Attention Quiz

The cocktail party phenomenon (that we can focus on a single conversation when in a large noisy crowd) is a good example of

• divided attention

• visual attention

• selective attention

• change blindness

Extensive practice can enhance a person's ability to divide their attention across multiple tasks. Why is this?

• It leads to automatic processing, freeing up attention resources to complete multiple tasks

• It increases how much we like one or both tasks, so we are more likely to keep trying

• It increases our confidence in our ability to divide attention

• Extensive practice doesn't actually enhance ability to divide attention.

We know that task type (e.g., modality, type of response) can also influence how well we can divide attention across multiple tasks. Which two tasks will show the best performance if done at the same time?

• Listening to a book while conversing with a friend

• Repeating back a list of words while also saying whether each word is a noun or not

• Pointing to correct math answers while also pointing to photos of cats

• Listening to a book while also pointing to photos of cat

We can control whether focusing on a single letter or an entire word. This is an example of the:

• Spotlight attention model

• Zoom lens attention model

• Object-based attention model

• Auditory attention model

Damage to the right parietal lobe of the brain can lead to unilateral neglect, a condition where patients typically:

• ignore the left side of space

• ignore the right side of space

• cannot see the left side of space

• cannot see the right side of space

Which of the following is FALSE about pseudoneglect?

• It refers to an over-attention to the left side of space

• It happens to most neurologically healthy people

• It may influence how we look at faces, art, or even where we crash when walking or driving

• It leads to people mis-bisecting lines to the far right of true centre

Many animals take cues from eye gaze of conspecifics (members of the same species)

• True

• False

In gaze cueing experiments, a face on the screen looks either to the left or right. Then a target appears on the screen. What do gaze cueing experiments typically show?

• Participants can gain information about whether the face was threatening or not based on gaze alone

• Participants only use gaze cues from realistic human faces

• Participants are more accurate at identifying targets that appear opposite of where the gaze was focused

• Participants are faster at identifying targets that appeared where the gaze was focused

Failure to notice an unexpected item in your environment is referred to as

• Pseudoneglect

• Multitasking

• Inattentional blindness

• Change blindness

Which of the following occurs because we naturally take the gist of a scene, so we miss fine details:

• Inattentional blindness

• Change blindness

• Pseudoneglect

• Multitasking