Psychology of Sustained Attention

Sustained attention is the ability to maintain focus on a task over time, and its performance declines over time, known as vigilance decrement.

Selective attention is the ability to focus on one message and ignore others, and it can lead to inattentional blindness, where one fails to notice something due to focus on something else.

The Mackworth Clock Task was designed to measure sustained attention in radar operations, and Norman Mackworth found that people's ability to detect targets decreased over time.

<p>Sustained attention is the ability to maintain focus on a task over time, while selective attention is the ability to focus on one message and ignore others.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Dichotic listening experiments aided our understanding of divided attention, and they involve presenting one message to the left ear and another to the right ear.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Inattentional blindness</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Change blindness</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Binding</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Focused attention stage</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>To experience a coherent world</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>To evaluate if we can completely filter out the message to the unattended ear and attend only to the shadowed message</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The content of the message</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The Cocktail party effect</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Broadbent's filter model</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The point at which attention filtering occurs in the processing of information</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Attention</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Attention influences our perception by selecting specific stimuli or locations to focus on, while ignoring others, which can lead to misperceptions or illusions.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Sustained, selective, and divided attention</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Low-load tasks use fewer cognitive resources, leaving some available for processing unattended stimuli, whereas high-load tasks use all available cognitive resources, leaving none for processing unattended stimuli.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The 'what' pathway corresponds to the ventral stream, involved in object recognition, while the 'where/how' pathway corresponds to the dorsal stream, involved in guiding actions towards objects.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The primary challenge is dividing cognitive resources between multiple tasks, which can be mitigated through practice, allowing for automatic processing of one or both tasks.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Divided attention can be dangerous in situations requiring full cognitive resources, such as driving or operating heavy machinery. An example is the experiment by Strayer &amp; Johnston, which showed that drivers on the phone missed twice as many red lights and took longer to apply the brakes.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Selective attention involves attending to one stimulus while ignoring others, allowing us to filter out distractions and focus on relevant information.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The experiment showed that with practice, participants' performance improved, and at a certain point, they reported that the task had become automatic. This implies that following multiple trials, automatic processing occurs for one or both of the divided attention tasks.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The Stroop Test demonstrates the concept of high-load tasks by showing how the name of the word interferes with the ability to name the ink color, requiring more cognitive resources. This reveals that high-load tasks use all available cognitive resources, leaving none for processing unattended stimuli.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The primary mechanism is that even unattended messages can be detected, particularly if they have a low threshold for detection, such as one's own name. This mechanism supports the cocktail party phenomenon because it allows individuals to detect their own name even when it's not the focus of their attention.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The main implication is that selection of stimuli for final processing occurs after information has been analyzed for meaning, suggesting that semantic processing occurs before attentional selection. This differs from earlier models, which suggested that attentional selection occurs prior to semantic processing.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Processing capacity is the amount of information a person can handle at any given moment, and perceptual load is the difficulty of a given task. Low-load tasks require lower processing capacity, while high-load tasks require higher processing capacity. This relationship suggests that attentional resources are limited and can be overwhelmed by high-load tasks, leading to decreased performance.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The key finding is that the meaning of the biasing word affects participants' choice, even though they reported being unaware of the presentation of the biasing words. This suggests that attention plays a role in language processing, even when we're not consciously aware of it.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The distinction between high-load and low-load tasks is significant because it highlights the limited nature of attentional resources. High-load tasks require more processing capacity, which can lead to decreased performance, while low-load tasks require less processing capacity, making it easier to allocate attentional resources. This distinction is central to understanding the concept of processing capacity and how it relates to attention.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Sensory memory briefly retains the effects of sensory stimulation, allowing for the processing of information in attention tasks, such as reporting letters in Sperling's experiment.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The capacity of sensory memory is limited, and its rapid decay leads to a decrease in performance in attention tasks, as seen when the tone was delayed in Sperling's experiment.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Persistence of vision is an example of sensory memory, specifically iconic memory, which allows for the brief retention of visual information, influencing attention to visual stimuli.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The brief duration of sensory memory impacts attention by limiting the time available for processing information, leading to decreased performance in attention tasks if information is not attended to quickly.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Echoic memory is the brief sensory memory of auditory information, playing a role in attention to auditory stimuli, and differing from iconic memory in its focus on auditory rather than visual information.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The retrieval of information from long-term memory can influence attention by facilitating the processing of familiar information, and long-term memory is distinct from sensory memory, which is a brief, initial retention of sensory information.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The takeaway example illustrates the retrieval of information from long-term memory, which can impact attention by facilitating the processing of familiar information, such as remembering a phone number.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The persistence of sound is an example of echoic memory, which allows for the brief retention of auditory information, influencing attention to auditory stimuli.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The capacity of sensory memory is a limiting factor in attention tasks, as seen in Sperling's experiment, where participants could only report a limited number of letters.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The decay of sensory memory impacts attention by limiting the time available for processing information, leading to decreased performance in attention tasks if information is not attended to quickly.</p> Signup and view all the answers