Perception and Attention

Description

Psychology Flashcards on Perception and Attention, created by Nuria Nácher Soler on 27/12/2019.
Nuria Nácher Soler
Flashcards by Nuria Nácher Soler, updated more than 1 year ago More Less
Leanne McMahon
Created by Leanne McMahon over 11 years ago
Nuria Nácher Soler
Copied by Nuria Nácher Soler almost 5 years ago
0
0

Resource summary

Question Answer
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.
Show full summary Hide full summary

Similar

History of Psychology
mia.rigby
Biological Psychology - Stress
Gurdev Manchanda
Bowlby's Theory of Attachment
Jessica Phillips
Psychology subject map
Jake Pickup
Psychology A1
Ellie Hughes
Psychology | Unit 4 | Addiction - Explanations
showmestarlight
Memory Key words
Sammy :P
The Biological Approach to Psychology
Gabby Wood
Chapter 5: Short-term and Working Memory
krupa8711
Cognitive Psychology - Capacity and encoding
T W
Nervous Systems and the Brain - Lecture 1
Georgina Burchell