Question 1

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

Accepted Answer

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. C

Question 2

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"?

Accepted Answer

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

Question 3

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

Accepted Answer

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. B

Question 4

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

Accepted Answer

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 5

Posner's precueing studies demonstrated that attention

Accepted Answer

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

Accepted Answer

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

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

Accepted Answer

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

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

Accepted Answer

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

Question 9

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.

Accepted Answer

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 10

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.

Accepted Answer

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

Question 11

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

Accepted Answer

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

Question 12

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

Accepted Answer

The answer of Describe Posner et al.'s (1978) precueing procedure,...

Question 13

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

Accepted Answer

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

Question 14

________ 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."

Accepted Answer

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

Question 15

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.

Accepted Answer

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

Question 16

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

Accepted Answer

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

Question 17

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

Accepted Answer

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 18

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

Accepted Answer

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

Question 19

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

Accepted Answer

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

Treisman and Schmidt prevented the focused attention stage from occurring by

Accepted Answer

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.

Exam 6: Visual Attention