PSYC20007 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Stroop Effect, Simple Features, Eriksen Flanker Task

• School: University of Melbourne
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC20007
• Professor: All

Document Summary

Psychological function of spatial attention: to assign limited-capacity processing resources to relevant stimuli in the environment, must locate stimuli among distractors & process (identify) them. Visual search: laboratory analogue of cheetahs-in-the-savannah, measure mean rt as a function of display size. Cognitive psychology: problems with fit, pop out sometimes depends on complex object properties, not just simple features (enns & Rensink, 1990: high-level, not low-level properties predict pop- out. Guided search theory (wolfe, 1989: 2 stage theory. Learned s-r associations: criteria: fast, parallel, effortless, doesn"t require capacity, basis for skill acquisition. Measure rt: rt(compatible) < rt(neutral) < rt(incompatible, failure of focussed attention, decreases with spatial separation. Involuntary processing of flankers even when attempting to ignore them. Implies some parallel processing of conjunction stimuli: disappears at 1-1. 5 degrees of separation, provides estimate of size of focus of attention (spotlight, stimuli falling within spotlight processed automatically.