Deck 4: Attention: Deploying Cognitive Resources

Question 1

Broadbent believed that you might be able to attend to two messages at once if ______.

A)you were concentrating very hard
B)both messages contained little information
C)both messages were important to you
D)there was no background noise in the room

Answer 1

both messages contained little information

Question 2

According to Treisman,people tend to process ______.

A)only to the level of physical characteristics
B)only to the level of linguistic characteristics,separating it into words
C)at a semantic level,analyzing for meaning most of the time
D)only as much as is necessary to separate the attended from the unattended message

Answer 2

only as much as is necessary to separate the attended from the unattended message

Question 3

According to ______ theory,we never actually acquire unattended material at all.

A)schema
B)bottleneck
C)attenuation
D)filter

Answer 3

schema

Question 4

Results from dichotic listening studies indicate that,while a person is shadowing one message,he/she notices which of the following features of the unattended message?

A)whether it is speech or simply noise
B)whether it is spoken in English or Japanese
C)multiple repetitions of the same words
D)both the fact that it is speech and the language that is being spoken

Question 5

In Kahneman's model of attention,allocation of mental resources is affected by preferences for certain kinds of tasks over others.These preferences are known as ______.

A)enduring dispositions
B)arousal states
C)momentary intentions
D)late selection preferences

Question 6

According to Treisman's attenuation theory,the cocktail party effect occurs because ______.

A)words like your own name have permanently lowered thresholds for recognition
B)your name is primed by the context of the conversation
C)perception of expected information is easier than perception of unexpected information
D)its physical characteristics make it "stand out" from surrounding conversation

Question 7

More recent research has suggested a move from a ______ to a ______ metaphor to explain the basic nature of attention.

A)bottleneck;filter
B)filter;bottleneck
C)bottleneck;spotlight
D)headlight;spotlight

Question 8

In Treisman's (1960)classic experiment,participants were asked to shadow a message in one ear.At a certain point in the middle of the messages,the content of the first message and the second message were switched.What happened to shadowing performance?

A)Many participants switched ears and repeated a few words from the unattended ear without realizing that the messages had been switched.
B)Participants became confused and were unable to continue shadowing.
C)Many participants switched ears and repeated a few words from the unattended ear,then caught themselves and consciously switched back to the correct ear.
D)Participants reported hearing both messages and asked which one they were supposed to shadow.

Question 9

Which of the following would NOT be a reasonable basis for filtering,according to Broadbent's model?

A)whether the message was coming from your right or your left side
B)the pitch of the voice reading the message
C)the loudness of the voice reading the message
D)the language that the message was being read in

Question 10

When listening to a conversation,your attention is momentarily diverted when you hear your name spoken in a different conversation across the room.This is an example of ______.

A)filter effect
B)dichotic listening phenomenon
C)cocktail party effect
D)attenuation effect

Question 11

In a ______ task,a person listens to an audiotape and hears two separate messages presented simultaneously to the left and right ears.

A)filter
B)dichotic listening
C)bionic listening
D)sustained attention

Question 12

Which of the following factors does NOT influence the allocation of mental resources in Kahneman's capacity model?

A)the state of arousal
B)the difficulty of the task
C)enduring dispositions
D)the lateness of selection

Question 13

The ______ theory of attention states that there is a very limited amount of information that can be attended to at one time;unattended information is blocked out.

A)filter
B)attenuation
C)schema
D)cocktail party

Question 14

Conway and colleagues discovered that research participants who detect their own names in an unattended message are likely to have ______.

A)lower working memory spans than those who do not
B)higher working memory spans than those who do not
C)lower IQ scores than those who do not
D)higher IQ scores than those who do not

Question 15

The word "cat" is ______ by the phrase "The dog chased the…." That is,the word cat is especially ready to be recognized or attended to.

A)filtered
B)attenuated
C)primed
D)suggested

Question 16

Wood and Cowan switched a passage in participants' unattended ear to backward speech and reported that performance in shadowing the other ear ______.

A)was unaffected for all participants
B)included more errors for all participants during the time that the backward message was being played
C)included more errors for only the participants who did not notice the backward message
D)included more errors that peaked 10 to 20 seconds after the backward message began,for those that did notice the message

Question 17

The "cocktail party effect" refers to the fact that shadowing performance is disrupted when ______ is embedded in the unattended message.

A)backward speech
B)the listener's name
C)a section of repeated words
D)music

Question 18

Greater effort or concentration results in better performance on ______.

A)all tasks
B)tasks that require resource-limited processing
C)tasks that are data-limited
D)tasks that require vigilance

Question 19

Treisman's theory argues that "unattended" information is actually ______.

A)blocked by a mental filter
B)attenuated but not entirely blocked
C)never acquired in the first place
D)processed to the level of meaning,then repressed

Question 20

Broadbent,in proposing his filter theory of attention,argued that an attentional filter lets some information through and blocks out the rest.This filter is based upon ______.

A)the meaning of the message
B)a physical characteristic of the message
C)the importance of the message
D)the language of the message

Question 21

Stroop interference peaks at around the age of ______ years.

A)3
B)8
C)20
D)60

Question 22

Cognitive psychologists use all of the following as criteria for determining whether an activity is automatic EXCEPT whether it ______.

A)occurs intentionally
B)gives rise to conscious awareness
C)interferes with other activities
D)requires mental filtering

Question 23

Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)______.

A)are more likely to be girls than boys
B)cannot devote mental resources to tasks
C)cannot switch attention from one task to another
D)cannot sustain vigilance on repetitive or dull tasks

Question 24

Studies of event-related potentials for attended and unattended tones indicate that ______.

A)ERPs are the same for attended and unattended stimuli,suggesting that the brain processes both types of stimuli at least to some degree
B)the amplitude of the waveform is larger for the right ear than the left,regardless of which ear is being attended to
C)the amplitude of the waveform is larger for the attended ear
D)the time lag of the peak waveforms suggests that the difference occurs in the ears,before the messages get to the brain

Question 25

Which of the following is true regarding controlled processing?

A)It is used with routine or familiar tasks.
B)It usually operates in parallel.
C)It requires attention.
D)It is unaffected by massive amounts of practice.

Question 26

Parts of the frontal,parietal,and subcortical lobes are involved in ______.

A)disengaging attention from where it was previously focused
B)implementing attention when a person has already decided where to focus
C)refocusing attention to a new stimulus
D)generating top-down instructions to the visual system

Question 27

Neuropsychological studies have indicated that patients with damage to the right parietal lobe ______.

A)cannot perceive objects on the left side of visual space
B)do not pay attention to objects on the left side of visual space
C)perceive and pay attention to objects on the left side of visual space,but cannot reproduce them in a drawing
D)can neither perceive nor pay attention to objects on the left side of visual space

Question 28

Which of the following is an example of a controlled process,for most people?

A)driving
B)reading
C)playing a well-practiced video game
D)sending a telegraph message

Question 29

In Treisman's experiments on feature integration,the number of distracters did not matter when participants were asked to spot ______.

A)an S among Ts and Xs
B)a green X among green Os and pink Xs
C)a pink T among blue Ts and pink Xs
D)a blue T among blue Xs and green Ts

Question 30

Sensory neglect (also called hemineglect)occurs when patients suffer damage to the ______ lobe.

A)occipital
B)frontal
C)parietal
D)temporal

Question 31

Which of these is true about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder?

A)It is more common in girls than in boys.
B)It affects 10%-15% of the general school-age population.
C)It involves an inability to be alert.
D)It involves an inability to inhibit an ongoing response such as talking or playing a game.

Question 32

Which of the following is a characteristic of an automatic process?

A)It only occurs intentionally.
B)It gives rise to conscious awareness.
C)It does not interfere with other activities.
D)It requires mental filtering.

Question 33

In the second stage of feature integration theory,we ______.

A)register features of objects such as their shape or color
B)combine features into unified objects
C)break unified objects down into identifiable features
D)switch from serial to parallel processing

Question 34

Stroop interference lessens when participants are ______.

A)better readers
B)given more practice at naming colors
C)girls rather than boys
D)encouraged to focus carefully

Question 35

In the Stroop effect,participants have difficulty correctly naming the color of ink that a word is written in when the word ______.

A)is unrelated to the topic of color
B)names the color of ink
C)names a color which is not the ink color
D)is not a word at all,but a pronounceable nonsense syllable

Question 36

In Schneider and Shiffrin's classic study of visual search for targets,which of the following variables DID have an effect on processing in the varied-mapping condition?

A)memory set size
B)frame size
C)frame time
D)all of these

Question 37

Treisman's feature integration theory argues that ______.

A)we perceive objects in two distinct stages
B)we can only process one piece of information at a time
C)we have a flexible capacity for processing information
D)controlled processes do not interfere with each other the way automatic processes do

Question 38

In a study of inattentional blindness,Daniel Simons and colleagues presented an unexpected event,such as a woman with an umbrella crossing the room from left to right,to a group of participants who were trying to monitor the number of passes that a particular basketball team made in a film.When questioned later about "anything unexpected" that happened in the film,______.

A)almost all participants noticed the woman with the umbrella
B)only participants with an easier pass-monitoring task noticed the woman
C)only participants with a more difficult pass-counting task noticed the woman
D)only about half of participants noticed the woman

Question 39

A person approaches you on the street and asks for directions.While you are talking,two people carry a door between you and the person to whom you are speaking.While the door is passing,the person you are talking to is replaced by a different person.If you are like the people in studies by Simons and Levin,you will ______.

A)immediately notice the change
B)only notice if the two people are of different heights
C)have only about a 50% chance of noticing the switch
D)only notice if the two people have noticeably different voices

Question 40

In Schneider and Shiffrin's classic study of visual search for targets,which of the following variables DID have an effect on processing in the consistent-mapping condition?

A)the length of time each array was displayed
B)the number of distracters in the array
C)the number of targets the subject was asked to find
D)both the number of distracters and the number of targets

Question 41

Spelke,Hirst,and Neisser attempted to teach participants to simultaneously take dictation and read with comprehension.Their results suggests that ______.

A)no amount of practice can teach people to do two things at once without a drop in performance
B)people could eventually reach accurate performance on the dictation task,but reading comprehension still suffered
C)people could eventually reach accuracy in reading comprehension,but in doing so they sacrificed accuracy in dictation
D)after 6 weeks of practice,people could simultaneously take dictation accurately and read with normal comprehension

Question 42

Mindful meditation's link to attention could best be described by ______.

A)its activation of the prefrontal cortex
B)the fact that everything is quiet
C)being nonjudgmental
D)increasing an individual's optimism

Question 43

A patient with right parietal hemineglect is asked to draw a five pointed star.You would most expect which part of the drawing to be missing?

A)the top point of the star
B)the right arm of the star
C)the left arm of the star
D)the bottom feet of the star

Question 44

Glancing out your window,you notice a woman in a blue coat walking with a child in a red coat.Later,you recall seeing a child in a blue coat.You have fallen victim to the phenomenon known as ______.

A)the Stroop effect
B)illusory conjunction
C)automatic processing
D)the bottleneck effect

Question 45

What characterizes hemineglect?

A)Patients forget about one hemisphere of their brain.
B)Patients tend to ignore information processed through a damaged hemisphere.
C)Patients fail to use certain cognitive processes results in brain damage.
D)Patients can no longer identify spherical shapes.

Question 46

Dividing your attention between two tasks is easiest when ______.

A)you are learning the tasks for the first time
B)the tasks are in the same modality
C)one task has been practiced previously
D)the tasks only engage one attention stream

Question 47

Which of the following best explains why we refer to attention as a spotlight?

A)Attention cognitively illuminates everything within the visual field.
B)Attention cannot focus on more than one thing at a time.
C)Attention can only be used in one modality such as vision.
D)Attention is consciously controlled and can switch its target.

Question 48

Which of the following is NOT true about distracted driving?

A)Having a passenger in the car results in less accident risk than driving alone.
B)About one in six fatal vehicle accidents involves distracted driving.
C)Most drivers who text only do so while at a stop sign or stop light.
D)Seventy percent of undergraduates report sending text messages while driving.

Question 49

The phenomenon of attentional capture ______.

A)primarily depends upon the perceiver's goals
B)is driven almost entirely by the properties of the stimulus
C)can be overridden by top-down processes under certain circumstances
D)is driven by the stimulus but can be overridden by top-down processes

Question 50

During an ERP task,a researcher notices that there were no large amplitude responses to several stimuli that participants listen to,even after 1000ms.What does this suggest about the amount of attention that was paid to the stimuli?

A)Participants paid attention to the stimuli.
B)Participants did not pay attention to the stimuli.
C)Nothing.The researcher needs to wait longer to observe the ERP.
D)Nothing.The researcher should look for low-amplitude responses.

Question 51

ERP signals associated with attention should be visible by about ______ ms after stimulus presentation.

A)100
B)500
C)1000
D)5000

Question 52

According to the attention hypothesis of automatization,attention ______.

A)is needed during the practice phase of a task
B)determines what gets learned during practice
C)determines what will be remembered from the practice
D)all of these

Question 53

Research suggests that talking on a cell phone while driving ______.

A)does not cause errors or slow reaction time
B)does not slow reaction time any more than does listening to the radio
C)causes significantly more errors and slows reaction time significantly more than listening to the radio.
D)does not impair driving as long as the driver is using a "hands-free" telephone

Question 54

Research on divided attention suggests that ______.

A)some people can multitask without any drop in performance
B)there are no limits on the number of things that we can successfully do at once
C)as individual tasks become more demanding,multitasking becomes more efficient
D)if you think that you are doing two things simultaneously,you are probably really rapidly switching attention back and forth between the two

Question 55

Which of the following provides the most likely explanation for the findings of Spelke,Hirst,and Neisser (in which participants learned to simultaneously take dictation and read with comprehension)?

A)Participants learned to alternate between the two tasks.
B)The reading task became automatic with practice.
C)The dictation task became automatic with practice.
D)Participants learned to combine the two specific tasks.

Question 56

Certain stimuli seem to jump off the page at the viewer,causing an involuntary shift of attention that is referred to as ______.

A)the Stroop effect
B)attentional capture
C)attenuation
D)the cocktail party effect

Question 57

If a participant attends to an auditory stimulus,you would expect their ERP results to show ______.

A)no electrical activity
B)lower amplitude activity than an unattended stimulus
C)higher amplitude activity than an unattended stimulus
D)the same activity as an unattended stimulus

Question 58

Neisser's schema theory of attention posits that we ______.

A)pay the most attention to things we expect
B)pay the most attention to things that are unexpected
C)attend to all objects and events unequally
D)have difficulty attending to things that are new

Question 59

An ERP taken while a participant is played auditory stimuli through headphones shows high amplitude signals in response to a stimulus played in the left ear channel.This suggests the stimulus was ______.

A)unattended to
B)not heard at all
C)able to be identified
D)attended to

Question 60

Driving simulator studies suggest that ______.

A)cell phone use increases the probability of missing a red light
B)cell phone use decreases reaction time to red lights
C)listening to the radio increases the probability of missing a red light
D)listening to the radio decreases reaction time to red lights

Question 61

Studies in which many participants fail to notice the presence of a gorilla or that two people switch places while being asked to engage in some other task (such as counting how many balls were passed or giving directions)is best considered an example of which of the following?

A)inattentional blindness
B)prosopagnosia
C)filtering
D)masking

Question 62

Of the following,which metaphor do we usually use to refer to attention?

A)spotlight
B)flashlight
C)street light
D)gaslight

Question 63

Easy tasks are more likely to use ______ processing and difficult tasks are more likely to use ______ processing.

A)automatic;automatic
B)controlled;controlled
C)controlled;automatic
D)automatic;controlled

Question 64

Which of the following would be an example of priming?

A)When counting,you are especially likely to pay attention to prime numbers.
B)When two images are flashed briefly in your visual fields,you are always equally likely to notice both.
C)When an object is unexpected in the environment,you immediately recognize it.
D)Hearing the word "bread" makes it more likely that you'll recognize the word "butter."

Question 65

Which of the following findings is NOT accurate with respect to dual task performance observed during cell phone use while driving?

A)Participants have difficulty tracking information in a conversation while driving.
B)Participants and passengers moderate their speech during difficult driving obstacles.
C)Participants' attention or driving skill is not affected by listening to a radio broadcast.
D)Participants are just as distracted by talking on the phone as they are by talking to a passenger.

Question 66

Based on Treisman's Feature Integration theory,which combination of experimental conditions should produce the longest reaction times?

A)asking participants to identify a single feature with many items in the display
B)asking participants to identify a single feature with few items in the display
C)asking participants to identify a combination of features with many items in the display
D)asking participants to identify a combination of features with few items in the display

Question 67

The ______ theory of attention states that there is a very limited amount of information that can be attended to at one time;unattended information is almost completely blocked and is not processed further except for some physical/acoustical properties.

A)filter
B)attenuation
C)schema
D)divided attention

Question 68

Which of the following is NOT an expected consequence of the attention hypothesis of automatization?

A)Attention is needed to learn from practice.
B)Attention determines what is remembered.
C)Attentional learning is specific to tasks and stimuli.
D)Attention is only useful for tests of performance.

Question 69

Treisman and Schmidt (1982)found that when participants' attentional resources were strained,they sometimes incorrectly integrated feature information across objects resulting in mixed perceptions.This is known as a(n)______.

A)conjunction fallacy
B)combinatorial conjunction
C)illusory correlation
D)illusory conjunction

Question 70

Which of the following is NOT a component of automatic processing?

A)processing that occurs without attention
B)processing that is not subject to error
C)processing that occurs outside of conscious awareness
D)processing that does not interfere with other cognitive functions

Question 71

The cocktail party effect,where you are likely to hear your name even an unattended stream of speech,would best be explained by which model of attention?

A)automatic
B)filter
C)social
D)attenuation

Question 72

Which of the following is an example of attentional capture?

A)The sudden appearance of a stimulus from outside of your visual field distracts you.
B)You are able to more quickly identify colors,shapes,and orientation than complex objects.
C)You require fewer attentional resources to complete a task the more you practice it.
D)It is difficult for you to focus on more than one complicated task at a time.

Question 73

Of the following,whom would you expect to be most susceptible to inattentional blindness?

A)an individual with less working-memory capacity
B)an individual with greater working-memory capacity
C)an individual with greater executive functioning capacity
D)an individual with less focus on individual items

Question 74

Who would you expect to be least affected by the Stroop effect?

A)a 5-year-old
B)a teenager
C)a college student
D)a 40-year-old

Question 75

In their classic Feature Integration findings,Treisman and Gelade (1980)found that feature searches (searches involving primitive single features such as color)were ______ and affected ______ by the number of distractors than conjunction searches (searches involving combinations of features).

A)slower;more
B)slower;less
C)faster;more
D)faster;less

Question 76

As a cognitive process,attention would NOT be affected by which of the following?

A)practice
B)the task
C)color
D)intent

Question 77

Logan and Etherton (1994)presented participants with pairs of words and later asked them to identify particular targets.Target words were sometimes paired with the same word or different words.Their results show that ______.

A)using a target word in the same pair several times improved performance
B)using a target word in many different pairs improved performance
C)asking participants to state the color a target word was written in improved performance
D)participants could always easily discriminate target words because the task was too easy

Question 78

According to Treisman's Feature Integration Theory,which of the following should be processed or attended to the slowest?

A)color
B)identity
C)shape
D)orientation

Question 79

In her experiments supporting her attentuation theory of attention,Treisman used the ______ to show that multiple streams of information can be processed even if they do not always rise to the level of conscious awareness.

A)dichotic listening task
B)Stroop task
C)gorilla paradigm
D)mindfulness meditation

Question 80

What does it mean to modulate your attention?

A)Attention is unconsciously pulled from one item to another.
B)An individual's total attentional capacity is increased or decreased.
C)Attentional resources are increased or decreased to meet environmental demands.
D)Attention is modified to an inactive state.