All flashcards
Flashcard 1: Which attention model best fits: your name in unattended input captures attention?
Answer: Treisman attenuation model. Attenuated channel allows breakthrough of personally relevant stimuli.
Flashcard 2: What is sustained attention (vigilance)?
Answer: Maintaining attention on a task over an extended time. Critical for tasks requiring prolonged focus like monitoring.
Flashcard 3: What does Broadbent's early selection model propose about filtering?
Answer: Filtering occurs before semantic processing of unattended input. Unattended information is blocked at sensory level.
Flashcard 4: What is inattentional blindness?
Answer: Failure to notice an unexpected stimulus when attention is elsewhere. Demonstrates limits of attention (e.g., missing gorilla in video).
Flashcard 5: Which concept states that attention is a limited resource, causing performance trade-offs under high task load?
Answer: Limited capacity (resource) model of attention. Explains why multitasking impairs performance.
Flashcard 6: Identify the visual search type: target defined by color alone among uniform distractors.
Answer: Pop-out (feature) search. Single feature allows parallel processing without focused attention.
Flashcard 7: What is a heuristic in decision-making and information processing?
Answer: A fast rule-of-thumb strategy that reduces cognitive effort. Mental shortcuts that simplify complex decisions.
Flashcard 8: What is selective attention in information processing?
Answer: Focusing on one stimulus while filtering out others. Allows focus on relevant information while ignoring distractions.
Flashcard 9: What is divided attention?
Answer: Allocating attention to multiple tasks or stimuli at once. Performance often decreases due to limited cognitive resources.
Flashcard 10: What is the cocktail party effect?
Answer: Noticing salient stimuli (for example, your name) amid noise. Demonstrates selective attention to personally relevant stimuli.
Flashcard 11: What does Treisman's attenuation model propose about unattended stimuli?
Answer: Unattended input is weakened, not blocked; salient items break through. Explains why we notice our name in unattended conversations.
Flashcard 12: What does Deutsch and Deutsch's late selection model propose?
Answer: All stimuli are processed for meaning before selection. Selection occurs after semantic analysis of all inputs.
Flashcard 13: What is change blindness?
Answer: Failure to detect changes in a visual scene across disruptions. Shows how attention affects visual perception continuity.
Flashcard 14: What is the Stroop effect?
Answer: Slower responses when word meaning conflicts with ink color. Automatic reading interferes with naming ink colors.
Flashcard 15: What is the difference between bottom-up and top-down processing?
Answer: Bottom-up: data-driven; Top-down: expectation/knowledge-driven. Sensory input vs. prior knowledge guide processing.
Flashcard 16: What is a schema in information processing?
Answer: A cognitive framework that organizes and interprets information. Mental templates that guide perception and memory.
Flashcard 17: What is the availability heuristic?
Answer: Judging likelihood by how easily examples come to mind. Recent or vivid events seem more probable than they are.
Flashcard 18: What is the representativeness heuristic?
Answer: Judging probability by similarity to a prototype. Ignores base rates when making probability judgments.
Flashcard 19: What is confirmation bias?
Answer: Seeking or interpreting information to support existing beliefs. Leads to ignoring contradictory evidence.
Flashcard 20: Identify the term for a cue that automatically captures attention due to its features (for example, a bright flash).
Answer: Exogenous (stimulus-driven) attention. Bottom-up process triggered by salient stimulus properties.
Flashcard 21: Identify the term for attention guided by goals or expectations (for example, searching for a friend in a crowd).
Answer: Endogenous (goal-directed) attention. Top-down process controlled by intentions and expectations.
Flashcard 22: What is the spotlight model of attention?
Answer: Attention enhances processing in a limited region of the visual field. Metaphor for how attention moves and focuses like a beam of light.
Flashcard 23: What is executive attention (attentional control)?
Answer: Top-down regulation of attention, including inhibition and task switching. Frontal lobe function managing attention allocation and focus.
Flashcard 24: What is the orienting response in attention?
Answer: Automatic shift of attention toward novel or salient stimuli. Evolutionary mechanism for detecting potential threats or opportunities.
Flashcard 25: Identify the attention concept: missing a new object while texting and walking.
Answer: Inattentional blindness. Attention focused on phone prevents noticing environmental stimuli.
Flashcard 26: What is a conjunction search in visual attention?
Answer: Serial search requiring attention to bind multiple features to find a target. Requires effortful, sequential scanning when features must be combined.
Flashcard 27: What is a pop-out effect in visual search?
Answer: Parallel search where a distinctive feature makes the target immediately salient. Single feature difference allows rapid, parallel visual processing.
Flashcard 28: What does Treisman's attenuation model propose about unattended input?
Answer: Unattended input is weakened, not blocked; salient items can break through. Middle-ground theory allowing some semantic processing of unattended input.
Flashcard 29: What is selective attention?
Answer: Attending to one stimulus while filtering out competing stimuli. Cocktail party effect exemplifies this focused processing ability.
Flashcard 30: What is attention in cognitive psychology?
Answer: Selective focusing of cognitive resources on specific stimuli. Mental process that prioritizes relevant information for processing.