PS102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Cognitive Load, Amygdala, Relaxin
Document Summary
We need to pay attention to something in order to remember it. We may use selective attention early, during the process of sensation, before the brain has had a chance to process meaning. At this level, we are performing structural encoding (or shallow processing). This is where we process visual/physical stimuli (e. g. , what letters look like; where we process visual/physical stimuli (e. g. , what letters look like; angles; shading). We also perform phonemic encoding (an intermediate level of processing), which is what the stimuli sound like (or if it is visual stimuli, then we"d recognize an object such as a car). This kind of attention may occur during tasks that require a high cognitive load (e. g. , a new task). We may use selective attention later, after the brain has processed meaning. This is evidenced in listening to two different conversations where we are dividing our attention between two meaningful things.
