Deck 6: Visual Attention

Question 1

Posner's precueing studies demonstrated that attention

A) increases the color perception of objects.
B) can spread through objects.
C) eliminates change blindness.
D) increases the efficiency of information processing.

Answer 1

D

Question 2

In an fMRI study by Datta and DeYoe (2009), participants covertly shifted their attention within a display. This shifting of attention resulted in the activation of

A) the same brain regions because the participant's eyes were not moving.
B) the same brain regions because the participant was engaging attention.
C) different brain regions because the participant was attending to different locations.
D) different brain regions because the participant's eyes were moving.

Answer 2

C

Question 3

Kelly is participating in an attention study. She is asked to fixate on a cross in the middle of the screen and watch for a word to appear in place of the cross. When the word appears she is using ______ attention to perceive it.

A) indirect
B) overt
C) covert
D) focused

Answer 3

B

Question 4

The important finding of Carrasco et al.'s (2004) research was that

A) two physically identical gratings will always be perceived the same.
B) the attended-to grating is perceived to have a higher contrast than another, identical grating.
C) the attended-to grating is perceived to have a lower contrast than another, identical grating.
D) the attended-to grating is perceived to have a higher contrast when compared to a non-identical grating.

Question 5

One aspect of the visual system that helps us select specific information from the environment for processing is

A) the optic nerve.
B) the concentration of cones in the fovea.
C) the blind spot.
D) the prevalence of amacrine cells in the peripheral retina.

Question 6

Larissa looks at a still picture of a football game. She uses her knowledge of football to look at the quarterback first, then the running backs, then the wide receivers, then the linebackers. This is an example of using ________ to guide attention.

A) saliency maps
B) retinotopic maps
C) knowledge
D) the cue approach

Question 7

"Learning from past experience" as a factor involved in attention was demonstrated by Shinoda et al. (2001), who showed that drivers are more likely to detect stop signs when they were positioned

A) at the middle of a block.
B) 75 feet from the intersection.
C) at the intersection.
D) all of these locations were equally detected.

Question 8

Egly et al. (1994) showed that precueing increases the efficiency of information processing

A) only when the cue is in the same position as the target.
B) when the cue appears in the same rectangle as the target stimulus.
C) when a cue is in a different rectangle than the target stimulus.
D) only when the cue is the same color as the target stimulus.

Question 9

________ described attention as "the taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought."

A) Hemlholtz
B) Posner
C) James
D) Rensink

Question 10

The spreading enhancement effect of attention can help us perceive

A) occluded objects.
B) the oblique effect.
C) grating stimuli.
D) illusory conjunctions.

Question 11

_________ can be generated based on saliency principles and used to predict early fixations in a scene.

A) Contrast maps
B) Salience decoders
C) Interest point files
D) Saliency maps

Question 12

When presented with superimposed images of a house and a face, Mack is asked to focus on the house. This attentional "focus" results in

A) increased activity in the FFA.
B) increased activity in the MT.
C) increased activity in the PPA.
D) similar activation changes in the FFA and PPA.

Question 13

People tend to fixate first on high contrast or unique (relative to the surrounding area) points in a visual scene. This is a result of __________ and is a ___________ process.

A) stimulus salience; top-down
B) stimulus salience; bottom-up
C) the spotlight effect; top-down
D) the spotlight effect; bi-directional

Question 14

The finding that attention can spread within an object, thereby, enhancing detection at other places within the object is referred to as

A) spreading activation.
B) location invariance.
C) same-object advantage.
D) spatial drift.

Question 15

Parkhurst et al. (2002) showed that observers make initial fixations in a visual scene based on

A) stimulus saliency.
B) meaningfulness.
C) stimulus schema.
D) scotopic representations.

Question 16

The eye movements that occur as the observer shifts his/her gaze from one part of the visual scene to another are called

A) pursuit eye movements.
B) magnified eye movements.
C) saccades.
D) aperatures.

Question 17

Vaco is playing basketball, and does a "no-look" pass to a teammate. This demonstrates the idea that attention

A) is solely the result of eye movements.
B) can occur without directly looking at the object.
C) may not occur even if we are looking straight at an object.
D) is due to the functioning of the rods.

Question 18

When a person scans a visual scene, he/she usually makes about ____ fixation(s) per second.

A) one
B) three
C) nine
D) twelve

Question 19

Nicki walks into her friend's bathroom and sees a blender next to the sink. She spends more time looking at that blender than she would have spent looking at a soap dispenser in the same position. Her increased gaze is a reflection of a ________ in action.

A) saliency map
B) scene schema
C) task demand
D) mismatch effect

Question 20

Land and Hayhoe (2001) found that _________ are most important in determining fixations when a person makes a peanut butter sandwich.

A) the stimulus colors
B) the stimulus contrast levels
C) the stimulus orientations
D) the task demands

Question 21

Based on fMRI data from covert shifts of attention, Datta and DeYoe (2009) developed ______. These tools predicted convert attention to a location with ____% accuracy.

A) attention maps; 100
B) saliency maps; 80
C) voxel maps; 95
D) heat maps; 90

Question 22

When Levin and Simons did not tell participants that changes in "body position or clothing" would occur in a video of a conversation between two women, approximately ___ % of the participants noticed any change.

A) 85
B) 55
C) 30
D) 10

Question 23

Simons and Chabris showed a video of students passing a basketball and asked participants to count how many passes made. In the video, a person in a gorilla suit walked through the basketball players for 5 seconds. Approximately how many of the participants reported seeing the "gorilla"?

A) 100
B) 77
C) 46
D) 23

Question 24

Levin and Simons showed a video of two women having a conversation. As the view switches between the women, other things in the scene change. Which change was noticed by the majority of the participants?

A) A scarf being present in one frame, but gone when the camera returns to her.
B) One woman whose hand position has changed from her chin to the table.
C) The plates on the table changing from red to white in different frames.
D) None of the changes were noticed by the majority of the participants

Question 25

A monkey attends to a stimulus left of fixation then to a stimulus right of fixation. If one were recording MT neuronal activity, it would reveal that

A) the neuron preferentially responding to the left stimulus is inactive when attending to the right stimulus.
B) the neuron preferentially responding to the left stimulus is unaffected by attention to the right stimulus.
C) the receptive field associated with the neuron responding to the left stimulus shrinks when attention shifts to the right stimulus.
D) the receptive field associated with the neuron responding to the left stimulus shifts right when attention shifts to the right stimulus.

Question 26

The ability to perceive a rod as being continuous behind an occluding block

A) is innate.
B) is common in one-week-old infants.
C) can be accomplished by three-month-olds.
D) occurs only after sharp acuity is developed.

Question 27

Treisman and Schmidt prevented the focused attention stage from occurring by

A) presenting stimuli for 200 msec.
B) having observers focus attention on another task.
C) none of these; focused attention occurs automatically.
D) using rapid stimulus presentation and directing attention to another task.

Question 28

_____________ is when a stimulus that is not attended is not perceived, even though the person is looking directly at the stimulus.

A) Prosopagnosia
B) Inattentional blindness
C) The Lazarus effect
D) Balint's Syndrome

Question 29

Research comparing superior temporal sulcus (STS) activity between individuals with and without symptoms of autism suggests that

A) both groups demonstrate similar behavior when viewing social interactions.
B) those without autism have more saccades per second than those with autism.
C) those with autism are more likely to anticipate an individual's reactions than those who do not have autism.
D) those without autism are more likely than those with autism to read other people's intentions.

Question 30

The incidence of change blindness __________ when a cue is added to the scene that indicates which part of the scene has changed.

A) increases
B) decreases
C) remains unchanged
D) can increase or decrease, depending on cue duration

Question 31

According to feature integration theory, the color, orientation, and other features of objects are initially processed in the _________ stage of processing.

A) preattentive
B) postattentive
C) focused attention
D) tertiary

Question 32

R.M., a patient with Balint's syndrome, reported illusory conjunctions

A) only if the two stimuli were presented for less than 1 second.
B) only if the two stimuli were presented for less than 2 seconds.
C) if he was told to attend only to the first stimulus.
D) even if he was presented the two stimuli for 10 seconds.

Question 33

When Levin and Simons alerted participants that changes in "body position or clothing" would occur in a video of a conversation between two women, approximately ___ % of the participants noticed the changes.

A) 90
B) 75
C) 50
D) 20

Question 34

Yasmen is walking in a mall and thinks she sees a man wearing a red dress. She takes a longer look, and realizes she has seen a man in a suit walking next to a woman in a red dress. This is a natural example of

A) disjunctive searches.
B) illusory conjunctions.
C) scene statistics.
D) illusory confusion.

Question 35

In the ________ procedure participants attend to a central task, but also have to complete a peripheral task.

A) figure-ground
B) task demand
C) dual-task
D) discrimination

Question 36

In the "I'm a Believer" scene at the end of the movie "Shrek," the three blind mice are turned into the horses in one frame, but the next time we see them, they are dancing on a piano as mice. This is an example of __________, which can be a "real-life" example of _________ if you do not notice the switch.

A) a contingency break; inattentional blindness
B) a continuity error; change blindness
C) an attentional lapse; illusory contingency
D) a unity break; illusory sequencing

Question 37

When an infant exhibits dishabituation, the researcher concludes that

A) the infant cannot tell the difference between the habituated stimulus and the new stimulus.
B) the infant can tell the difference between the habituated stimulus and the new stimulus.
C) the new stimulus causes emotional distress in the infant.
D) the habituated stimulus is more interesting than the new stimulus.

Question 38

Which of the following is true regarding task-irrelevant stimuli?

A) They are least distracting when you are engaged in a difficult task.
B) They are least distracting when you are engaged in an easy task.
C) They are most likely to distract you when workload is high.
D) They are least likely to distract you when perceptual load is low.

Question 39

According to Treisman, the ______ stage is the "glue" that combines all the incoming information about an object.

A) preattentive
B) focused attention
C) tertiary
D) compiling

Question 40

Shelby watches the movie "Slumdog Millionaire". When Jamal is in the "hot seat" on the game show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?," Shelby looks at Jamal's eyes. Shelby most likely

A) has autism.
B) does not have autism.
C) has prosopagnosia.
D) does not have aphasia.

Question 41

Describe Posner et al.'s (1978) precueing procedure, the classic results obtained using this procedure, and the implications for attention theory.

Question 42

Johnson et al. (2004) presented moving occluded rods to 3-month-old infants,
And classifed the infants as "perceivers" or "nonperceivers" of a unified, occluded
Rod) The main finding of the study was

A) perceivers and nonperceivers did not differ in eye movements.
B) perceivers and nonperceivers did not differ in VEP activity.
C) perceivers tended to make more horizontal eye movements.
D) perceivers tended to look at the stationary occluder.

Question 43

(a) Define inattentional blindness.
(b) Describe the method and results of Simons and Chabris (1999) research on inattentional blindness.

Question 44

Discuss the differences in attention between people who have autism and those who do not, from behavioral and physiological perspectives.

Question 45

(a) Describe the "occluded rod" paradigm.
(b) Describe what it revealed about the relationship between perceptual completion, motion perception, attention, and scan paths in infants.

Question 46

(a) Discuss how Treisman's feature integration theory addresses the binding problem.
(b) What are illusory conjunctions, and why are they support for feature integration theory?

Question 47

Discuss the three factors involved in determining what we fixate on in a visual scene.

Question 48

(a) Discuss the method and results of Rensink's research on change blindness.
(b) What is the relationship between change blindness and continuity errors?
(c) Describe a specific example of a "continuity error".