Deck 6: Visual Attention

Question 1

 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 1

B

Question 2

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

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

Answer 2

B

Question 3

 _____ described attention as "the taking possession by 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

Answer 3

C

Question 4

 _____ 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 5

 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

Question 6

 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 7

 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 8

 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 9

 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 10

 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 11

 The spreading enhancement effect of attention can help us perceive _____.

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

Question 12

 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

Question 13

 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) object location invariance
C) same-object advantage
D) spatial drift

Question 14

 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 15

 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 16

 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 17

 "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) at random through a neighborhood

Question 18

 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 19

 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 20

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

A) pursuit
B) magnified
C) Saccadic
D) Aperature

Question 21

 Which statement about change blindness is most accurate

A) When sorting blocks according to color in a computer-based task, sudden changes to task-irrelevant features are detected better than changes to task-relevant features.
B) When changes are made to a well-known, iconic building or vista, the changes are detected by at least 90% of viewers.
C) Changes to objects appearing in their usual locations are more easily detected than those occurring to objects in atypical locations.
D) Smokers detect changes to smoking-related objects (e.g., lighters) better than changes to other household objects.

Question 22

 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 23

 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 24

 In a laboratory experiment on the impact of cell phone conversations on driving, drivers missed _____ red lights when talking on the phone as when not talking on the phone.

A) about as many
B) twice as many
C) three times as many
D) five times as many

Question 25

 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 26

 In the "100=Car Naturalistic Driving Study, the driver was inattentive in some way 3 seconds before _____ of crashes.

A) 75%
B) 80%
C) 85%
D) 90%

Question 27

 While watching Pretty Woman (1990), you fail to notice when Vivian (Julia Roberts) begins to reach for a croissant that suddenly turns into a pancake. 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 28

 _____ occurs 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

 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 30

 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 31

 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 four-month-olds
D) occurs only after sharp acuity is developed

Question 32

 R.M., a patient with Balint's syndrome, reported illusory conjunctions on 23% of the trials _____.

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

 In Grimes' 1996 study, _____ of subjects failed to notice a 180-degree rotation of Cinderella's Castle at Disneyland.

A) 15%?
B) 25%
C) 35%
D) 45%

Question 34

 In Grimes' 1996 study, _____ of subjects failed to detect a change in a model's swimsuit from bright pink to bright green.

A) 38%
B) 48%
C) 58%
D) 68%

Question 35

 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 36

 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 37

 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 38

 A monkey attends to a moving stimulus left of fixation then to a stationary 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 39

 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 40

 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) 54
D) 23

Question 41

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 42

 How is talking on a cell phone while driving different from talking to passengers while driving

Question 43

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

Question 44

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 45

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

Question 46

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

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 47

 Explain the load theory of attention.

Question 48

What is the relationship between change blindness and continuity errors
(b) Describe a specific example of a "continuity error".

Question 49

 Are voice-activated devices in cars a good idea or are they potentially dangerous
Explain your reasoning.

Question 50

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