2.1 Cognitive Psychology Thinking And Remembering (FSWP2014A)
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Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam (EUR)
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2.1 Cognitive Psychology Thinking And Remembering (FSWP2014A)
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2.1 Thinking and Remembering
P1 – Attention
Inattentional Blindness
Inattentional blindness: failing to notice objects or events when attention is focused elsewhere
• More likely to notice unexpected objects that share features with attended items (e.g. black
shirt and gorilla)
• The greater effort needed for the attended task, the less likely to notice something unexpected
• The limits are not purely visual, instead reflect the limits in capacity of attention
• Chabris simulation of policeman – auditory distractions can induce real-world failures to see
Inattentional deafness: while attentively listening to something, we might miss important info that is
presented simultaneously
• When attention is focused, we see and hear far less of the unattended information than we
might expect
o Even more when demands on attention are greater
o Under conditions of distraction, we effectively develop tunnel vision
Dichotic listening task: each ear listening to something different (in headphones)
• Notice only large physical changes in the unattended ear (male → female voice)
• Failed to notice when language changed, or the speech was presented backwards
• Analogous task in vision – viewing videos of 2 distinct but transparent overlapping events at
once → participants unaware of events outside their focus even though they saw both videos
simultaneously (Neisser & Becklen, 1975)
o Gorilla task
o Inattentional blindness
Selective listening task: highlights the power of attention to filter unnecessary information from
awareness letting only the elements we want to hear
Focused attention: crucial for filtering distractions and focusing only on what we want (to see or hear)
→ however we can miss otherwise obvious important signals
Multitasking: almost never happens rather quick task-switching (multitasking can occur with automatic
tasks)
Individual Differences
• Controversial
• Few studies: greater working memory capacity → more likely to notice unexpected objects
o Theory: with more resources available, ppl are more likely to notice
• Other studies: no such relationship
, o Theory: the greater the working memory capacity, better able to focus on given task →
should be less likely to notice
• Some ppl can track objects at greater speed, however it is unrelated to odds of noticing
Mistaken Intuition
• Our experiences mislead us – we are rarely confronted with something we missed
• Happily unaware of what we missed
Evolutionarily
• Noticing unexpected events wasn’t so useful → they are relatively infrequent
• In social context, others might notice and call attention to it
• Inattentional blindness had minimal consequences
• However, it does have consequences today
o We face greater distractions
o Greater speed
o Ppl do not notice how distracted they are, so they believe they are performing just fine
How To Counter Inattentional Blindness?
• Not much, only mitigate
• Maximize the attention available by avoiding distractions
• Don’t assume ppl see you, looking is not the same as seeing
Change blindness: you are aware of the object that is subjected to change but fail to notice its change
(inattentional blindness is failing to notice the object in general)
● Change blindness is failing to notice smth that changes in your surrounding.
● Inattentional blindness: fail to perceive smth that is already there due to focusing on smth else.
Selective attention
Cocktail party phenomenon: tracking one conversation in the presence of other simultaneous
conversations
• Shadowing – 2 messages at once – follow one ignore the other
• Dichotic presentation – separate messages in one ear
Factors that help selective attention:
1. Distinctive sensory characteristics of the target’s speech (pitch, pace, rhythmicity)
2. Sound intensity
3. Location of the sound source (least effective)
a. Turning an ear toward the speaker doesn’t really help the total sound intensity but it
does help the volume
,Theories of Selective attention
• Filter and bottleneck theories
o Filter: blocks some of the info going through, selects which info passes on to the next
stage
o Bottleneck: slows down info passing through
Broadbent’s Model
• Filter right after we notice it at sensory level
• Multiple channels (pitch, loudness, or accent) of sensory input reach an attentional filter
• The filter permits only one channel of sensory info to proceed and reach the processes of
perception (meaning assigned)
o Other stimuli never reach the level of perception
• Pros:
o Sensory info may be noticed by unattended ear if it does not have to be processed
elaborately (e.g. change of language)
• Cons: Selective Filter Model
o Even though people ignore most higher-level aspects, they can recognize their name in
unattended ear
o Messages of high importance may pass through the filter of selective attention, other do
not
Attenuation Model (Anne Treisman)
• Explores why some unattended messages pass through the filter
• Method: shadowing and switched the remainder of the coherent message to the unattended
ear → participants picked up first few words of the unattended message
• Ppl somehow processed the unattended message as well
• Ppl noticed if the messages where identical even when out of sync
o Even when it was a translation of one another
• Showed that at least some information about unattended signals is being analyzed
• Theory of selective attention:
o Involves a later filtering mechanism, the filter doesn’t block only weakens (attenuates)
o We analyze stimuli at a low level for target properties (loudness, pitch)
▪ If stimulus possesses target properties → pass on
▪ If stimulus does not possess target properties → pass on a weakened version
, o Then we analyze the meaning of the stimuli and its relevance to us
Late filter model (Deutsch and Deutsch)
• Location of the filter even later
o Enables ppl to recognize info in the unattended ear → recognize their name or
translation of the attended input
• Stimuli filtered out only after they have been analyzed both for physical properties and meaning
Synthesis of Early filter and Late filter Models
Preattentive processes:
• Automatic
• Rapid
• Occur in parallel
• Only notice physical characteristics of the unattended message
• Do not discern meaning or relationships
Attentive, controlled processes:
• Occur later
• Execute serially
• Consume time and attentional resources (WM)
• Synthesize fragments into a mental representation of an object
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