cog psych

the active cognitive processing of a limited amount of information from the vast amount of information available through the senses, in memory, and through cognitives process; focus on a small subset of available stimuli

Includes both the feeling of awareness and the content of awareness

information that is available for cognitive processing but that currently lies outside conscious awareness exists at the preconscious level of awareness. Preconscious information includes stores memories that we are not using at a given time but that we could summon when needed.

The facilitation of one's ability to utilize missing information; occurs when recognition of certain stimuli is affected by prior presentation of the same or similar stimuli

a basic capacity to respond to the environment

maintenance of attention for infrequent events over long periods of time

Conscious processing- conscious awareness that a task is being preformed, and usually conscious awareness of the outcome of performance

Processing with no necessary involvement of conscious awareness

Patients going into surgery were given a list of words then during surgery they were given a list of words. BOARD LIGHT -- they were given BO_ _ _ LI _ _ _. Patients undergoing surgery would be able to fill out the blank letters.

A reflex redirection of attention that orients you toward the unexpected stimulus

the spontaneous redirection of attention to stimuli in the world based on physical characteristics. Triggers: stimuli important to the organism, novel stimuli. Habituation: gradual reduction of the orientating response baseline

The mental attention focusing mechanism that prepares.. includes posner's spacial cueing task

Deliberate, voluntary allocation of mental effort or concentration

The Ability to attend to one source of information while ignoring other on-going stimuli around us

The mental process of eliminating distractions/unwanted messages

giving the system more than it can handle and test the accuracy for a portion of information

It is important because it allows on organism to direct their attention to different situations in their environment.

yes

Conscious processing - conscious awareness that a task is being preformed, and usually conscious awareness of the outcome of performance

processing with no necessary involvement of conscious awareness

type of perceptual task requiring attention that typically involves an active scan of the visual environment for a particular object or feature (the target) among other objects or features (the distractors)

Faster than baseline response resulting from the useful advance information

A response slower than baseline because of the misleading cue

search for the presence of specified features

search for the combination of two features

Recently checked locations are mentally marked by attention as places that the search process would not return to

Participants must repeat back a message that is played through headphones in one ear and ignore the other message

• occurs after the initial processing of the message is done
• Right Ear: While Bill was walking through the forest/ A Bank can lend you the money
• Left Ear: If you want to buy a car/ A tree fell

reduced in informational importance to ongoing processing

situation in which a person's attention and thoughts wander from the current task to some other inappropriate line of thought

attention shuts down or attenuates processing in the unattended ear before the mind can analyze its semantic content

actively suppress mental representation of salient but irrevelent information so that it's activation level is reduced, perhaps resting below baseline level.

slower to respond to the target trials when they were preceded by irreverent distractor primes compared to control trials where the ignored object on the prime trial was an unrelated item

is done with little or no necessary involvement of a conscious

occurs with attention, open to awareness, tends to be slower

action slips - unintended, often automatic, actions that are inappropriate for the current situation

disruption/decreased ability to attend to something in the (often) left field or vision

the means by which we retain and draw on our past experiences to use this information in the present

intelligence tests. there is was found that people typically have a limit to how much they can remember and it is usually about 7(+-2)

grouping items together, than remembering the newly formed groups

Pp were given 3 letters followed by a 3 digit number. They were asked to count backwards by 3. after counting they were acked to recall the letters. it was said that the letters were forgotten due to decay over time. later researchers questioned the assumption that backward counting would not interfere with the task of keeping the letters in memory

16 digits were presented at a rate of either 1 or 4 per second. given 7 4 6 and 9 with a probe of 4, the person must recall the 6. if forgetting is due to decay the 2 groups should differ since so much time elapsd in the 16 second condition. agrued that it is not the passage of time but the interveneing items.

when older material interferes forward in time with your recollection of the current stimulus.

when the decline in performance caused by PI is reversed because of a switch in the to be remembered stimuli

when newer material interferes backward in time with your recollection of older items

graph of items by item accuracy on a recall task

refers to the original position an item had in the list it was studied

in charge of planning future actions, initiating retrieval and decision processes as necessary and integrating information coming into the system

speech and sound related component responsible for rehearsal of verbal information

passive store components

involved in active refreshing of information in the phonological stage

system specialized for visual and spatial information holding or maintaining that information in a short duration

the portion of working memory where info from different modalities and sources are bound together to form new episodic memories

• dual task methodology
• working memory span

generally have a primary task that you are most interested in and a secondary task that is performed simultaneously (both tasks must be related to WM)

individual differences approach (high and low span)