PSYCH 1F03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Stroop Effect, Visual Search, Speech Shadowing
6 Mar 2017
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Document Summary
W/out the ability to focus your limited processing resources, you wouldn"t be able to have a conversation, listen to music, or learn new things. Operational definitions are necessary for testing cognitive models. William james defined attention as: everyone know what attention is. Selection: the act of an object to select it apart from unattended objects: some stimuli in the env"t can trigger attention in an automatic fashion. Attention is an active process and is our conscious ability to attend to info that is relative to our goals. When irrelevant info overwhelms us, we get distracted. Automatic processes: involuntary capture that is fast and efficient: triggered involuntarily by external events and trigger the capture of attention. Salience: some cues are more noticeable and lead to stronger, quicker associations when paired w/ events. E. g. the lights and sirens from emergency vehicles. Consciously effortful tasks can become automatic through practice: e. g. driving.
