Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience, 3rd Edition

112 • CHAPTER 4 Attention

2. Find someone who is willing to participate in a brief
   “observation exercise.” Cover a picture (preferably one
   that contains a number of objects or details) with a piece
   of paper. Tell the person that you are going to uncover
   the picture and that the task is to report everything that
   he or she sees. Then uncover the picture very briefly (less
   than a second), and have the person write down, or tell
   you, what he or she saw. Then repeat this procedure,
   increasing the exposure of the picture to a few seconds,
   so the person can direct his or her attention to different
   parts of the picture. Perhaps try this a third time, allow-
   ing even more time to observe the picture. From the per-
   son’s responses, what can you conclude about the role
   of attention in determining what people are aware of in
   their environment?


3. Art composition books often state that it is possible to
   arrange elements in a painting in a way that controls
   both what a person looks at in a picture and the order in
   which a person looks at things. What would the results of
   research on visual attention have to say about this idea?


4. How does the attention involved in carrying out actions
   in the environment differ from the attention involved in

scanning a picture for details, as in the previous “obser-

vation exercise”?

5. As you sit in a stadium watching a football game, there
   is a lot going on in the game, in the stands, and on the
   sidelines. Which things that you might look at would
   involve object-based attention, and which would involve
   location-based attention?


6. As the quarterback steps back to pass, the offensive line
   blocks out the defense, so the quarterback has plenty of
   time to check out what is happening downfield and hits
   an open receiver. Later in the game, two 300-pound line-
   men get through to the quarterback. While he scrambles
   for safety, he fails to see the open receiver downfield
   and instead throws a pass toward another receiver that
   is almost intercepted. How can these two situations be
   related to the way selective attention is affected by task
   load?


7. Given the mounting evidence that talking on cell phones
   (even hands-free) while driving increases the chances of
   having an accident, it could be argued that laws should
   be passed making all cell phone use illegal while driving.
   What would be your reaction if this occurred? Why?

If You WANT TO KNOW MORE

1. Losing a sense. Loss of one sense can cause changes both
   in a person’s ability to perceive with the other senses and
   in the physiological mechanisms of the remaining senses.

Proksch, J., & Bavelier, D. (2002). Changes in the spatial dis-

tribution of visual attention after early deafness. Journal of

Cognitive Neuroscience, 14, 687–701.

2. Video games. It has been shown that practice with video games
   can improve a person’s ability to process visual information.

Green, C. S., & Bavelier, D. (2003). Action video game modifies

visual selective attention. Nature, 423, 534–537.

Green, C. S., & Bavelier, D. (2006). Effect of action video games

on the spatial distribution of visuo-spatial attention. Journal

of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Perfor-

mance, 32, 1465–1478.

3. Visual neglect. An effect of brain damage called visual
   neglect causes people to pay attention to only half of
   their visual field.

Behrmann, M., & Tipper, S. P. (1999). Attention accesses mul-

tiple reference frames: Evidence from visual neglect. Journal

of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor-

mance, 25, 83–101.

Halligan, P. W., Fink, G. R., Marshall, J. C., & Vallar, G. (2003).

Spatial cognition: Evidence from visual neglect. Trends in

Cognitive Sciences, 7, 125–133.

Tipper, S. P., & Behrmann, M. (1996). Object-centered not

scene-based visual neglect. Journal of Experimental Psy-

chology: Human Perception and Performance, 22, 1261–

1278.

4. Attention and memory. A connection has been demon-
   strated between attention and our ability to hold infor-
   mation in memory.

Awh, E., Vogel, E. K., & Oh, S.-H. (2006). Interactions

between attention and working memory. Neuroscience, 139,

201–206.

Conway, A. R. A, Cowan, N., & Bunting, M. F. (2001). The

cocktail party phenomenon revisited: The importance

of working memory capacity. Psychonomic Bulletin and

Review, 8, 331–335.

Key TERMS

Attention, 82
Attenuation theory of attention, 86
Attenuator, 86
Autism, 109

Automatic processing, 92

Balint’s syndrome, 106

Bottleneck model, 85

Change blindness, 97

Cocktail party effect, 85

Cognitive load, 87

Cognitive resources, 87

Compatible fl anker, 88

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