PSY 1101 Lecture 12: Selective Inattention

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 1101
• Professor: Rosalinde Klempan

Document Summary

Brain areas below the cortex are processing emotion-related information (ex. those who lose l visual cortex and are blind on right side can still sense emotion expressed in faces) consciousness sometimes arrives late to decision making. Being focused increases brain activity 5% above baseline rate. A decision to move occurs when the brain activity crosses a threshold, which happens to coincide with the average time of awareness of intention to move (0. 15 before movement) Unconscious parallel processing is faster than sequential conscious processing. Parallel processing enables your mind to take care of routine business, the processing of many aspects of a problem simultaneously, the brain"s natural mode of information processing for many functions. Sequential processing is best for solving new problems, requires focused attention. Conscious attention can only be in one place at a time. Selective attention is the focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus.