.png){kind=icon}
Click on each question to check your answer.
Fill in the Blank Questions
1. A(n) ________ process demands attention while a(n) ________ process operates without the necessary engagement of any attentional processes.
controlled; automatic (p. 91)
2. The notion of ________ refers to the diversion of attention by a stimulus that is strong enough to attract attention even if it had been focused elsewhere.
attention capture (p. 93)
3. ________ is the hypothesis that attentional tasks interfere with one another to the extent that they involve similar activities.
Structural limits (p. 100)
4. Attending to something by moving your eyes is referred to as ________ attention, while attending to something without moving your eyes is referred to as ________ attention.
overt; covert (p. 111)
5. ________ are right to left movements of the eye during reading that direct the eyes to previously read text.
Regressions (p. 114)
Short Answer Questions
1. Many discussions of attention begin with William James’s famous definition of attention. De-scribe it in your own words.
William James asserts that attention is the act of taking control of your mind. It involves removing information consciously in order to effectively (focus) on more relevant information. It is the conscious removal of distractions. (p. 89)
2. What is the cocktail party phenomenon?
The cocktail party phenomenon refers to our natural ability to focus on and understand what a single person is saying even when surrounded by many other people speaking simultaneously. (p. 90)
3. Simons and Chabris (1999) conducted an experiment on selective looking in which a person dressed in a gorilla suit walked into the room in which the experiment was taking place and was completely unnoticed by 50 per cent of the participants. Why did such an obvious stimulus go unnoticed by so many, and what mechanism of attention was at play?
The experimenters had asked the subjects to pay attention to only one of two basketball teams. By giving these instructions, subjects were so focused on paying attention to the basketball team that they failed to notice the very obvious “gorilla” entering the scene. This failure to notice the appearance of the gorilla is known as inattentional blindness. (p. 96)
4. Some theories of attention include a central processor. What is meant by this term and how would two simultaneous tasks be performed with a central processor?
Some theories, for example the central bottleneck theory, posit the existence of a central processor, which is an information processing step that can process only one task at a time. In order to perform two tasks simultaneously with a central processor, a subject must rapidly switch be-tween the two tasks. Although a person can rapidly alternate between tasks, only one task will be processed at a time. (p. 100)
5. What is switch cost? Provide an example.
A switch cost refers to the phenomenon that when a person is alternating between two tasks, there is a drop in performance on a task immediately after switching to it. In other words, if you’re writing a term paper and a friend calls you and you go out for a cup of coffee, when you come back to the paper later, you might not be able to smoothly pick up where you left off. You might have to reconstruct exactly what you were doing and it might almost feel you have to re-start everything from scratch. This may be a good explanation for why most people work best on single tasks with no interruptions. (p. 108)
6. How can mind wandering be related to dual tasks? Can it lead to similar costs in performance?
Mind wandering refers to the shift of mental resources from a task at hand towards internal thoughts. This essentially requires the individual to do two things simultaneously, which is analogous to a dual task. Yes, there can be significant costs associated with mind wandering, as exemplified by the train accident described in the text (pp. 102–104).
7. What is the attentional blink task and how does it relate to attention and perception?
The attentional blink task requires individuals to pay attention to a rapid serial presentation to items and respond to two embedded targets in that stream. The first target is responded to with good success, but if the second target is presented within half a second it often goes unnoticed. This demonstrates that when attentional resources are occupied, conscious perception can be difficult to achieve (although unconscious perception has been reported for the second target) (pp. 104–106).
8. How does the sequential attentional model relate to how we read?
We read in saccades and only a small body of information is attended overtly while our covert attention in our peripheral vision is busy programming our next saccade. In other words, when your overt attention moves to a new word, certain features of the “new” text have already been pro-cessed using your covert attention, reducing the time needed to overtly spend on it. (p. 111-113)
9. Describe fixation, saccade, nystagmus, and smooth pursuit eye movements. How are they different?
A fixation is when you hold the eye relatively still in order to keep the image on the fovea. Small and continuous movements are still made during a fixation, and these are known as nystagmus. The movements made when you move your eyes from fixation to fixation are called saccades. The ability to follow a moving object (e.g., a moving tennis ball) is referred to as smooth pursuit eye movements. (pp. 113, 116)
10. Vickers’ has proposed the location-suppression hypothesis to explain the free-throw performance of elite basketball players. Describe the two stages involved in a free throw. Why is “looking away” important?
According to the location-suppression hypothesis, the free-throw involves two stages: the location stage and the suppression stage. The location stage involves fixing the eye gaze on the hoop to ascertain its location. The second, suppression stage involves looking away while executing the throw in order to suppress new visual input that might disrupt the aim. (pp. 119–120)