Week 2 - Attention and Research Methods

In an experiment exploring the role of working memory in the ability to ignore auditory distractors, the experimenters split subjects into high working memory load, low working memory load and no load groups. It was found that it was found that subjects under high working memory load were more susceptible to distraction than those with low or no load. How many levels of IV was there in this experiment?

In an experiment exploring the role of working memory in the ability to ignore auditory distractors, the experiments split subjects into high working memory load, low working memory load and no load. It was found that it was found that subjects under high working memory load were more susceptible to distraction than those with low or no load. What was the dependant variable in this study?

[blank_start]Spatial Resolution:[blank_end] The accuracy at which we can measure where an event occurs in the brain. [blank_start]Temporal Resolution:[blank_end] The accuracy at which we can measure when an event occurs in the brain.

The cocktail party phenomenon: In dichotic listening tasks participants will not notice the repetition of the same word over and over again in the unattended ear but will notice if their name is mentioned. What does this result tell us about our ability to notice unattended stimuli?

The cocktail party phenomenon gives support best to which bottleneck model of attention?

In Johnston and Wilsons (1980) experiment,subjects are asked to respond yes/no if a target is in a certain category. An ambiguous target was paired with either a neutral, appropriate or inappropriate paring in the unattended ear, for example, organ could be matched with church (appropriate), paper (neutral) or kidney (inappropriate). The resulting improved accuracy under the appropriate condition compared to the neutral and inappropriate conditions tells us what about the level of semantic processing in unattended stimuli and?

What are some factors that determine how well we can perform two tasks at the same time?

What are some characteristics of automaticity?

In Shiffrin and Shneiders study, participants learned to do a task over many trials searching in a set area until the task become automatic. Participants were then told to respond to trials in a subsection of the same area but found it difficult to restrict their responding to the smaller area. Which feature of automaticity does this result explain?

Instance theory describes automaticity as the result of memorised responses, hence requiring litle attentional capacity.