Perception and Attention

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Degree DSE212-Exploring Psychology (Perception and Attention) Flashcards on Perception and Attention, created by Leanne McMahon on 06/06/2013.
Leanne McMahon
Flashcards by Leanne McMahon, updated more than 1 year ago
Leanne McMahon
Created by Leanne McMahon over 11 years ago
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Treisman found that attention can be switched to unattended information if it is meaningful, which is supported by the cocktail party effect in which we can be in conversation with someone, overhear our name and switch attention to what we find meaningful. This is important because it has made valuable contribution to our understanding of attention and has stimulated research in this area.
Limited Capacity Attention. Our brains are limited in the amount of information they can take in at any one time. Kahneman says we have a limited capacity central processor theorises this works in tandem with top down knowledge already stored in memory. This idea was supported by Posner and Boies' Dual-task study which found that people responded slower when exposed to a letter and a tone simultaneously rather than one after the other.
However.... McLeod suggests we have multiple pools of resources for drawing on tasks and no central processor. Limited Capacity Attention is important because it stimulates research in areas of attention processing.
Attention Spotlight. We cannot process everything in our visual field and the Attention Spotlight is a metaphorical description of how one part of the field has priority. We can choose to focus in one a small area or 'Zoom out' to a larger area. (e.g. picking out musical instruments in a song)
The idea of an attention spotlight is important as it suggests we have control over what we process and that attention is selective. However sometimes the perceptual load is too high and Attention tunnelling can occur whereby very little other than a small area of info is processed when overloaded.
Bottleneck Theories of Attention. Bottleneck theories of attention suggest attention resources are limited. Broadbent suggests this happens early on in the attention process. This theory doesn't account for what is meaningful to us being processed.
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