2.1 Cognitive Psychology Thinking And Remembering (FSWP2014A)
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Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam (EUR)
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Cognitive Psychology
Extensive English summary of Problem 1 to 8, Lectures 1 to 5 and an Example test.
Includes learning goals, in depth questions and answers, references, images, examples and marked in grey what might be less important.
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COGNITION Visual perception and object recognition
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Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam (EUR)
International Bachelor In Psychology
2.1 Cognitive Psychology Thinking And Remembering (FSWP2014A)
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2.1C Thinking and remembering 2021/2022- Problem 1 – Where’s your head at?
What determines what we pay attention to?
Why is attention limited?
Different forms of attentions → selective and divided attention
Inattentional blindness: failure to Dichotic listening: set of headphones with diff speech streams in each
notice unexpected objects or events ear, with the task of repeating each syllable spoken into your left ear as
when attention is focused elsewhere. quickly and accurate as possible → you won’t be able to notice if
We appear able to process only one speaker in right ear switches to diff language or diff speaker with
stream of info at a time: effectively similar voice or if what they’re saying makes sense. If the person states
filtering other info from awareness. your name: you’ll only notice 1/3d of the time, and then only because
To a large extent, we perceive only you still devote some of your limited attention to the ignored speech
that which received the focus of our stream. In this task, you will tend to notice only large physical changes
cognitive efforts: our attention. e.g. switch from male to female speaker, but not substantive ones.
Inattentional deafness: the auditory Selective listening: a method for studying selective attention in which
version of inattentional blindness. people focus attention on one auditory stream of information while
People fail to notice an unexpected deliberately ignoring other auditory information.
sound or voice when attention is
focused on other aspects.
Focused attention is crucial to our powers of observation, making it possible for us to zero in on what we want
to see or hear while filtering out irrelevant distractions. Consequences: we can miss what would otherwise be
obvious and important.
Neisser et al. (1970): made a visual version of the dichotic listening task with a video of 2 partially transparent
and overlapping events. Participants often failed to notice unexpected events in the ignored video stream and
were unaware of events happening outside the focus of their attention, even when looking right at them.
However, researchers dismissed these results because of the transparent, ghostly appearance and figured
people would notice if the display were fully opaque and vivid. 20 years later → Gorilla experiment.
- People are more likely to notice unexpected - Another crucial influence is the effort you put into the
objects that share features with the attended attention-demanding task.
items in display e.g. if counting players in black The more distracted we are, the less likely we are to be
→ people are more likely to notice gorilla aware of our surroundings. Under conditions of distraction,
because color of gorilla = black. But even we effectively develop tunnel vision.
unique items (e.g. red cross traversing a black - The greater the demands on attention, the less likely
and white display) can go unnoticed. people are to notice objects falling outside their attention.
Who is better in noticing unexpected objects?
Studies differ: the ability to perform a task does not predict the likelihood of noticing.
Interesting: we think we see and remember far more of our surroundings than we actually do (we rarely
experience a study situation such as the gorilla experiment in which we are forced to confront something
obvious that we just missed).
Why is it important?
Our ability to focus attention intently might have been more evolutionary useful than the ability to notice
unexpected events. For an event to be unexpected, it must occur relatively infrequently.
,2
Most events don’t require our immediate attention, so if inattentional blindness delays our ability to notice the
events, the consequences could well be minimal.
However:
Inattentional blindness has more consequences in modern society because we face greater distractions and
move at greater speeds e.g. a small delay in noticing something unexpected can mean a big difference.
Discussion Questions
1. Many people, upon learning about inattentional blindness, try to think of ways to eliminate it, allowing
themselves complete situation awareness. Why might we be far worse off if we were not subject to
inattentional blindness?
2. If inattentional blindness cannot be eliminated, what steps might you take to avoid its consequences?
3. Can you think of situations in which inattentional blindness is highly likely to be a problem? Can you
think of cases in which inattentional blindness would not have much of an impact?
Sternberg book Problem B
What affects our ability to pay attention?
How can we pay attention to many things at the same time? If possible?
What kind of theories are there that explain how and when we process information?
How do these theories differ from each other?
Colin Cherry (1953): Cocktail party problem: paying attention to one conversation whilst there’s the distraction
of other conversations.
Experimented with shadowing: listening to two diff messages by dichotic listening (see previous page).
In a noisy restaurant, 3 factors help you to attend only to the speaker that you want to listen to:
1. Distinctive sensory characteristics of the target’s speech e.g. high versus low pitch, pacing and
rhythmicity.
2. Sound intensity (loudness)
3. Location of the sound source, you might turn one ear toward and the other ear away from target
speaker (recent studies found this less important than harmonious and rhythmic target sounds).
Theories of selective attention belong to the group of
Filter blocks the information: thus selects only part of the total info
Bottleneck slows down info passing through: everything goes through, the info just weakens and the
most important info reaches attention.
1. Broadbent’s Model: filter theory: one of the 3. Attenuation Model (Anne Treisman): bottleneck
earliest theories of attention - we filter info right theory: explored more why some unattended
after we notice it at the sensory level. messages pass through the filter. Suggests that at
least some info about unattended signals is being
analyzed → Theory of selective attention that
involves a later filtering mechanism: instead of
blocking stimuli, the filter only weakens (attenuates)
the strength of distracting stimuli.
Multiple channels(loudness, pitch, accent) of sensory
input reach a filter that permits only one channel of
sensory info to proceed and reach the processes of
perception. Other stimuli will be filtered out at the
sensory level and may never reach the level of When the stimuli reaches us, we analyze them at a
perception e.g. proven by Cherry’s findings that low level for target properties like loudness and pitch.
,3
sensory info is noticed by an unattended ear if it If the stimuli possess those target properties → we
does not have to be processed elaborately (notice pass the signal on to the next stage; if not → we pass
that the voice in your unattended ear switches to a on a weakened version of the stimulus.
tone). But info requiring higher perceptual processes Then, we analyze the meaning of the stimuli and their
is not noticed if not attended to (likely not notice that relevance to us, so that even a message from the
the language in your unattended ear switches from unattended ear can come into consciousness if they
English to German). are.
2. Selective Filter Model: filter theory: Moray found 4. Late filter model (Deutch and Deutch): stimuli are
that even when participants ignore most other high- filtered out only after they have been analyzed on a
level (e.g. semantic) aspects of an unattended high and low level. This would allow people to
message → they still recognize their names in an recognize info entering the unattended ear e.g.
unattended ear. recognize sound of their own names or a translation.
The reason for this effect is that messages that are of
high importance to a person may break through the → can be a filter or bottleneck theory depending on
filter of selective attention. literature and how you look at the process.
Modified Broadbent’s metaphor → selective filter
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they burst through the filtering mechanism.
Both the early and late theories differ only in their hypotheses of where the bottleneck is positioned.
5. Synthesis of Early-filter and Late-Filter Models (Ulric Neisser) synthesized the early-filter and the late-filter
models and proposed that there are 2 processes governing attention:
1. Preattentive processes: automatic swift processes 2. Attentive, controlled processes: occur later,
that notice only physical sensory characteristics of consume time and attentional resources (e.g.
the unattended message but do not discern meaning working memory). Does discern meaning and
or relationships. relationships.
Olivers Problem C
What interferes with our attention? What are the limitations of our attention?
How does divided attention work?
How do external circumstances influence attention?
One type of mental activity interferes with, distracts from, or takes attentional capacity away from the other.
Exceptions have been reported e.g. after extensive practice, some individuals are able to copy spoken
sentences while at the same time doing a primary task, which generally involves highly practiced procedural
skills like playing piano.
Trial: series of letters presented rapidly at centre of square. Two target digits (T1 and T2) that the observer has
to report at the end of the trial. Usually T2 suffers if presented within a short lag from T1.
Attentional blink: phenomenon that reflects temporal limitations in the ability to deploy visual attention.
Your eye blinks for just a moment each time your brain gulps in new data, creating a split-second "gap"
in conscious processing. When people must identify two visual stimuli in quick succession, accuracy for
the second stimulus is poor if it occurs within 200 to 500 ms of the first. But might be able to focus
better when distracted.
Who?
66 subjects with normal vision.
4 groups of participants, primary task = detect 2 digits in the stream of letters.
1. Standard control group: standard instructions.
2. Free association group: participants were instructed that while doing the task, they should think about
either their most recent holiday or their shopping requirements for an imaginary dinner with friends.
3. Listen-to-music group: perform the task while listening to a rhythmic tune. In addition in another block
they were given the additional task of detecting an occasional yell that was part of the tune.
, 4
4. Reward conditions: people were paid according to their performance: as it might motivate people more
to do the boring experiment.
Results:
In the free association group: T2 detection was significantly better overall.
Listen-to-music group had T2 detection that was so high that the attentional blink virtually disappeared.
Thus results show that performance on an attentional demanding visual detection task may improve when the
task is accompanied by task-irrelevant mental activity. Under conditions of rapid visual presentation, a
spreading of attention may be beneficial.
How?
1. Maybe due to arousal: decreased/ increased arousal (free association and music) may make the
attentional system more susceptible to other input.
2. It may cause a positive affective state, which has been shown to improve performance on several
cognitive tasks.
3. The additional task itself may have induced a more distributed state of attention and therefore a better
ability to focus? (how?)
In-depth questions
Problem A:
1. Many people, upon learning about inattentional blindness, try to think of ways to eliminate it, allowing
themselves complete situation awareness. Why might we be far worse off if we were NOT subject to
inattentional blindness?
- We have the ability to focus intently on something and differentiate between important vs unimportant.
We avoid cognitive overload by filtering out and it allows us to differentiate stimuli from each other by forming
criteria to distinguish them. We have limited attentional capacity, so we would have gotten overwhelmed and
we wouldn’t be able to focus on one task that is important. Nowadays it is more important to notice diff things
at the same time, because there are more distractions, and life is fast-paced. Evolutionarily unexpected events
occur much rarer, so the consequences of us not noticing them are minor.
2. Fougnie and Marois (2007) found that people miss unexpected visual objects when they devote their
limited cognitive resources to a memory task. Why is this such an important finding?
- We usually believe that we notice everything --- it is important because it shows us we are constantly missing
things → when we are aware, then we act with more caution.
When one attentional system is preoccupied, other att. systems are preoccupied as well.
Possible link with multitasking → inability to engage in it, because we are focusing on something else.
3. So far, we have assumed that inattentional blindness results from a failure to SEE the unexpected
stimulus. However, people might fail to report the unexpected stimulus even if they did see it – they could
simply FORGET that they saw it by the time they are asked about it. Why is this an unlikely explanation of
the inattentional blindness phenomenon?
- In IB the unexpected event does not reach the sensory register.
- it is very distinctive as a stimulus to see a gorilla, this is why people wouldn’t forget it.
4. During the video you saw, the curtains in the background changed color; something that goes unnoticed
by most viewers. This phenomenon is known as change blindness. How is it different from inattentional
blindness?
- Change blindness is the failure to notice something change and involves memory (there are before and after
conditions that you compare), you are aware of the object that changes, but not the fact that it changes.
- Inattentional blindness is an (awareness) failure to notice something altogether (no comparison needed), you
are not even aware of the object.
5. Some recent studies have demonstrated that due to attentional engagement on a primary task,
participants fail to notice target objects they have been explicitly instructed to look out for and that occur
on many trials. How is this different from inattentional blindness?
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