Cognitive Psychology Chapter 4: Goldstein 5th Edition
1. Attention: Focusing on specific features, objects, or locations or on certain
thoughts or activities.
2. Attention Capture: a rapid shifting of attention, usually caused by a stimulus such
as a loud noise, bright light, or sudden movement .
3. Attenuation Model of Attention: Anne Treisman's model of selective attention
that proposes that selection occurs in two stages. In the first stage, an attenuator
analyzes the incoming message and lets through the attended message—and also
the unattended message, but at a lower (attenuated) strength.
4. Attenuator: In Treisman's model of selective attention, the attenuator analyzes
the incoming message in terms of physical characteristics, language, and meaning.
Attended messages pass through the attenuator at full strength, and unattended
messages pass though with reduced strength.
5. Automatic Processing: Processing that occurs automatically, without the person
intending to do it, and that also uses few cognitive resources. Automatic processing
is associated with easy or well-practiced tasks.
6. Balint's Syndrome: A condition caused by brain damage in which a person has
difficulty focusing attention on individual objects.
7. Binding: process by which features such as color, form, motion, and location are
combined to create our perception of a coherent object.
8. Binding Problem: problem of explaining how an object's individual features
become bound together. Addressed by Anne Treisman's feature integration theory.
9. Bottleneck Model: Model of attention that proposes that incoming information
is restricted at some point in processing, so only a portion of the information
1
, gets through to consciousness. Broadbent's model of attention is an example of a
bottleneck model.
10. Change Blindness: Difficulty in detecting changes in similar, but slightly different,
scenes that are presented one after another. The changes are often easy to
see once attention is directed to them, but are usually undetected in the absence of
appropriate attention.
11. Conjunction Search: searching among distractors for a target that involves a
combination of features, such as "horizontal" and "green".
12. Cocktail Party Effect: The ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other
stimuli, especially at a party where there are a lot of simultaneous conversations.
13. Covert Attention: Occurs when attention is shifted without moving the eyes,
commonly referred to as seeing something "out of the corner of one's eye." Contrasts
with overt attention.
14. Dichotic Listening: The procedure of presenting one message to the left ear
and a different message to the right ear.
15. Dictionary Unit: A component of Treisman's attenuation theory of attention. This
processing unit contains stored words and thresholds for activating the words. The
dictionary unit helps explain why we can sometimes hear a familiar word, such as
our name, in an unattended message. See also Attenuation model of attention.
16. Distraction: Occurs when one stimulus interferes with attention to or the processing
of another stimulus.
17. Divided Attention: The ability to pay attention to, or carry out, two or more
different tasks simultaneously.
18. Early Selection Model: Model of attention that explains selective attention by
early filtering out of the unattended message. In Broadbent's early selection model,
2
1. Attention: Focusing on specific features, objects, or locations or on certain
thoughts or activities.
2. Attention Capture: a rapid shifting of attention, usually caused by a stimulus such
as a loud noise, bright light, or sudden movement .
3. Attenuation Model of Attention: Anne Treisman's model of selective attention
that proposes that selection occurs in two stages. In the first stage, an attenuator
analyzes the incoming message and lets through the attended message—and also
the unattended message, but at a lower (attenuated) strength.
4. Attenuator: In Treisman's model of selective attention, the attenuator analyzes
the incoming message in terms of physical characteristics, language, and meaning.
Attended messages pass through the attenuator at full strength, and unattended
messages pass though with reduced strength.
5. Automatic Processing: Processing that occurs automatically, without the person
intending to do it, and that also uses few cognitive resources. Automatic processing
is associated with easy or well-practiced tasks.
6. Balint's Syndrome: A condition caused by brain damage in which a person has
difficulty focusing attention on individual objects.
7. Binding: process by which features such as color, form, motion, and location are
combined to create our perception of a coherent object.
8. Binding Problem: problem of explaining how an object's individual features
become bound together. Addressed by Anne Treisman's feature integration theory.
9. Bottleneck Model: Model of attention that proposes that incoming information
is restricted at some point in processing, so only a portion of the information
1
, gets through to consciousness. Broadbent's model of attention is an example of a
bottleneck model.
10. Change Blindness: Difficulty in detecting changes in similar, but slightly different,
scenes that are presented one after another. The changes are often easy to
see once attention is directed to them, but are usually undetected in the absence of
appropriate attention.
11. Conjunction Search: searching among distractors for a target that involves a
combination of features, such as "horizontal" and "green".
12. Cocktail Party Effect: The ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other
stimuli, especially at a party where there are a lot of simultaneous conversations.
13. Covert Attention: Occurs when attention is shifted without moving the eyes,
commonly referred to as seeing something "out of the corner of one's eye." Contrasts
with overt attention.
14. Dichotic Listening: The procedure of presenting one message to the left ear
and a different message to the right ear.
15. Dictionary Unit: A component of Treisman's attenuation theory of attention. This
processing unit contains stored words and thresholds for activating the words. The
dictionary unit helps explain why we can sometimes hear a familiar word, such as
our name, in an unattended message. See also Attenuation model of attention.
16. Distraction: Occurs when one stimulus interferes with attention to or the processing
of another stimulus.
17. Divided Attention: The ability to pay attention to, or carry out, two or more
different tasks simultaneously.
18. Early Selection Model: Model of attention that explains selective attention by
early filtering out of the unattended message. In Broadbent's early selection model,
2
