Stroop Effect Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Paying Attention
Selective attention – usually focus our attention on one or a few tasks or events at any given time
Extensive practice tasks becoming so easy and effortless performing them requires no attn. – automatic
Attention is freed up for a person to do another task simultaneously with the automatic one – divided attention
Find your keys on your desk
Spatial attention – attn. can be focused on objects and events of interest in our enviro in order to aid in our ability to recognize them amongst other events and objects
Selective Attention
The term selective attention refers to the fact that we usually focus our attention on one or a few things or events rather than on many
We process info differently depending on whether or not we have been actively focusing on a stimulus
Simply
is part of “mental effort” the more effort, the more attn. we are using
Detect a dim light or a soft sound in a bright and noisy room – data limited – depends entirely on the quality of the incoming data, not on mental effort or concentration
Automaticity and the Effects of Practice
The Stroop Effect
Series of colour bars or colour words
Asked to name as quickly as possible, the ink colour of each item in the series. When shown bars they did so quickly with few errors. Things changed dramatically when items consisted of words that named colours other than that of the ink in which the item was printed
Have had so much practice reading that the task requires little attention and is preformed rapidly
Literate adults read so quickly and effortlessly that not reading the words is hard
Automatic versus Attentional (Controlled) Processing
Three criteria for cognitive processing to be called automatic processing: must occur without intention, without involving conscious awareness, not interfere with other mental activities
Schneider and Shiffrin
Search for certain targets either letters or numbers in different arrays of letters or numbers called