Deck 4: Attention.

Question 1

The "filter model" proposes that the filter identifies the attended message based on

A)meaning.
B)modality.
C)physical characteristics.
D)higher order characteristics.

Answer 1

physical characteristics.

Question 2

Dichotic listening occurs when

A)the same message is presented to the left and right ears.
B)different messages are presented to the left and right ears.
C)a message is presented to one ear,and a masking noise is presented to the other ear.
D)participants are asked to listen to a message and look at a visual stimulus,both at the same time.

Answer 2

different messages are presented to the left and right ears.

Question 3

Suppose you are in your kitchen writing a grocery list,while your roommate is watching TV in the next room.A commercial for spaghetti sauce comes on TV.Although you are not paying attention to the TV,you "suddenly" remember that you need to pick up spaghetti sauce and add it to the list.Your behavior is best predicted by which of the following models of attention?

A)Object-based
B)Early selection
C)Spotlight
D)Late selection

Answer 3

Late selection

Question 4

According to Treisman's "attenuation model," which of the following would you expect to have the highest threshold for most people?

A)The word "money"
B)Their child's first name
C)The word "home"
D)The word "platypus"

Question 5

When a person is shadowing a message,he or she is

A)silently following it mentally.
B)ignoring it while paying attention to another message.
C)saying the message out loud.
D)thinking about something closely related to the message.

Question 6

Which theorist is responsible for proposing the idea of a filter model of attention?

A)Raymond Sanders
B)Donald Broadbent
C)Monica McGoldrick
D)Elizabeth Loftus

Question 7

Broadbent's model is called an early selection model because

A)the filter eliminates unattended information right at the beginning of the flow of information.
B)the filtering step occurs before the information enters the sensory store.
C)only a select set of environmental information enters the system.
D)incoming information is selected by the detector.

Question 8

Suppose twin teenagers are vying for their mother's attention.The mother is trying to pay attention to one of her daughters,though both girls are talking (one about her boyfriend,one about a school project).According to the operating characteristics of Treisman's attenuator,it is most likely the attenuator is analyzing the incoming messages in terms of

A)physical characteristics.
B)language.
C)meaning.
D)direction.

Question 9

Which stage in Treisman's "attenuation model" has a threshold component?

A)The attenuator
B)The dictionary unit
C)The filter
D)The "leaky" filter

Question 10

Which experimental result caused problems for Broadbent's filter model of selective attention?

A)A result where listeners don't notice words presented up to 35 times in the unattended ear
B)A result where listeners can shadow a message presented in the attended ear
C)The result of Cherry's experiment demonstrating the cocktail party phenomenon
D)The result of the "Dear Aunt Jane" experiment

Question 11

Which of the following is an experimental procedure used to study how attention affects the processing of competing stimuli?

A)Early selection
B)Filtering
C)Channeling
D)Dichotic listening

Question 12

The main difference between early and late selection models of attention is that in late selection models,selection of stimuli for final processing doesn't occur until the information is analyzed for

A)modality.
B)meaning.
C)physical characteristics.
D)location.

Question 13

In a dichotic listening experiment,refers to the procedure that is used to force participants to pay attention to a specific message in one ear among competing messages in the other ear.

A)rehearsing
B)shadowing
C)echoing
D)delayed repeating

Question 14

The cocktail party effect is

A)the ability to pay attention to one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli.
B)the inability to pay attention to one stimulus in the presence of competing stimuli.
C)the diminished awareness of information in a crowd.
D)the equal division of attention between competing stimuli.

Question 15

In the filter model of attention,the stages of information processing occur in which order?

A)Detector,filter,sensory store,short-term memory
B)Sensory store,filter,detector,short-term memory
C)Filter,detector,sensory store,short-term memory
D)Detector,sensory store,filter,short-term memory

Question 16

According to the filter model of attention,which of the following messages would likely by identified by the filter?

A)All messages selected by the filter
B)All messages within earshot
C)A message with an unfamiliar foreign accent
D)All sensory messages

Question 17

Which of the following is most closely associated with Treisman's attenuation theory of selective attention?

A)Late selection
B)Stroop experiments
C)Precueing
D)Dictionary unit

Question 18

When Sam listens to his girlfriend Susan in the restaurant and ignores other people's conversations,he is engaged in the process ofattention.

A)low load
B)divided
C)cocktail party
D)selective

Question 19

Colin Cherry's experiment in which participants listened to two different messages,one presented to each ear,found that people

A)could focus on a message only if they are repeating it.
B)could focus on a message only if they rehearsed it.
C)could focus on one message and ignore the other one at the same time.
D)could not focus on a message presented to only one ear.

Question 20

A high threshold in Treisman's model of attention implies that

A)weak signals can cause activation.
B)it takes a strong signal to cause activation.
C)all signals cause activation.
D)no signals cause activation.

Question 21

Imagine that U.S.lawmakers are considering changing the driving laws and that you have been consulted as an attention expert.Given the principles of divided attention,in which of the following conditions would a person have the most difficulty with driving and therefore pose the biggest safety risk on the road?

A)When the person has to drive to work early in the morning
B)When the driver is stuck in stop-and-go traffic
C)When the driver has to park in a crowded parking garage
D)When the person is driving an unfamiliar vehicle that is more difficult to operate

Question 22

Automatic processing occurs when

A)cognitive resources are high.
B)response times are long.
C)tasks are well-practiced.
D)attention is focused.

Question 23

The use of a machine that tracks the movement of one's eyes can help reveal the shifting of one'sattention.

A)overt
B)covert
C)divided
D)dichotic

Question 24

The Stroop effect demonstrates people's inability to ignore theof words.

A)meaning
B)color
C)size
D)font

Question 25

If you are folding towels that have just come out of the laundry while watching television,you may find that you don't have to pay much attention to the process of folding the towels.This sort of familiar task that does not require much of your attention would be an example of a(n)task.

A)attenuated
B)high-load
C)low-load
D)filtered

Question 26

Posner and coworkers (1978)deduced which of the following from their research?

A)The enhancing effect of attention spreads throughout an object.
B)Attention is always divided across two or more tasks simultaneously.
C)People move their attention from one place to another.
D)Attention affects an entire object,even if it is occluded by other objects.

Question 27

When we search a scene,initial fixations are most likely to occur onareas.

A)high-load
B)low-load
C)high-saliency
D)low-saliency

Question 28

A bottom-up process is involved in fixating on an area of a scene that

A)has high stimulus salience.
B)fits with the observer's interests.
C)is familiar.
D)carries meaning for the observer.

Question 29

Eye tracking studies investigating attention as we carry out actions such as making a peanut butter sandwich shows that a person's eye movements

A)usually followed a motor action by a fraction of a second.
B)were influenced by unusual objects placed in the scene.
C)were determined primarily by the task.
D)continually scanned all objects and areas of the scene.

Question 30

With the Stroop effect,you would expect to find longest response times when

A)the color and the name matched.
B)the color and the name differed.
C)the shape and the name matched.
D)the shape and the name differed.

Question 31

The Stroop effect occurs when participants

A)are told to divide their attention between colors and shapes.
B)try to name colors and ignore words.
C)try to select some incoming information based on meaning.
D)are told to shadow two messages simultaneously.

Question 32

In Schneider and Shiffrin's experiment,in which participants were asked to indicate whether a target stimulus was present in a series of rapidly presented "frames," divided attention was easier

A)once processing had become automatic.
B)when processing was done verbally.
C)when verbal processing was prohibited by the experimenters.
D)when processing was more controlled.

Question 33

The distribution of attention among two or more tasks is known as

A)divided attention.
B)dual attention.
C)divergent tasking.
D)selective attention.

Question 34

The Stroop effect demonstrates

A)how automatic processing can interfere with intended processing.
B)a failure of divided attention.
C)the ease of performing a low-load task.
D)support for object-based attention.

Question 35

Which of the following options would not be an important factor in automatic processing?

A)close attention
B)ease in performing parallel tasks
C)tasks that are well-practiced
D)the use of few cognitive resources

Question 36

Which of the following everyday scenarios is most likely to support what the early selection approach would say about how attention will affect the performance of the two tasks involved?

A)Driving home while thinking about a problem at work
B)Reading a novel while walking on a treadmill
C)Humming a familiar song while washing dishes
D)Conversing on the phone while doing a crossword puzzle

Question 37

According to your text,the ability to divide attention depends on all of the following EXCEPT

A)practice.
B)the type of processing being used.
C)the difficulty of the tasks.
D)task cueing.

Question 38

In support of late selection models,Donald MacKay showed that the presentation of a biasing word on the unattended ear influenced participants' processing ofwhen they wereof that word.

A)letter pairs;aware
B)letter pairs;unaware
C)ambiguous sentences;aware
D)ambiguous sentences;unaware

Question 39

Results of precueing experiments show that participants respond more rapidly to a stimulus that appeared at the
Location.

A)fixated
B)cued
C)rightmost
D)topmost

Question 40

The notion that faster responding occurs when enhancement spreads within an object is called

A)high-load detraction.
B)divided attention.
C)location-based potentiation.
D)same-object advantage.

Question 41

Research on the use of cell phones while driving indicates that

A)the negative effect can be decreased by using "hands-free" units.
B)the problem with cell phones is that attention is distracted from the task of driving by the need to hold the phone and drive with one hand.
C)the main effect of cell phone use on driving safety can be attributed to the fact that attention is used up by the cognitive task of talking on the phone.
D)the public perception that using a cell phone while driving poses a significant risk to drivers' safety is,in fact,incorrect.

Question 42

Treisman's model has been called a "leaky filter" model.Describe her model,and explain why it is "leaky." How does Treisman's model explain the results of Moray's "words in the unattended ear" experiment?

Question 43

Discuss how the process of binding is essential in your ability to watch a movie or television program.

Question 44

Discuss the ways in which Nillie Lavie's research considers the roles of both processing capacity and perceptual load in the explanation of how people focus their attention.

Question 45

According to Treisman's feature integration theory,the first stage of perception is called thestage.

A)feature analysis
B)focused attention
C)preattentive
D)letter analysis

Question 46

In Simons and Chabris's "change blindness" experiment,participants watch a film of people playing basketball.Many participants failed to report that a woman carrying an umbrella walked through because the

A)woman with the umbrella was in motion,just like the players.
B)the umbrella was the same color as the floor.
C)participants were counting the number of ball passes.
D)participants were not asked if they saw anything unusual.

Question 47

Scene schema is

A)rapid movements of the eyes from one place to another in a scene.
B)short pauses of the eyes on points of interest in a scene.
C)how attention is distributed throughout a static scene.
D)knowledge about what is contained in a typical scene.

Question 48

Define change blindness.Explain two sets of experimental data that illustrate this phenomenon.

Question 49

Which of the following statements concerning the "100-car naturalistic driving study" is true?

A)Video recorders created records of both what the drivers were doing and the views out the front and rear windows.
B)Pushing buttons on a cell phone was the least distracting activity drivers performed while driving.
C)Records showed that the majority of drivers were attentive to driving during the three seconds before a near crash but inattentive during the three seconds before an actual crash.
D)Male drivers were far less attentive than female drivers

Question 50

is the process by which features such as color,form,motion,and location are combined to create our perception of a coherent object.

A)Binding
B)Integration
C)Assimilation
D)Equilibration

Question 51

During a visit to the local museum,you appreciate the incredible beauty of the paintings displayed on the wall.Your ability to see the paintings as complete pictures rather than individual,disconnected dots of color,texture,and location is because of a process called.

A)contiguity
B)proximity
C)accommodation
D)binding

Question 52

Difficulty in recognizing an alteration - even a very obvious one - in a scene is calledblindness.

A)covert
B)exogenous
C)endogenous
D)change

Question 53

Lan has no idea what she just read in her text because she was thinking about how hungry she is and what she is going to have for dinner.This is a real-world example of

A)the late-selection model of attention.
B)an object-based attentional failure.
C)inattentional blindness.
D)the cocktail party phenomenon.

Question 54

Illusory conjunctions are

A)combinations of features from different stimuli.
B)misidentified objects using the context of the scene.
C)combinations of features from the masking field and the stimuli.
D)features that are consistent across different stimuli.

Question 55

Define automatic processing.Describe the research by Shiffrin and Schneider,which showed how practice can affect our ability to do multiple tasks simultaneously.In your description,clearly distinguish between consistent and varied mapping,both in terms of procedure and results.

Question 56

Strayer and Johnston's (2001)experiment involving simulated driving and the use of "hands-free" vs."handheld" cell phones found that

A)talking on either kind of phone impairs driving performance significantly and to the same extent.
B)driving performance was impaired only with the handheld cell phones.
C)driving performance was impaired less with the hands-free phones than with the handheld phones.
D)divided attention (driving and talking on the phone)did not affect performance.

Question 57

Describe Moray's "words in the unattended ear" experiment.Why does this research pose a problem for Broadbent's filter model? Specifically,what does this research say about its classification as an early selection model?