Psychology 2010A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Long Term Ecological Research Network, Context-Dependent Memory, Psych
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18 Nov 2011
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Psych 2010A
Chapter 3 - Attention
•two characteristics of attention: focalization and concentration
•focalization implies selectivity
•selective part of attention prevents us from being overload with information
•bottleneck theories: a theory that attempts to explain how people select information
when some information-processing stage become overloading with too much
information
•concentration: investing mental effort into a task
•mental effort: the amount of mental capacity required to perform a task
•mental effort can be measured using the fMRI - uses blood flow to detect activity
•capacity theory: a theory that proposes that we have a limited amount of mental effort
to distribute across tasks, so there are limitations on the number of tasks we can
perform at the same time
•as the number of items increase, a limited amount of attention must be distributed
over more patterns
Bottleneck Theories
•Broadbentʼs Filter Model
•the proposition that a bottleneck occurs at the pattern recognition stage and that
attention determines what information reaches the pattern recognition stage
•limited-capacity perceptual channel: the pattern recognition stage of Broadbentʼs
model, which is protected by the filter (attention) from becoming overloaded with
too much perceptual information
•takes time to switch attention (the flap, filter)
•the shift has to occur before the information entering the unattended ear decays
from the auditory sensory store
•limitation: sensory store would have to last fairly long to operate as proposed,
otherwise the information would decay before it could be recognized
•Treismanʼs Attenuation Model
•shadowing a message provides proof that the listener is following instructions and
attending to the correct ear - requires the people to repeat the message out loud
•contextual effects: the influence of the surrounding context on the recognition of
patterns
•the contextual cues were not sufficient to cause subjects to change permanently to
the unattended message in order to follow the meaning of the passage
•proposed that the model consisted of two parts: a selective filter and a dictionary
•the filter in this model does not completely block the message, but rather
attenuates it, making it less likely to be heard
•the recognition of a word occurs in a dictionary when the threshold of a word is
surpassed (the loudness the word needs to be said in order to be recognized)
•The Deutsch-Norman Memory Selection Model
•the two former models proposed that the bottleneck occurs after the pattern
recognition stage
•this is an example of a late-selection model
•says that all patterns are recognized, but only words selected into LTM can be
recalled
Capacity Theories
•mental effort (capacity) is required for late selection after pattern recognition than for
early selection before pattern recognition
•example of a capacity model:
•capacity theories are concerned with the amount of mental effort that is required to
perform a task
•his capacity model was designed to supplement, rather than to replace the
bottleneck theories
•a bottleneck theory proposes that interference occurs because the same
mechanism (i.e. listening) is required to carry out two tasks at the same time
•a capacity theory proposes that interference occurs when the demands of two
activities exceed available capacity
•allocation of capacity: when a limited amount of capacity is distributed to various
tasks
•enduring dispositions: an automatic influence where people direct their attention.
•momentary intentions: reflect our specific goals or objectives at a particular time
•Capacity and Stage of Selection
•Johnston and Heinz had a theory proposed where the listener has control over the
location of the
bottleneck
•called their theory a multimode theory - a theory that proposes that peopleʼs
intentions and the demands of the task determine the information processing stage
at which information is selected
•as the system shifts from an early to a late mode of selection, it collects more
information about the secondary message, but this reduces the capacity to
understand the primary message.
•subsidiary task: a task that typically measures how quickly people can react to a
target stimulus to evaluate the capacity demands of the primary task
•more capacity is required to perform at a late mode of selection
•two lists should require more capacity than listening to one list, which should
require no more capacity than listening to no list.
•model has both an early (filtering mechanism) and a late (semantic analysis) stage
of selection
•Automatic Processing
•automatic processing: performing mental operation that require very little mental
effort - skills - occurs without conscious awareness
•when is a skill automatic?
•occurs without intention
•does not give rise to conscious awareness
•does not interfere with other mental activities
•Stroop effect: the finding that it takes longer to name the color of the ink a word is
printed in when the word is the name of a competing color (i.e. the word red printed
in blue ink)
•Automatic Encoding
•incidental learning: learning that occurs when we do not make a conscious effort to
learn
•frequency information is data that specifies how often different stimuli occur
•spatial information is data about where object occur in the environment
•temporal information is data about when or for how long events occur
•5 criteria to distinguish between automatic and effortful processing
•intentional vs. incidental learning
•effect of instruction and practice
•task interference - automatic process should not be affected by task inteference
•depression or high arousal - automatic processing should not be affected by
emotional states
•developmental trends - automatic processing show little change with age
•Automatic Processing and Reading
•learning to read requires many component skills such as recognizing features,
letters, words, understand the meanings and symbols, etc
•words should require less capacity to recognize if we can recognize the word as a
unit rather than a string of four letters
•