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| Broadbent proposed this theory of selective attention in which an attentional “bottleneck” occurred prior to semantic processing |
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| the extent to which it is possible to listen to a message conveyed by one voice while other voices are simultaneously audible |
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| Broadbent viewed this selective process as adaptive, in protecting the cognitive system from overload. |
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| elementary stimulus properties such as the ear at which an auditory stimulus arrives, or the color of a visually-presented stimulus |
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| The contents of this kind of memory are available for approximately 500 ms. Beyond this point there is no performance advantage for the “partial report” condition which was tested by presented participants with a tone (immediately after the display of letters). The pitch of the tone (low, mid, high) indicated a row of letters (bottom, middle, and top) that participants were required to recall. |
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| In these tasks, targets differ from non-target items in terms of a single feature, such as color or shape. Target items are presented on some proportion of trials and the response requirement is to indicate the presence of absence of a target by depressing a response key. Search for a single feature takes place in parallel. |
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| In these tasks targets differ from non-targets in terms of a combination of features, for example, searching for a particular letter in an array of letters. Target items are presented on some proportion of trials and the response requirement is to indicate the presence of absence of a target by depressing a response key. Search for an object requires a serial search, with attention moving from location to location until the stimulus target is found. |
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Term
| Posner’s 3 neural systems |
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Definition
- Posterior system (deciding where in space an object is so the appropriate action may be initiated)
- Anterior Network (deciding what an object is)
- Frontal Lobe (vigilance – handling temporal uncertainty)
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| Inhibition and Negative Priming |
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| Defined by slow responses to stimuli, or properties of stimuli that have previously been ignored either due to this or something else |
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| the person’s ability to perform two or more tasks simultaneously |
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| limits on the quantity of attention applied to a task or tasks |
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| studies of this of attention in which performance deteriorates seemingly because the processing system cannot handle all the information presented to it |
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| Has been developed to refer to the attentional demands experienced during the performance of cognitive tasks. Also refers to people’s experiences of cognitive task performance as effortful and fatiguing which may index task demands or attentional overload. Various measures can be taken of this by questionnaire and psychological assessments. |
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| Proposes a single, serial-processing channel, limited by its capacity for throughput of information. There is no separate pool of resources, because all capacity limits are localized within the cognitive architecture. |
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| When two tasks require a common processing structure, such as a short-term memory store. |
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| Psychological Refractory Period |
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| show that processing a given stimulus may slow response to a second stimulus. There appears to be a bottleneck in cognitive processing between perception and response at which point tasks can only be performed serially |
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| An attentional resource model that describes in broad terms the association between performance, resource allocation and task demand. If more resources are allocated to a task (increased effort), and task difficulty remains constant, levels of performance increase. If a task difficulty is increased and resource allocation remains constant, than performance declines |
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| It may be that the task is so simple that allocation of additional resources beyond a minimal requirement will produce no improvement in performance. The PRD formula does not apply. |
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| Allocation of additional resources results in an increase in performance. The PRD formula does not apply. |
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| Structural interference between the primary and secondary tasks is called this. Studies assessing attentional capacity demands used a dual-task paradigm, in which performances of a primary and secondary task are examined together. The participant is told that the principal goal is to maintain performance on the task designated as primary, so that performance on the secondary task provides an index of the remaining spare capacity |
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| NASA T(ask)L(oad)X(index) |
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Definition
| A workload scale where the respondent is required to assess the level of workload that they experienced during task performance on six scales: mental demand, physical demand, temporal demand (pace of task), performance, effort, and frustration level |
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| proposes that sensory evidence about actual or potential signals is received by a noisy nervous system, and that a separate decision process acts upon such evidence to determine whether or not a detection response should be made. These are the joint outcome of the operation of sensory and decision processes |
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| Probe Reaction Time Measures |
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Definition
| In addition to a primary task, participants are presented with occasional tones or visual stimuli at unpredictable intervals and required to make a speeded response. The length of time taken to respond is taken to be an index of remaining attentional capacity after performing the primary task. Pashler argues that this tends to be elevated at approximately the time when response selection for the main task is in progress. Consequently, slowing of this may reflect not lack of resources but postponement of the response to the probe at the response selection bottleneck. |
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| (deciding where in space an object is so the appropriate action may be initiated) Located in the posterior brain structures such as the parietal lobes. This system controls aspects of spatial attention, such as orienting to stimuli. |
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| (deciding what an object is) Controls the detection of events. It is active during performance of all tasks in which visual targets must be detected whether targets are defined by color, form, motion, or word meaning. This system may related to processing constructs such as controlled processing and working memory |
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| (vigilance – handling temporal uncertainty) Controls alertness and vigilance in the absence of stimuli. |
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