PSYC 221 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Cocktail Party, Mental Event, Information Processing

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 221
• Professor: Monica Castelhano

Document Summary

Two defs mental resource: selective attention: mental process of concentrating effort on a stimulus or mental event, controlled attention: the limited mental energy or resource that powers the mental system. Where does the attention loop go: as seen in the picture. Or: between sensation and perception, cocktail party effect we can attend to only one conversation among many, but will notice critical information (such as your name) Dichotic listening experiments subjects listen to different messages presented to each ear through headphones, but they must follow one: suggests that some information is processed to some extent but is filtered. Filter models: early filter, problem: some info gets through, one ear: dog six fleas, other ear: eight scratch fleas , subject says: dog scratch fleas , late filter, switching experiment: Words that are common or important have low thresholds. Attention capacity it is hard to really distinguish filter models so emphasis has shifted to capacity theories.