Be sure to study the experimental studies mentioned in the textbook for each approach/theory!
Es = experimenters; Ps = participants; STM = short term memory; WM = working memory

Chapter 3

Attention.
William James - emphasis on focalization and concentration, which are still important aspects of the definition of attention today.
Many factors influence attention, not the least of which are: complexity (of the task), and expertise (of the individual).
Divided attention - dual-task performance.
Selective attention - only attend to one or a few tasks at a time, probably necessary to keep us from being overloaded with information.
Dichotic listening task & shadowing.
Early-selection theory
Filter theory - an early-selection theory that views attention as being similar to a filter (or bottleneck) that
blocks out unattended to information. Little to no processing of unattended information takes place.
However, evidence mounted over time that some of the information that was not attended to nevertheless was processed to some extent (e.g., Ps could say if the unattended information was a voice or other noise, or if it was a male or female voice). The meaning of the stimuli could also influence this (different syllables and/or words being presented to different ears, and the person incorrectly saying the word/sentence when some of that information was presented in a nonattended channel/ear).
Cocktail party effect/phenomenon.
Attenuation theory - instead of a filter blocking out unattended information, this theory proposes that
unattended to information is attenuated (i.e., the volume is turned down). The unattended information
is still there and processed at some level, but it is very hard to recover.

According to Treisman, 3 kinds of analysis are completed on incoming information: (1) analysis of basic
physical properties of the stimulus, (2) a linguistic analysis of the linguistic stimuli (syllables, words),
and (3) a semantic analysis that identifies the meaning of the stimuli.

According to this approach, some stimuli (or meaningful units) have permanently low thresholds for
reaching our attention (i.e., the volume on these stimuli is permanently turned up). So, even if we are not
attending to them they still enter our attentional state. And, the context can temporarily lower the
threshold (e.g., priming can temporarily lower the threshold/raise the volume on a stimulus).
Late-selection theory
Multimode theory - attention takes place in a series of stages. If selection takes place early, then this requires less mental effort and several tasks may be done simultaneously. If, however, selection takes place later, then this requires more mental effort (i.e., takes more attentional capacity) and nothing else can be done simultaneously, or it is more difficult to other things simultaneously. According to multimode theory, attentional selection can take place at any of three stages:
Stage 1 (similar to filter theory, so early-selection theory) - sensory/physical representations are made.
Stage 2 - semantic representations; the meaning of stimuli are determined.
Stage 3 (late-selection theory) - previous two representations are combined & enter conscious awareness.

Know the experiment that supported multimode theory (two tasks simultaneously, the first attentional task relying on either physical differences in stimuli or basing attention on the meaning of the stimuli, then how did each group differ on the second, simultaneous task?)

Another metaphor of attention as a spotlight - the size of the spotlight is not fixed. So, attentional capacity can vary in size.
Kahneman's model of attention & effort - arousal influences total available attentional capacity; enduring dispositions (one's preferences) & momentary intentions (specific, momentary goals) determine the allocation of this capacity; evaluation (i.e., feedback) of the demands on your capacity can influence your arousal.
An implication is that practicing and expertise should influence the degree to which a task becomes automatic (i.e., as we practice a task that task should take up less and less attentional capacity).

Schema theory (an early-selection theory) - unattended information is never perceived at all; attention consists
of following the perceptual stream and anything that is not in that perceptual stream does not make it to
attention and is not processed at all. So, the perceptual stream drove attention. Experimental examples
were found using visual tasks analogous to the dichotic listening experiments (two videos were overlaid
and the Ps pay attention to just one video).

Neuropsychological Studies of Attention - examine what areas of the brain are active when a person attends to something. Areas of the parietal lobe and frontal lobe seems to play a part in attention.

Sensory neglect (also called hemineglect) supports the conclusion that the parietal lobe is involved in attention. Damage to parietal lobe results in neglect of sensory information in the opposite visual field (i.e., left hemisphere damage leads to ignoring stimuli in the right visual field). Hemineglect is a result of attentional problems, not a sensory problem.

Posner & Raichle's model of attention - Attention consists of three different processes:
(1) Disengage - disengage attention from a previous spot; the posterior parietal lobe.
(2) Move - refocus attention on a new location; superior colliculus in the midbrain.
(3) Enhance - neural processing at the new location is enhanced (focus on this stimulus);
the pulvinar (in the thalamus)
ADHD patients may suffer from an inability is just one of these three attentional processes - only the enhance process of attention may be a problem for ADHD individuals.

Event-related Potentials (ERPs) and Selective Attention - ERPs have been found to vary according to whether a stimulus is being attended to or not. The amplitude (height of the wave) is larger/higher when an individual is attending to a stimulus, indicating that there is more brain activity to an attended stimulus.

Automaticity and the Effects of Practice - with practice the amount of mental effort/capacity for a particular task will decrease.
Posner & Snyder argue that there are 3 criteria for cognitive processes to be considered automatic:
(1) the process must occur without intention.
(2) it must occur without conscious awareness.
(3) it must not interfere with other mental activities
These 3 criteria are consistent with the notion that automatic tasks require less attentional capacity.
For many adults reading has become an automatic task. Examples include the Stroop Task and the overhead in class "count the F's in the sentence."
Schneider & Shiffrin proposed that there are two levels of cognitive processing relevant to attention:
Automatic vs. Controlled (or attentional) Processing
(1) Automatic processing - occurs with easy or familiar tasks, takes up little attentional capacity,
and involves parallel processing.
(2) Controlled/attentional processing - occurs with difficult or unfamiliar tasks, takes up more
attentional capacity, and involves serial processing.
Know Schneider & Shiffrin's study with 2 conditions: consistent-mapping condition & varied-mapping condition. Experimental Ps searched through visual displays (called frames) for a particular target. Es manipulated: frame size (# of distractors), frame time (length of time frame was shown to Ps), & memory set (# or size of the target). Which of these IVs influenced performance in the two conditions?

Feature Integration Theory (FIT) (proposed by Treisman, inspired by Schneider & Shiffrin above):
People perceive objects in two stages:
Stage 1 - individual features are perceived automatically/preattentively.
Stage 2 - attention or controlled processing enables people to "glue" the separate individual
features into a unified object.
Example stimuli for this on the inside cover of the textbook. A target that differs in just one feature "pops
out" automatically & the number of background objects does not influence performance. However, if a
target differs in a combination of features, then it does not pop out, takes more attentional capacity, and
performance (i.e., reaction time) is influenced by # of background/distracter stimuli.
Illusory Conjunctions - can occur when attention is overloaded or not given enough time to "glue" together
features correctly. So, Ps incorrectly combine features into stimuli that were not presented to them
("seeing" a red "X" instead of the actual stimuli presented to them a blue "X" or a red "T").
Attentional Capture - refers to the automatic "popping out" of an object in stage one of FIT. The implication from FIT & the name "attentional capture" is that the stimulus itself captures and controls attention, thus it is an early-selection process. However, research in the textbook demonstrates that expectation (a warning to attend to a specific location) can influence and prevent attentional capture.

Divided Attention
Dual-task performance - over time people attempting to complete two tasks simultaneously will improve their performance. Three possible explanations for this include: (1) they switch their attention back and forth between the two tasks, (2) one of the tasks becomes automatic and takes up less attentional capacity enabling the person to do both tasks at once, or (3) with practice individuals can learn to combine two tasks. For the example discussed in the textbook the third explanation was seen as being the most likely, because Ps changed the way they completed the tasks over time possibly indicating they had combined them into one task.

Skip - the attentional hypothesis of automitization
Skip - the psychological refractory period (PRP)

Divided attention outside the laboratory: Cell phone usage while driving.
Experiments on cell phone usage involved Ps moving a cursor on a computer screen to follow a target and also pressing the "brake" when a red light flashed.
Listening to the radio vs. talking on a cell phone.
Talking on a cell phone: shadowing a list of words vs. a word-generation task; and easy vs. difficult driving task.

Chapter 4

Modal Model of Memory & the serial position effect (primacy & recency effects):
Memory stores (sensory, STM, LTM).
Memory processes (encoding, storage, retrieval, & forgetting).
Sensory Memory (large capacity & short duration, modality specific & info. relatively unprocessed):
Icon (Iconic memory) - duration (150-200 msec), capacity (large), know Sperling's experiments &
methodology.
Echo (Echoic memory) - duration (probably several seconds, perhaps as much as 20 seconds), capacity
(large), know experimental methodology to study the echo (whole report condition vs. partial
report condition), suffix effect (more similar auditory cue is to auditory target stimulus, the greater
the suffix effect).
Short-Term Memory (STM):
Capacity - size of STM is relatively small - 7±2 chunks (information in STM can be large if material is
chunked properly); practice and/or expertise enables one to chunk information better; knowledge
of dates from American history helps one chunk these numbers into a manageable amount of
material - 17761812186119121941.
Coding - how is information stored in STM, primary code for STM seems to be acoustic (discovered by
Ps making more errors in recall that were similar in sound to original, visually presented
stimuli).
Retention Duration - duration is short (20-30 seconds without rehearsal), the Brown-
Peterson task (a three-consonant trigram to remember - called the memory trace, then present Ps
with a number & tell them to count out loud backwards by threes, this keeps Ps from actively
rehearsing the trigram in their STM), forgetting primarily comes about through interference (but
decay probably also plays a role in forgetting), proactive interference (release form proactive
interference).
Forgetting - initially Es believed that the memory trace decayed in the Brown-Peterson task, but Es
began to believe that interference was occurring; the counting task was interfering with the
memory trace (i.e., the three-consonant trigram). Know the Waugh & Norman methodology.
Waugh & Norman compared decay vs. interference in their study presenting 16-digit lists to Ps,
the last number served as the cue for Ps to recall the number that followed the 1st occurrence of the
cue #. The 16-digit lists were presented either quickly or slowly. If decay explains forgetting in
STM, then slow presentation rate should lead to more forgetting. If interference explains
forgetting in STM, then the position of # in list should influence forgetting. Interference was
found - if the # to remember was earlier in the list (i.e., more # to interfere followed it), then more
forgetting occurred. Proactive interference & release from proactive interference
(experimental demonstration of this phenomenon - da, da, da, da, da).
Retrieval of Information - 3 possible ways to search for & retrieve information from STM; research has
found that for random/unorganized/unrelated information we use a serial & exhaustive search,
whereas for organized/related information we use a parallel search; know these experiments.
Working Memory (WM) (reconceptualizing STM): STM morphed into a more active cognitive process that
consists of several abilities. Es found that keeping info. in STM interfered with decision making (mainly
slowing it down). So, there are several related abilities in this renamed WM. Researchers saw this new
WM as being composed of several abilities: a central executive, a phonological loop, & a visuospatial
sketch pad.
So, WM is a limited-capacity "workspace" divided between storage & control processes.
(1) Central Executive - conscious awareness, attention, decision making, limited amount of resources
(i.e., limited capacity), SITs (stimulus-independent thoughts, daydreams/intrusive thoughts)
originate here (Teasdale, et al. experiments on SITs).
(2) Phonological Loop (auditory information) - this consists of two structures or parts: (1) a short-term
phonological buffer (this stores verbal information for short periods of time) & (2) a subvocal
rehearsal loop (this rehearses the information to keep it in the buffer compensating for the rapid
decay of info. from the buffer).
(3) Visuospatial sketch pad - this is important for the creation & use of mental images (both visual &
spatial images).
Executive Functioning - in what ways do Ps who have a larger WM capacity differ from those with smaller WM capacity? It may be that those with a higher WM capacity are better able to control their attention.
Higher WM capacity Ps:
o are less likely to detect their names in an unshadowed message,
o they are also more resistant to an antisaccade task (i.e., their attention was not moved off target by an
irrelevant stimulus),
o they are somewhat more resistant to proactive interference,
o they are more resistant to postevent misleading information.
Neurological Studies of Memory Processes - memories do not seem to be stored in one specific location in the brain, however, specific areas of the brain seem to be important in different memory processes.
Cerebellum - seems important in classically conditioned motor responses.
Medial temporal lobe of the cortex - important multimodal convergence site (i.e., info. from different
sensory modalities converge here), seems important in forming long-term explicit memories.
Patient H.M. - removed some temporal lobe, hippocampus, & amygdala - H.M. lost the ability to form
new episodic memories & new explicit memories.
Anterograde amnesia
Retrograde amnesia
Areas of the frontal lobe may be more involved in WM.
PET scans (measuring blood flow to the brain; PET scans assume that when a particular area of the brain
is active more blood with flow to that area) - support notion that the different processes of WM
are located in different areas of the brain (verbal info. in the left frontal & parietal lobes; spatial
info. in the right parietal, temporal & frontal lobes)
It is assumed that there may be structural changes in the nervous system when memories are formed.
Hebb rule (if synapse between two neurons is repeatedly activated, then the structure or chemistry
of the synapse changes.
Long-term potentiation (LTP) has been found in neurons in the hippocampus. LTP consists of
the observation that neurons that are repeatedly exposed to intense electrical stimulation
become more sensitive (i.e., more likely to fire in the future; the neuron's threshold level to
fire is lowered) for an extended period of time. This sort of process might form memories.