PSYC 2P49 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Mental Chronometry, Retinotopy, Gabi Balint

• School: Brock University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 2P49
• Professor: Stephen Emrich

Document Summary

We have all of this brain power dedicated to processing visual information. We cannot process all of it in detail at once. Attention: the selective enhanced processing of some information (at the expense of other information) Typically what we mean by attention is selective attention. Contrast it to vigilance: e. g. , paying attention for long periods of time in a boring lecture (sustained attention) Usually relates to salience item item that is very, distinct from it"s surrounding. An attribute of the physical stimulus (stimulus driven attention) Attention usually automatically drawn towards most salient item. Attention can also be directed towards features or locations. Depend on task and goals of observer. Searching for a target amongst a group of distractors. Measuring reaction time (rt) to nd the target. Examine how rt changes over a) the number of distractors, b) the types of distractors. Feature search (pop-out): looking for a target that can be found on the basis of a single feature.