PSYB57H3 Chapter 4: Chapter 4
Document Summary
Attention: the ability to focus on specific stimuli or locations. The central characteristic of attention includes withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others many different aspects of attention. Attention became important topic of research in the 1950s, world war ii. Cocktail party effect: ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli. Early selection model: filter eliminates the unattended information right at the beginning of the flow of information (e. g. Broadbent"s model provided testable predictions about selective attention. Leaky filter model: some of the unattended message gets through the attenuator: attenuator: analyzes the incoming message in terms of (1) its physical characteristics; (2) its language; and (3) its meaning. Represents a process and is not identified with a specific brain structure: dictionary unit: contains words stored in memory, each of which has a threshold (the smallest signal strength that can barely be detected) for being activated.
