Cognitive Psychology Week 1: Attention

Cognitive psychology is concerned with humans' information processing, and it is involved in every psychological phenomenon, examining all human activity from a particular point of view.

Focused attention involves concentrating on a specific task or piece of information while ignoring other stimuli, whereas divided attention is not explicitly mentioned in the text. Focused attention involves selecting and processing a small subset of information, filtering out other stimuli.

The 'cocktail party phenomenon' refers to the ability to focus on a single conversation at a noisy party, ignoring other voices, which is an example of selective or focused attention.

The 'own name effect' refers to the phenomenon where a person can hear their own name being mentioned in a crowded room, even if they are not paying attention to that particular conversation, which demonstrates that some unattended information can still be processed to a certain extent.

Early filter theories propose that the filter is placed early in the processing stream, and only physical characteristics of stimuli are processed, with irrelevant stimuli being filtered out before semantic processing.

Attention is an essential aspect of cognitive phenomena, as it is involved in all human activity, and every psychological phenomenon is a cognitive phenomenon.

In focused attention, selection involves attending to a small subset of information, filtering out other stimuli, which is essential for processing and utilizing information effectively.

Cognitive psychology's concern with information processing is closely tied to the concept of cognition, as cognition refers to all processes by which sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used, even in the absence of relevant stimulation.

Early filter theories struggle to explain why highly salient information, like hearing one's name, can still be noticed even when it is part of the unattended stimuli.

Attenuation Theory proposes a more flexible filter that attenuates, rather than completely blocks, the unattended information.

Late Filter Theories lack strong empirical support.

The ability to divide attention effectively depends on several factors, such as task difficulty, similarity, and the individual's level of practice.

Performance decrements, which occur when performing two tasks simultaneously, are studied using the dual-task paradigm.

If the combined demands of tasks exceed the available resources, performance suffers.

The Multiple Resource Theory suggests the existence of several independent pools of resources, whereas the Single Attentional Resource Theory proposes a single pool of resources.

The Spotlight lens model describes attention as a process of focusing on a small region of the visual field, illuminating and filtering out irrelevant details.