cogw4

• Attention is the ability to focus on specific stimuli locations in the environment
• Selective attention involves attending to only one thing and completely ignoring other stimuli
• Divided attention is attending to more than one thing at a time
• Psychologists study attention through tasks like dichotic listening tasks
• Early Selection Model (Broadbent Filter Model of Attention) suggests that selection happens before information is fully analyzed
• Intermediate Selection Model (Treisman's Attenuation Model) proposes that selection can occur before or after analysis
• Late Selection Model (MacKay, 1973) states that selection occurs after information has been analyzed for meaning
• Perceptual load refers to the difficulty of a given task, with high load being difficult and low load being easy
• Divided attention can improve with practice, as shown by Schneider and Shiffrin's study in 1977
• Inattentional blindness is when subjects are unaware of an attended stimulus despite it being clearly visible
• Feature Integration Theory explains how we perceive features of individual objects and combine them to create perception
• Feature search (disjunctive) involves viewing a whole and detecting what stands out
• Serial search (conductive) involves viewing one by one and eliminating options incongruent with previous known information
• Dichotic listening involves presenting two different messages to each ear simultaneously, with participants asked to repeat what they heard, typically recalling the message presented to their right ear better due to its direct connection to the left hemisphere responsible for language processing

  
• Broadbent's filter model of attention proposes that attention acts as a filter, allowing some messages to pass through to memory while blocking others, with messages first received by sensory memory, then filtered and passed on to the detector for further processing and storage

  
• Early Selection Model - Broadbent's Filter Model of Attention:

  • Sensory memory holds incoming information briefly
  • Filter selects attended message based on physical characteristics
  • Detector processes information to determine higher-level characteristics
  • Short-term memory holds information for 10-15 seconds
• Broadbent's model can't explain why:

  • Participants' names get through the filter
  • Participants can shadow meaningful messages switching from one ear to another
• Selective attention involves stimuli being presented, with the attenuator filtering out unattended messages and the dictionary unit storing the attended messages in memory

  
• Intermediate Selection Model - Treisman's Attenuation Model:

  • Attended message separated from unattended message early in the information-processing system
  • Selection can also occur later
• Treisman's Attenuation Model:

  • Attenuator analyzes incoming message in terms of physical characteristics, language, and meaning
  • Attended message let through at full strength, unattended message at weaker strength
  • Dictionary unit contains words with different thresholds for activation
• Late Selection Model - MacKay (1973):

  • Selection for final processing occurs after analyzing for meaning
  • Participants in the study heard ambiguous sentences in the attended ear and different words in the unattended ear
• Load Theory of Attention:

  • Processing capacity refers to how much information a person can handle at once
  • Perceptual load indicates the difficulty of a task, with high-load tasks using more processing capacity
• Broadbent's Filter Model of Attention proposes that attention acts as a filter, allowing some messages to pass through to memory while blocking others
• The perceptual load theory states that there is a limit to the amount of information a person can process at one time, with high perceptual load resulting in less capacity to process additional information

  
• Strayer and Johnston's 2001 experiment showed that drivers talking on a cell phone were more likely to miss red lights and took longer to apply the brakes, even with hands-free devices
• Inattentional blindness can cause subjects to be unaware of clearly visible stimuli if they aren't directing their attention to them
• Feature Integration Theory proposes a two-stage process for perceiving individual features as part of the same object: a preattentive stage and a focused attention stage
• R.M., a patient with Balint’s syndrome due to parietal lobe damage, had an inability to focus attention on individual objects and reported a high number of illusory conjunctions, such as seeing a "blue T"
• Feature search, also known as disjunctive search, targets unique visual features like color or shape, while serial search, or conjunction search, involves scanning a display to focus attention at a specific location