COGNITIVEPRELIMREVIEWER2024.pdf

Cognitive psychology is the scientific investigation of and processes related to knowledge, including attention, human cognition, that is, all our mental abilities – perceiving, memory, judgment, reasoning, problem solving, decision...

Cognitive psychology is the scientific investigation of and processes related to knowledge, including attention, human cognition, that is, all our mental abilities – perceiving, memory, judgment, reasoning, problem solving, decision learning, remembering, thinking, reasoning, and understanding. making, and a host of other vital processes. It is closely related to the highly interdisciplinary cognitive Human cognition takes place at both conscious and science and influenced by artificial intelligence, computer unconscious levels. It can be concrete or abstract. It is science, philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, biology, physics, intuitive, meaning that nobody has to learn or be taught and neuroscience. how to think. It just happens as part of being human. The term “cognition” stems from the Latin word “cognoscere” or Cognitive processes use existing knowledge but are "to know". Fundamentally, cognitive psychology studies how capable of generating new knowledge through logic and people acquire and apply knowledge or information. inference. Imagine all of your thoughts as if they were physical entities, swirling rapidly inside your mind. How is it possible that the brain People have been studying knowledge in various ways for is able to move from one thought to the next in an organized, centuries. Some of the most important figures in the study orderly fashion? The brain is endlessly perceiving, processing, of cognition are: planning, organizing, and remembering—it is always active. Yet, you don’t notice most of your brain’s activity as you move Aristotle (384–322 BCE) The study of human cognition throughout your daily routine. This is only one facet of the began over two thousand years ago. The Greek complex processes involved in cognition. Simply put, cognition is philosopher Aristotle was interested in many fields, thinking, and it encompasses the processes associated with including the inner workings of the mind and how they perception, knowledge, problem solving, judgment, language, affect the human experience. He also placed great and memory. Scientists who study cognition are searching for importance on ensuring that his studies and ideas were ways to understand how we integrate, organize, and utilize our based on empirical evidence (scientific information that conscious cognitive experiences without being aware of all of the is gathered through observation and careful unconscious work that our brains are doing (for example, experimentation). Kahneman, 2011). Descartes (1596–1650) René Descartes was a Cognitive psychology is the field of psychology dedicated to seventeenth-century philosopher who coined the famous examining how people think. It attempts to explain how and why phrase I think, therefore I am (albeit in French). The we think the way we do by studying the interactions among simple meaning of this phrase is that the act of thinking human thinking, emotion, creativity, language, and problem proves that a thinker exists. Descartes came up with this solving, in addition to other cognitive processes. Cognitive idea when trying to prove whether anyone could truly psychologists strive to determine and measure different types of know anything despite the fact that our senses intelligence, why some people are better at problem solving than sometimes deceive us. As he explains, “We cannot others, and how emotional intelligence affects success in the doubt of our existence while we doubt.” workplace, among countless other topics. They also sometimes focus on how we organize thoughts and information gathered Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) Wilhelm Wundt is from our environments into meaningful categories of thought. considered one of the founding figures of modern psychology; in fact, he was the first person to call himself a psychologist. Wundt believed that scientific psychology should focus on introspection, or analysis of History of Cognitive Psychology the contents of one’s own mind and experience. Though Maybe you’ve heard the phrase I think , therefore I am, or today Wundt’s methods are recognized as being perhaps even the Latin version: Cogito ergo sum. This simple subjective and unreliable, he is one of the important expression is one of enormous philosophical importance, figures in the study of cognition because of his because it is about the act of thinking. Thought has been of examination of human thought processes. fascination to humans for many centuries, with questions like What is thinking? and How do people think? and Why do people think? troubling and intriguing many philosophers, Cognition, Psychology, and Cognitive Science psychologists, scientists, and others. The word “cognition” is the closest scientific synonym for thinking. It comes from the The term “cognition” covers a wide swath of processes, same root as the Latin word cogito, which is one of the forms everything from memory to attention. These processes of the verb “to know.” Cognition is the set of all mental abilities can be analyzed through the lenses of many different  fields. Because of the number of disciplines that study Just as concepts can be abstract or concrete, we can cognition to some degree, the term can have different make a distinction between concepts that are functions meanings in different contexts. For example, in psychology, of our direct experience with the world and those that “cognition” usually refers to processing of neural information; in are more artificial in nature. social psychology the term “social cognition” refers to attitudes and group attributes. These numerous approaches to the analysis of cognition are synthesized in the relatively new field Natural and Artificial Concepts of cognitive science, the interdisciplinary study of mental processes and functions. In psychology, concepts can be divided into two categories, natural and artificial. Natural concepts are created “naturally” through your Concepts and Prototypes experiences and can be developed from either direct or indirect experiences. The human nervous system is capable of handling endless streams of information. The senses serve as the interface An artificial concept, on the other hand, is a concept between the mind and the external environment, receiving that is defined by a specific set of characteristics. stimuli and translating it into nervous impulses that are Various properties of geometric shapes, like squares and transmitted to the brain. The brain then processes this triangles, serve as useful examples of artificial concepts. information and uses the relevant pieces to create thoughts, A triangle always has three angles and three sides. A which can then be expressed through language or stored in square always has four equal sides and four right angles. memory for future use. To make this process more complex, Mathematical formulas, like the equation for area (length the brain does not gather information from external × width) are artificial concepts defined by specific sets of environments only. When thoughts are formed, the brain also characteristics that are always the same. Artificial pulls information from emotions and memories. Emotion and concepts can enhance the understanding of a topic by memory are powerful influences on both our thoughts and building on one another. behaviors. Schemata In order to organize this staggering amount of information, the brain has developed a file cabinet of sorts in the mind. The A schema is a mental construct consisting of a cluster or different files stored in the file cabinet are called concepts. collection of related concepts (Bartlett, 1932). There are Concepts are categories or groupings of linguistic many different types of schemata, and they all have one information, images, ideas, or memories, such as life thing in common: schemata are a method of organizing experiences. Concepts are, in many ways, big ideas that are information that allows the brain to work more efficiently. generated by observing details, and categorizing and When a schema is activated, the brain makes immediate combining these details into cognitive structures. You use assumptions about the person or object being observed. concepts to see the relationships among the different elements There are several types of schemata. of your experiences and to keep the information in your mind organized and accessible. 1. An object schema is perhaps the most basic type of cognitive schema. It holds information Another technique used by your brain to organize information about objects – chairs, dogs, cars, tables, and so on. is the identification of prototypes for the concepts you have (example: Learning the difference between car and bus.) developed. A prototype is the best example or 2. A person schema holds information about people. A representation of a concept. child’s first person schema might be about their For example, for the category of civil disobedience, your parents. prototype could be Mohandas Gandhi served as a nonviolent (example: Learning about other people’s personalities, force for independence for India while simultaneously roles and preferences.) demanding that Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, and Christian 3. A role schema holds information about the social leaders—both Indian and British— collaborate peacefully. roles and positions of people in society. A role Although he was not always successful in preventing violence schema makes assumptions about how individuals in around him, his life provides a steadfast example of the civil certain roles will behave (example: Learned gender roles) disobedience prototype (Constitutional Rights Foundation, 4. A person’s self schema refers to how they perceive 2013). themself. Parents and teachers spend a lot of time trying to help a young person positive a positive  self-schema, or what we might call a positive sense of self. Perceptual object-is the object that reflects the (example: Learning about personal attributes) properties of the external world 5. An event schema is a schema about events. An event Perception occurs when the informational medium carries schema, also known as a cognitive script, is a set of information about a distal object to a person. When the behaviors that can feel like a routine. person’s sense receptors pick up on the information, proximal (example: Differentiating holidays) stimulation occurs, which results in the person’s perceiving the object. From Sensation to Perception Where do we draw the line between sensation, perception and cognition? MODALITY DISTAL INFORMATIONAL PROXIMAL PERCEPTUAL OBJECT MEDIUM STIMULATION OBJECT These processes is part of a continuum. Information flows the system. Different processes address different questions. Vision/Sight Mommy’s Reflected Photon Mommy’s Questions of sensation focus on the qualities of face light( visible absorption in face stimulation. electromagnetic the rod and waves) cone cells of Questions of perception deal with identity, form, the retina. pattern and movement. Audition/Sound A falling tree Sound waves by Sound wave A falling tree Questions of cognition occurs as this information is used tree’s fall conduction to to serve further goals. basilar membrane. Olfaction/Smell Bacon being Molecules Molecular Bacon Seeing things that aren’t there, or are they? fried released by frying absorption in bacon the olfactory Percept- a mental representation of a stimulus that is perceived. cells Sometimes, we perceive what is not there. Other times, we do not perceive what is there. The existence of perceptual illusions Gustation/Taste Ice cream Molecules of the Molecular Ice cream ice cream contact with suggest that what we sense (in our sensory organs) is not taste buds necessarily what we perceive (in our minds). Our minds must be taking the available sensory information somehow to create mental Tactile/Touch Computer Mechanical Stimulation of Computer representations of objects, properties and spatial relationships keyboard pressure & receptor cells keys within our environment. vibration and within the surface of skin dermis How do we perceive the world around us? Perception- the set of processes by which we recognize, The Duck and Rabbit Illusion: Ambiguous Images and Mid- organize and make sense of the sensations we receive from level Vision environmental stimuli. This image first appeared in 1892 and has been puzzling and James Gibson amusing people ever since. The duck-or-rabbit conundrum Distal- object in the external world operates on the principles of how we perceive ambiguous images and the processes of mid-level vision. Informational medium-the pattern of event which are happening Mid-level vision is the point at which our brains group visual information based on its ability to find edges in the image. However, Proximal stimulation-event when information comes into in the case of ambiguous images, these edges are not clear, and contact with appropriate sensory receptors we become capable of perceiving two contrary depictions within  the same image. For this reason, we are able to see either a rabbit or a is attained by acquiring chunks of knowledge in long- duck, depending on which depiction we choose to focus on. term memory that can later be accessed for fast recognition. Templates-highly detailed models for patterns we potentially Bottom-Up Theory vs. Top-Down Theory might recognize. What's the Difference? Feature-Matching Theories- we attempt to match features of a pattern to features stored in memory, rather Bottom-Up Theory suggests that perception begins with the than to match a whole pattern to a template or a individual elements of a stimulus, which are then combined to prototype. form a complete perception. This theory emphasizes the importance of sensory input in shaping our perceptions. Local Precedence Effect In contrast, Top-Down Theory proposes that perception is Local features constitute the small-scale or detailed aspects of a guided by higher-level cognitive processes, such as given pattern expectations, beliefs, and prior knowledge. This theory suggests that our perceptions are influenced by our mental frameworks and interpretations of the world. Attribute Bottom-Up Theory Top-Down Theory Starts with specific details Starts with a general When letters are more widely spaced, we are more quickly to Initiation and builds up to a larger understanding and breaks it identify the local features of the individual letters than the global understanding down into specific details ones and the local features interfere with the global recognition in cases of contradictory stimuli. Focuses on sensory input Relies on pre-existing knowledge Global Precedence Effect Processing and perception and expectations Global features that give a form its overall shape. When the local letters were positioned close together, we could Driven by internal cognitive Control Driven by external stimuli identify stimuli at the global level more quickly than at the local processes level. Experiments have shown that global information dominates over local information. Adaptable to new Less adaptable to new Flexibility information and changes information and changes While Bottom-Up Theory focuses on the role of sensory information, Top-Down Theory highlights the impact of cognitive processes on perception. Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Bottom-Up Theories (Conceptually-driven vs. Data-driven processing) Direct perception (aka Ecological perception)- the While our sensory receptors are constantly collecting information in our sensory receptors, including our sensory information from the environment, it is ultimately how we context is all we need to perceive anything. We do not need interpret that information that affects how we interact higher cognitive processes to mediate between our sensory with the world. Perception refers to the way sensory experiences and our perceptions. information is organized, interpreted, and consciously experienced. Perception involves both bottom-up and Template Theories- suggests that we have stored in our top-down processing. minds myriad sets of templates. We recognize a pattern by comparing it with our set of templates. It suggest that expertise  Bottom-up processing refers to the fact that perceptions are sound demonstrates sensory adaptation and shows that while built from sensory input. closely associated, sensation and perception are different. On the other hand, top-down processing is how we interpret Multisensory Perception those sensations is influenced by our available knowledge, our Although it has been traditional to study the various experiences, and our thoughts. senses independently, most of the time, perception operates in the context of information supplied by multiple sensory modalities at the same time. For example, imagine if you witnessed a car collision. You could describe the stimulus generated by this event Seen alone, your brain engages in bottom-up processing. by considering each of the senses independently; that is, There are two thick vertical lines and three thin horizontal lines. as a set of unimodal stimuli. Your eyes would be There is no context to give it a specific meaning, so there is no stimulated with patterns of light energy bouncing off the top-down processing involved. cars involved. Your ears would be stimulated with patterns of acoustic energy emanating from the collision. Your nose might even be stimulated by the smell of burning rubber or gasoline. However, all of this information would be relevant to the same thing: your perception of the car collision. Indeed, unless someone was to explicitly ask you to describe your perception in unimodal terms, you would most likely experience the event as a unified bundle of sensations from multiple Surrounded by sequential letters, your brain expects the shape senses. In other words, your perception would be to be a letter and to complete the sequence. In that context, multimodal. The question is whether the various you perceive the lines to form the shape of the letter “B.” sources of information involved in this multimodal stimulus are processed separately by the perceptual system or not. For the last few decades, perceptual research has pointed to the importance of multimodal perception: the effects on the perception of events and objects in the world that are observed when there is information from Surrounded by numbers, the same shape now looks like the more than one sensory modality. Most of this research number “13.” indicates that, at some point in perceptual processing, information from the various sensory modalities is When given a context, your perception is driven by your cognitive integrated. In other words, the information is combined expectations. Now you are processing the shape in a top-down fashion. and treated as a unitary representation of the world. One way to think of this concept is that sensation is a physical process, whereas perception is psychological. For example, upon walking into a Subliminal Perception kitchen and smelling the scent of spaghetti, the sensation is the scent receptors detecting the odor of spaghetti , but the perception may be The idea of subliminal perception - that stimuli presented “Mmm, this smells like the spaghetti Mom used to cook when the family below the threshold for awareness can influence gathered for holidays.” thoughts, feelings, or actions – is a fascinating and kind of creepy one. Can messages you are unaware of, Although our perceptions are built from sensations, not all sensations embedded in movies or ads or the music playing in the result in perception. In fact, we often don’t perceive stimuli that remain grocery store, really influence what you buy? Many such relatively constant over prolonged periods of time. This is known as claims of the power of subliminal perception have been sensory adaptation. Imagine entering a classroom with an old analog made. One of the most famous came from a market clock. Upon first entering the room, you can hear the ticking of the clock; researcher who claimed that the message “Eat Popcorn” as you begin to engage in conversation with classmates or listen to your briefly flashed throughout a movie increased popcorn professor greet the class, you are no longer aware of the ticking. The sales by more than 50% although he later admitted that clock is still ticking, and that information is still affecting sensory the study was made up (Merikle, 2000). Psychologists receptors of the auditory system. The fact that you no longer perceive the have worked hard to investigate whether this is a valid  phenomenon. Studying subliminal perception is more difficult than it might seem, because of the difficulty establishing what Types: the threshold for consciousness is or of even determining what type of thresholds important; for example, Cheesman and  Akinetopsia. You can recognize objects but can’t Merikle (1984, 1986) make an important distinction between recognize that they’re moving. objective and subjective thresholds. The bottom line is that  Alexia. You can’t recognize words you see. That means there is some evidence that individuals can be influenced by you can see the words but can’t make sense of or read stimuli they are not aware of, but how complex stimuli can be them. You can still write and speak without any problem. or the extent to which unconscious material can affect behavior  Achromatopsia. Also known as color agnosia, this is is not settled. where a person can see colors and tell them apart, but they can’t identify the color. Synesthesia  Form agnosia. You can see the parts of an object but Synesthesia is a condition in which a sensory stimulus can’t recognize the object itself. An example of this is presented in one area evokes a sensation in a different area. identifying the wheels, seat and handlebars of a bicycle In the 19th century Francis Galton observed that a certain when you look at each part, but not recognizing them as proportion of the general population who were otherwise part of the whole bicycle. normal had a hereditary condition he dubbed "synesthesia"; a  Prosopagnosia is a condition where you struggle to sensory stimulus presented through one modality recognize faces or can’t interpret facial expressions and spontaneously evoked a sensation experienced in an cues. It usually happens because of brain damage, but unrelated modality. some people have it at birth. For example, an individual may experience a specific color for every given note (“C sharp is red”) or printed number or letter- is tinged with a specific hue (e.g. 5 is indigo and 7 is green). The specificity of the colors remains stable over time within any given individual but the same note or letter doesn’t necessarily evoke the same color in different people. Synesthesia used to be regarded as a rare condition but recent estimates suggest that it affects 4% of the population. The most common of which appears to be letter sounds associated with color. Most individuals report having had the experience as far back in childhood as they can remember. As Galton himself noted, the condition tends to run in families and recent ATTENTION AND CONSCIOUSNESS work suggests a genetic basis. Attention- the means by which we actively process a limited amount of information from the enormous amount of information available through our senses, our stored memories and our other Visual Perception Deficits cognitive processes. Attention includes both conscious and unconscious processes. In many cases, conscious processes are relatively easy to study. Unconscious processes are harder to study because you are not conscious of them. Attention allows us to use our limited mental resources judiciously. By dimming the lights on many stimuli from outside (sensations) and inside (thoughts and memories), we can highlight the stimuli that interest us. This heightened focus increases the likelihood that we can respond speedily and accurately to interesting stimuli. Visual agnosia is a condition that disrupts your brain’s ability to process Consciousness- includes both the feeling of awareness and the and understand what you see with your eyes. There are several different content of awareness, some of which may be under the focus of forms of visual agnosia, with a wide range of effects on your ability to see attention. the world around you.  Conscious attention serves three purposes in playing a causal role Present Miss or “false negatives” Lifeguard does not see the for cognition. drowning person. Failure to observe the presence of a target. 1. It helps in monitoring our interactions with the environment. Through such monitoring, we maintain our awareness of how well we are adapting to the situation in which we find ourselves. Absent Correct rejections or “true negatives” Nobody is drowning and lifeguard knows nobody is in 2. It assists us in linking our past (memories) and our present Correctly identifies the absence of a trouble. (sensations) to give us a sense of continuity of experience. target. Such continuity may even serve as the basis for personal identity. 3. It helps us in controlling and planning for our future actions. We can do so based on the information from monitoring and Vigilance- a person’s ability to attend to a field of stimulation over from the links between past memories and present sensations. a prolonged period, during which the person seeks to detect the appearance of a particular stimulus of interest. Four Main Functions of Attention: *When being vigilant, the individual watchfully waits to Signal detection and vigilance: We try to detect the detect a signal stimulus that may appear at an unknown appearance of a particular stimulus. (observing) time. Typically, vigilance is needed in settings where a Search: We try to find a signal amidst distracters. (looking for given stimulus occurs only rarely but requires immediate a thing in a pile) attention as soon as it does occur. Selective attention; We choose to attend to some stimuli and Search: Actively looking ignore others. (conversation in a party) Search- refers to a scan of the environment for particular features- actively looking for something when you are not sure where it will Divided attention: We prudently allocate our available appear. attentional resources to coordinate our performance of more than one task at a time. (cooking and phone conversation) Distracters- non-target stimuli that divert our attention away from the target stimulus. Signal Detection Theory: Finding Important stimuli in a Crowd *The number of targets and distracters affect the Signal detection theory- is a framework to explain how difficulty of the task. people pick out the few important stimuli when they are embedded in a wealth of irrelevant, distracting stimuli. This THEORIES ABOUT SEARCH PROCESSES theory was one of the first theories to suggest an interaction between the physical sensation of a stimuli and cognitive DISPLAY SIZE EFFECT processes such as decision-making. Display size – the number of items in a given visual array. (It does not refer to the size of the items or even the size of the field on SIGNAL DETECTION MATRIX which the array is displayed). The display size effect is the Signal Example degree to which the number of items in the display hinders (slows down) the search process. Present Hit or “true positives” The lifeguard correctly identifies the presence of LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL Correctly identifying the presence of a somebody drowning. LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL target. LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLTLLL LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL Absent False alarms or ‘false positives’ Lifeguard thinks somebody is LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL drowning who actually isn’t. LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL Incorrectly identifying the presence of a target that is actually absent. L L L L L L LL L L LL L L L T L LL L LLLLLLLLLL L LL LL FEATURE SEARCH GUIDED SEARCH THEORY: FEATURE SEARCH-scanning the environment for an item with a distinct The Guided Search theory suggest that all searches feature like color or shape. involve two stages: first is the parallel stage: the individual simultaneously activates a mental LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL representation of all the potential targets. The second LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL stage, the serial stage, the individual sequentially LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL evaluates each of the activated elements, according to LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL the degree of activation. Then, the person chooses the true targets from the activated elements. Featural Singletons- items with distinctive features that stand out in The parallel stage will activate a mental map that the display. contains all the features of the target (circle, black). Thus, black circles, white circles and black squares will be * When featural singletons are targets, they seem to grab our activated. During the serial stage, you will evaluate the attention. black circle, which was highly activated. But then you will evaluate the black squares and the white circles, which were less highly activated. You then will dismiss them as OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO distracters. OOOOOOOOOOOOOT O OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOO OOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO When featural singletons are targets, they seem to grab our attention. Unfortunately, any featural singletons grab our This effect, now known as the Stroop effect, was first attention. This includes featural singletons that are distracters reported in the classic article “Studies of Interference in that can distract us from finding the target. In Panel D, the T is Serial Verbal Reactions” published in the Journal of a featural singleton. But the presence of the black-filled circle Experimental Psychology in 1935. Since then, this probably slowed you down in your search. phenomena has become one of the most well known in the history of psychology. If Stroop has a test, then what is the actual effect you SIMILARITY THEORY: ask? Well, the Stroop effect is an example of the This theory states that as the similarity between the target and interesting case where the brain’s reaction time actually distracter stimuli increases, so does the difficulty in detecting slows down when it has to deal with conflicting the target stimuli. information. This delayed reaction time is happening because of a processing delay that is caused by competing functions in your brain. This effect is named after John Ridley Stroop who published a paper back in 1935 but the effect had been studied abroad before Stoop’s publishing’s. SELECTIVE ATTENTION Selective attention is the process of focusing on a particular object in the environment for a certain period of time. Attention is a limited resource, so selective Targets that are highly similar to distracters are relatively hard attention allows us to tune out unimportant details and to detect. Targets that are high disparate from distracters are focus on what matters. relatively easy to detect.  Selective attention is the ability to select certain stimuli in the systematic study of attention, and more generally, to the environment to process, while ignoring distracting information. interrelation of scientific theory and practical application One way to get an intuitive sense of how attention works is to in the study of psychology. Dichotic Listening consider situations in which attention is used. A party provides Experiments In 1952, Broadbent published his first an excellent example for our purposes. Many people may be report in a series of experiments that involved a dichotic milling around, there is a dazzling variety of colors and sounds listening paradigm. In that report, he was concerned with and smells, the buzz of many conversations is striking. There a person’s ability to answer one of two messages that are so many conversations going on; how is it possible to were delivered at the same time, but one of which was select just one and follow it? You don’t have to be looking at irrelevant. the person talking; you may be listening with great interest to some gossip while pretending not to hear. However, once you are engaged in conversation with someone, you quickly become aware that you cannot also listen to other conversations at the same time. You also are probably not aware of how tight your shoes feel or of the smell of a nearby flower arrangement. On the other hand, if someone behind you mentions your name, you typically notice it immediately and may start attending to that (much more interesting) conversation. This situation highlights an interesting set of observations. We have an amazing ability to select and track one voice, visual object, etc., even when a million things are competing for our attention, but at the same time, we seem to Treisman’s Attenuation Model be limited in how much we can attend to at one time, which in turn suggests that attention is crucial in selecting what is Treisman suggested that selection starts at the physical important. How does it all work? or perceptual level, but that the unattended information is not blocked completely, it is just weakened Donald Broadbent and Dichotic Listening or attenuated. As a result, highly meaningful or pertinent information in the unattended ear will get through the filter for further processing at the level of meaning. Donald E. Broadbent has been praised for his outstanding contributions to the field of psychology since the 1950s, most Late selection model notably in the area of attention. In fact, despite the undeniable role that attention plays in almost all psychological processes, Late selection or response selection model proposed by research in this area was neglected by psychologists for the Deutsch and Deutsch (1963) suggests that all information in first half of the twentieth century (Massaro, 1996). During that the unattended ear is processed on the basis of meaning, not time, behaviorists ignored the role of attention in human just the selected or highly pertinent information. However, behavior. Behaviorism was characterized by a stimulus- only the information that is relevant for the task response gets response approach, emphasizing the association between a into conscious awareness. This model is consistent with ideas stimulus and a response, but without identifying the cognitive of subliminal perception; in other words, that you don’t have operations that lead to that response (Reed, 2000). to be aware of or attending a message for it to be fully Subsequently, in the mid-1950s, a growing number of processed for meaning. psychologists became interested in the information-processing approach as opposed to the stimulus response approach. It was Broadbent’s elaboration of the idea of the human organism as an information-processing system that lead to a  successfully carry out multiple tasks at a time. This cognitive skills is very important, as it allows us to be more efficient in our day-to-day lives. MULTITASKING- the performance of more than one task at the same time. Our ability to attend to multiple stimuli and do various Information-Processing and the Filter Model of Attention tasks at a time does have its limits. When you divide your attention, the efficiency with which you do these Cognitive psychology is often called human information actions is decreased, and you will almost certainly processing, which reflects the approach taken by many perform poorly. Interference is the term used to cognitive psychologists in studying cognition. The stage describe when a person has a hard time attending to approach, with the acquisition, storage, retrieval, and use of two stimuli at a time. We see interference when the information in a number of separate stages, was influenced by brain is only able to process a certain amount of the computer metaphor and the way people enter, store, and information. However, cognitive training can help retrieve data from a computer (Reed, 2000). The stages in an improve divided attention, and as a consequence, the information-processing model are: ability to do more than one activity at a time. Sensory Store: brief storage for information in its original Unless a task is fully automated, some researchers sensory form suggest that “multi-tasking” doesn’t really exist; you are just rapidly switching your attention back and Filter: part of attention in which some perceptual information forth between tasks. is blocked outand not recognized, while other information is attended to and recognized Pattern Recognition: stage in which a stimulus is recognized Disorders or pathologies associated with divided attention  Divided attention may be altered in a number of different Selection: stage that determines what information a person disorders, whether it be due to problems with divided will try to remember attention itself, or problems with other attentional sub- Short-Term Memory: memory with limited capacity, that lasts processes. For someone with poor divided attention, any for about 20-30 seconds without attending to its content interference may alter the task that they are doing simultaneously. Long-Term Memory: memory that has no capacity limit and lasts from minutes to a lifetime  Divided attention will likely be affected in any disorder that alters attention processes. If a patient suffers from a contralateral heminegligence (inability to attend to the visual field opposite the injury), hypoprosexia (distractability), hyperprosexia (intense concentration on a single stimuli), or aprosexia (inability to concentrate), it will be difficult, or nearly impossible, for the patient to do tasks that require divided attention. Divided Attention and Multitasking What is divided attention? Divided attention could be defined as our brain's ability to attend to two different stimuli at the same time, and respond to the multiple demands of your surroundings. Divided attention is a type of simultaneous attention that allows us to process different information sources and