Deck 4: Attention

Question 1

Participants in Simons & Chabris' (1999) study did not notice when a gorilla walked across a scene. This illustrates _____.

A) inattentional blindness
B) color blindness
C) the Simon effect
D) visual blindness

Answer 1

inattentional blindness

Question 2

You are a biology major but must take at least one business class in order to graduate. The fact that you tend to find biology-based courses much more entertaining than the required business class supports _____.

A) Treisman's filter model of attention
B) Kahneman's capacity model of attention
C) Broadbent's theory of attention
D) Treisman's feature integration theory

Answer 2

Kahneman's capacity model of attention

Question 3

Which of the following is NOT an analogy your textbook uses to describe attention?

A) A filter of information
B) A key fitting into a lock
C) A spotlight focused on an aspect of the environment
D) A glue that binds the features of the environment together

Answer 3

A key fitting into a lock

Question 4

Our attention has been said to involve a _____ that filters out everything except the information we are attending to.

A) bottleneck
B) net
C) switchboard
D) bridge

Question 5

Noticing a red flower among a field of purple flowers illustrates _____.

A) The attention capture phenomenon
B) The cocktail party effect
C) The bottleneck of attention
D) A shadowing task

Question 6

Participants in Simons & Levin's (1998) study did not notice when a person asking them for directions was switched with another person. This illustrates _____.

A) Change blindness
B) Visual blindness
C) Color blindness
D) Top-down processing

Question 7

In your textbook, a study was discussed in which participants were asked to complete two tasks at once or separately, and their performance in both conditions was compared. It was found that when they performed both tasks at the same time, they did not perform as well as when the tasks were performed separately. This experiment employed _____.

A) The dual-task method
B) The filter model of attention
C) The capacity model of attention
D) The single-task method

Question 8

Talking to your friend during class while you are supposed to be listening to your professor's lecture is most similar to _____.

A) salience
B) a shadowing task
C) the cocktail party effect
D) the dual-task method

Question 9

Localization of function in the brain is consistent with _____.

A) the dual-task method
B) top-down processing
C) the filter model of attention
D) the feature integration theory

Question 10

Who developed the feature integration model of attention?

A) Broadbent
B) Treisman
C) Kahneman
D) Strayer

Question 11

What was LaBerge's (1983) finding on shifting attention?

A) We can attend to more than one thing at a time
B) Attention shifts very quickly
C) Attention works like a spotlight
D) Attention is a form of bottom-up processing

Question 12

Which of the following scenarios best illustrates the notion that our attention is like a spotlight?

A) A woman baking cookies while holding her child and talking with her friend on the phone
B) Tony's focus on his video game
C) A professor noting the students coming into class late while giving a lecture
D) A student studying for an exam while browsing social media

Question 13

According to Treisman's dictionary unit, the lower the threshold of information, _____.

A) The more likely you are to become confused
B) The less likely the information is attended to
C) The more likely the information is attended to
D) The less likely you are to understand the meaning

Question 14

You are walking through the park, and you notice two people. You see that they are sitting together, on a blanket of some kind. They also have a basket in front of them, and there is food inside of it. There are bottles of juice next to each person, and they appear to be laughing and enjoying the beautiful weather that you then notice. Combining all of these observation to surmise that this couple is having a picnic on a beautiful day in the park best illustrates _____.

A) the filter model of attention
B) top-down processing
C) the feature integration theory
D) the capacity model of attention

Question 15

Treisman's modified filter model of attention suggests that some information passes through, but only after it has been ranked in terms of _____.

A) importance
B) definition
C) difficulty
D) number of words

Question 16

An example of a conjunction target would be

A) A green square among red squares
B) A yellow circle among green squares
C) A black circle among black triangles
D) A purple triangle among blue triangles

Question 17

You are at a playground with your little brother, and you hear a child yell, "MOM!" You notice a dozen women pause in their conversations, turning their heads to see if it was their child calling for them. This is an example of _____.

A) The cocktail party effect
B) The bottleneck of attention
C) The salience of a message
D) A shadowing task

Question 18

If you had to turn your car wheel left to make a right turn, you would likely get confused. This illustrates _____.

A) Change blindness
B) The Simon effect
C) The attention capture phenomenon
D) The theory of unconscious inference

Question 19

Which of these is NOT known to influence the cocktail party effect?

A) Early processes in filtering
B) The salience of the message
C) A person's intelligence
D) Individual differences in filtering abilities

Question 20

Zaretskaya et al. (2013) found activity in the _____ during a task involving a global percept.

A) Right parietal cortex
B) Left parietal cortex
C) Right temporal cortex
D) Visual cortex

Question 21

Interference in response due to inconsistency between the response and the stimulus is known as the Stroop Effect.

Question 22

Attention is an unlimited resource, capable of focusing on limitless bits of information.

Question 23

Letter targets and distractors in Schneider & Shiffrin's (1977) task is an example of a _____.

A) Varied mapping condition
B) Consistent mapping condition

Question 24

The two mechanisms hypothesized to underlie the Simon effect are _____ and _____.

A) The theory of unconscious inference; the attentional-movement hypothesis
B) The attentional-movement hypothesis; the referential-coding hypothesis
C) The computational approach; the referential-coding hypothesis
D) Sensation; perception

Question 25

The spotlight theory of attention assumes that our attention is similar to a spotlight in that it focuses on one thing at a time.

Question 26

Strayer & Johnston (2001) found that people have a harder time maintaining a conversation on a cell phone while driving than they do listening to the radio while driving.

Question 27

The Stroop task is a measure of the interference of automatic processes such as reading.

Question 28

The dual-task method compares performance on two simultaneous tasks to performance on one task at a time to see which scenario produces better results.

Question 29

In Stroop's study[ok?](1935) on automatic processing in attention, he found that participants took less time to name colors when the word and color were _____, and more time when they were _____.

A) Congruent; incongruent
B) Incongruent; congruent

Question 30

Perhaps one of the most important ways to turn a controlled task into an automatic one is _____.

A) practice
B) to stop worrying about it
C) only try it once
D) try different ways of completing it

Question 31

You are participating in an experiment in which you are told to locate the letter "T" among a field of digits. This is an example of _____.

A) A consistent mapping condition
B) A varied mapping condition
C) The dual-task method
D) The Stroop Effect

Question 32

Letter targets and number distractors in Schneider & Shiffrin's (1977) task is an example of a _____.

A) varied mapping condition
B) consistent mapping condition

Question 33

In Treisman's feature integration theory, it is hypothesized that people perceive stimuli as a whole rather than as a combination of features.

Question 34

In Simons & Chabris' (1999) study, most people noticed the gorilla walk across the scene.

Question 35

Evidenced by Treisman's filter model of attention, cognitive processes go through revision when new results suggest that the original model is not right.

Question 36

Processing that is not controlled and does not tax cognitive resources is _____, whereas processing due to an intention that consumes cognitive resources is _____.

A) Automatic; controlled
B) Voluntary; involuntary
C) Controlled; automatic
D) Difficult; easy

Question 37

Not noticing that your mother changed the curtains in your family room is an example of change blindness.

Question 38

You are a senior in college, and you have driven to school at least 3 days a week for the past 4 years. You know your way to and from school well. This is an example of _____.

A) Automatic processing
B) Controlled processing
C) The Simon Effect
D) Voluntary processing

Question 39

Being able to name the colors of various symbols illustrates _____.

A) Change blindness
B) Inattentional blindness
C) The Stroop Effect
D) The Simon Effect

Question 40

Walking is to _____ as learning a new language is to _____.

A) Top-down processing; bottom-up processing
B) Controlled processing; automatic processing
C) Automatic processing; controlled processing
D) Perception; sensation

Question 41

Discuss Kahneman's (1973) capacity model of attention and give one example.

Question 42

Discuss the Stroop Effect. How does this relate to our everyday attentional processing? Propose a variation of the Stroop Effect, and discuss how you would carry out an experiment to test it.

Question 43

Discuss the societal and legislative impact of Strayer & Johnston's study (2001) on the cognition of distracted driving.