Class Policies and Midterm Overview

A mental process that allows us to focus on specific information while ignoring other stimuli.

Theories that propose a bottleneck or limitation in our cognitive capacity, forcing us to filter out most incoming information.

A theory stating that the filtering of information occurs early in the sensory processing stage.

A theory stating that the filtering of information can happen later in the processing stages, even after meaning has been extracted.

The process of choosing which stimuli to focus on when there is more information coming in than we can fully process.

The idea that our mental capacity is too large, making it difficult to process all information effectively, leading to interference and difficulty responding appropriately to specific stimuli.

A theory proposing that attention is necessary to bind different features of a stimulus (like color, shape) into a single unified perception.

Incorrect combinations of features reported when attention is divided, illustrating that without attention, features remain uncombined. For example, reporting a 'red, unfilled circle' when there was a 'red circle' and 'unfilled square'.

Treisman's theory suggesting that unattended stimuli are not fully blocked out, but rather weakened or attenuated. Provides an alternative to 'filtering' theories.

The remarkable phenomenon where people fail to notice significant changes in a scene, demonstrating the limitations of our attentional capacity.

Our ability to focus on specific aspects of the environment, filtering out distractions.

Type of attention that focuses on one sensory modality (e.g., visual or auditory).

Type of attention involving focusing on specific locations in space.

Attention can be directed by our goals and intentions (top-down), but it can also be automatically captured by salient stimuli (bottom-up).

A demonstration of attentional capture where a visual cue indicates the likely location of a target, influencing our attention and reaction time.

Attention can be biased by our expectations, leading to improved processing for expected stimuli and reduced processing for unexpected stimuli.

Attention is a critical process for maintaining and updating information in working memory, selecting relevant memories, and suppressing irrelevant ones.

Attention can influence our conscious experience. What we attend to becomes more vivid and accessible, while unattended information may be less conscious.

The theory proposes that consciousness emerges from a mental model or schema of attentional processes, allowing us to understand and control our own awareness.

Our ability to attend to specific details can improve our memory for those details. For example, attending to the location of an object can improve recall of location-related information.