Sensation and Perception - Chapter 6 - Visual Attention Flashcards

2439545983	Attention	The process of focusing on some objects while ignoring others. Can enhance the processing of the attended object.	0
2439546543	Attentional Capture	Occurs when stimulus salience causes an involuntary shift of attention.	1
2439547657	Autism	A serious developmental disorder in which one of the major symptoms is the withdrawal of contact from other people.	2
2439547979	Balint's Syndrome	A condition resulting from damage to a person's parietal lobe. One characteristic of this syndrome is an inability to focus attention on individual objects.	3
2439548319	Binding	The process by which features such as color, form, motion, and location are combined to create our perception of a coherent object.	4
2439549383	Binding Problem	The problem of how neural activity in many separated areas in the brain is combined to create a perception of a coherent object.	5
2439550228	Change Blindness	Difficulty in detecting differences between two visual stimuli that are presented one after another, often with a short blank stimulus interposed between them. Also occurs when part of a stimulus is changed very slowly.	6
2439550560	Conjunctional Search	A visual search task in which it is necessary to search for a combination (or conjunction) of two or more features on the same stimulus to find the target.	7
2439551584	Dishabituation	An increase in looking time that occurs when a stimulus is changed.	8
2439552190	Dual-Task Procedure	An experimental procedure in which subjects are required to carry out simultaneously a central task that demands attention and a peripheral task that involves making a decision about the contents of a scene.	9
2439553260	Feature Integration Theory	A theory proposed by Treisman to explain how an object is broken down into features and how these features are recombined to result in a perception of the object.	10
2439554376	Feature Search	A visual search task in which a person can find a target by searching for only one feature.	11
2439554645	Fixation	The brief pause of the eye that occurs between eye movements as a person scans a scene.	12
2439555102	Focused Attention Stage	The stage of processing in feature integration theory in which the features are combined	13
2439555653	Habtituation	Paying less attention to the same stimulus that is presented repeatedly. For example, infants look at a stimulus less and less on each successive trial.	14
2439556137	High-Load Task	Task that involves more processing resources and that therefore uses more of a person's perceptual capacity.	15
2439556897	Illusory Conjunction	Illusory combination of features that are perceived when stimuli containing a number of features are presented briefly and under conditions in which focused attention is difficult. For example, presenting a red square and a blue triangle could potentially create the perception of a red triangle.	16
2439557353	Inattentional Blindness	A situation in which a stimulus that is not attended is not perceived, even though the person is looking directly at it.	17
2439558600	Load Theory of Attention	Lavie's proposal that the amount of perceptual capacity that remains as a person is carrying out a task determines how well the person can avoid being distracted by task-irrelevant stimuli. If a person's perceptual load is close to perceptual capacity, the person is less likely to be distracted by task-irrelevant stimuli.	18
2439558898	Low-Load Task	A task that uses only a small amount of the person's perceptual capacity.	19
2439559532	Perceptual Capacity	The resources a person has for carrying out perceptual tasks.	20
2439560098	Perceptual Completion	The perception of an object as extending behind occluding objects.	21
2439560419	Perceptual Load	The amount of a person's perceptual capacity needed to carry out a particular perceptual task.	22
2439562995	Preattentive Stage	An automatic and rapid stage of processing, proposed by Treisman's feature integration theory, during which a stimulus is decomposed into individual features.	23
2439563407	Precueing	A procedure in which a cue stimulus is presented to direct an observer's attention to a specific location where a test stimulus is likely to be presented. This procedure was used by Posner to show that attention enhances the processing of a stimulus presented at the cued location.	24
2439564057	Saliency Map	A "map" of a visual display that takes into account characteristics of the display such as color, contrast, and orientation that are associated with capturing attention.	25
2439564748	Same-Object Advantage	The faster responding that occurs when enhancement spreads within an object. Faster reaction times occur when a target is located within the object that is receiving the subject's attention, even if the subject is looking at another place within the object.	26
2439565151	Scene Schema	An observer's knowledge about what is contained in typical scenes. An observer's attention is affected by knowledge of what is usually found in the scene.	27
2439565531	Scene Statistics	The probability of various things occurring in the environment.	28
2439566572	Spatial Attention	Attention to a specific location.	29
2439567179	Stimulus Salience	Characteristics such as bright colors, high contrast, and highly visible orientations that cause stimuli to stand out and therefore attract attention.	30
2439567508	Task-Irrelevant Stimuli	Stimuli that do not provide information relevant to the task at hand.	31
2439568087	Visual Scanning	Moving the eyes to focus attention on different locations on objects or in scenes.	32
2439570590	Covert Attention	Attention without looking. Seeing something out of the corner of your eye, for example	33
2439571353	Overt Attention	Attention that involves looking directly at the attended object.	34
2439572541	Saccadic Eye Movement	Rapid Eye movement between fixations that occurs when scanning a scene.	35