attention?

Answer 2

Selection (choosing one source of input) and resource allocation (distributing mental effort).

Question 3

What is the cocktail party effect?

Answer 3

The ability to focus on one conversation while ignoring background noise.

Question 4

What is early selection theory?

Answer 4

Information is filtered based on physical characteristics before meaning is processed.

Question 5

What are problems with early selection theory?

Answer 5

People sometimes notice meaningful information, like their own name, in the unattended channel.

Selection can occur after some meaning is processed.

Question 6

What is Broadbent’s filter theory of selective attention?

Answer 6

1. All incoming information enters PARALLEL sensory channels
2. Messages briefly held in sensory buffer
3. Selective filter chooses ONE message to pass on (BASED ON PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS like pitch, loudness, location)
4. Only selected message reaches decision channel for response
5. Unattended information filtered out
   *form of early selection

Question 7

What is the shadowing task?

Answer 7

• Two messages played simultaneously into different ears. Then, ear of arrival is switch for two messages. People follow the story when it switches ears – even if they were asked to attend to only right ear.
• You’re analyzing information from both ears even if you are only attending to one ear.
• • Challenged Broadbent & early selection.

Question 8

What is the halfalogue effect?

Answer 8

• Hearing only one side of a conversation is more distracting because the brain wants to fill in the missing half.
• Draws cognitive resources away from task on hand & impairs performance
• Exception to cocktail party effect

Question 9

What is the key finding of Posner’s cueing task?

Answer 9

Attention to a validly cued location speeds detection, while invalid cues slow it.

Question 10

What does Posner’s cueing task demonstrate?

Answer 10

Attention acts like a spotlight that enhances processing at specific spatial locations.

Question 11

What is negative priming?

Answer 11

• Inhibition of information at one time carries over into future processing.
• You become slower/less accurate at responding to a stimulus because you previously ignored it.
• Most impactful on IMMEDIATE trials

Question 12

What does Kahneman’s capacity model explain?

Answer 12

Attention is a limited resource that must be divided among simultaneous tasks.

Question 13

Why does multitasking reduce performance?

Answer 13

Because tasks compete for limited cognitive capacity, leading to slower or less accurate performance.

Question 14

What is the feature-integration theory?

Answer 14

• Attention binds separate visual features (color, shape, size) into unified percepts.
• Features are registered automatically & in parallel.
• Once a location is attended to, it is marked as not to be returned to (INHIBITION OF RETURN)
• Features at unattended locations are free-floating and may recombine randomly (ILLUSORY CONJUNCTIONS)

Question 15

What is an illusory conjunction?

Answer 15

A misbinding of features from different objects, such as seeing a blue N instead of a red N.

Question 16

What is the difference between feature search and conjunction search?

Answer 16

Feature search is automatic and fast; conjunction search is slower and requires focused attention.

Question 17

What is the guided search model?

Answer 17

Attention is guided by both bottom-up features and top-down goals, creating a mix of serial and parallel processing (like a priority map)

Question 18

What is the attentional blink?

Answer 18

A brief period (~200–500 ms) after detecting one target when a second target is often missed due to limited processing resources.

Question 19

What is automaticity?

Answer 19

When a process becomes fast, effortless, and requires little to no attention.

Question 20

What does the Stroop effect demonstrate?

Answer 20

• ASYMMETRIC INTERFERENCE where reading interferes with color naming but not vice versa.
• Reading is highly automatic/dominant process, color naming is slower & requires controlled attention.

Question 21

What is mind-wandering?

Answer 21

Situation in which a person’s attention & thoughts drift from current task to some other, unrelated line of thought (often of long-term importance)

Question 22

What are action slips?

Answer 22

Unintended, automatic actions that are inappropriate for the current situations (e.g., packing a lunch even though you planned to eat out; habit overrides intention)

Question 23

What is hemineglect?

Answer 23

Decreased ability to attend to something in one field of vision (often left) typically as a result of stroke.