Psychology 2135A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Retina, Dieting, Parietal Lobe

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2135A/B
• Professor: Mark Holden

Document Summary

Cognitive resources: idea that we have a limited amount of brain power that we can use at any given time, must chose what to focus our limited resources on. Some things are easy (walking) and require little brain power. Attention capture: diversion of attention by a stimulus so powerful that it compels us to notice it even when attention is focused elsewhere: opposite of inattentional blindness. Often stimuli of evolutionary importance: loud noises, threatening stimulus, faces, bodies. Ask them to indicate which arm is longest. Every 4th trial, something appears in one of the quadrants: results: most participants don"t even notice the black shape, about 15% notice the circle, those that did couldn"t tell u what shape it was. Selective attnetion focusing attention on relevant info, and ignoring irrelenvant info: listen to sounds of the room selective allows us to tune out things like the sounds of the rooms etc studying selective attention, 1.