10 12 15 PSY 317 Notes Housekeeping Assignment 3 is due next week Exam 2 is next week Different Objects Different Systems Both of these things may be pushed back so be alert of tentative dates Do similar recognition processes hold across the senses o For the most part YES Faces however do seem to be a special case o Agnosia inability to recognize certain stimuli Prosopagnosia specifically the inability to recognize faces Patients have difficulty identifying birds and car parts even though this was their expertise Expert performance worsens with upside down expert material o Fusiform face area activates during face perception and when doing things in which you re an expert Ex Experts on cars had a much more difficult time identifying pictures of upside down cars than non experts Holistic Face Perception Faces are recognized not by the parts but by the overall configuration of the face Top Down Influence on Object Recognition Our knowledge also influences our ability to recognize objects o Priming Ideas If I tell you that you ll be identifying music stars in the next few slides you will probably answer easier quicker than you would if you did not know what was coming up o Easily recognize objects in your area of expertise o Difficulty recognizing objects out of context Attention What is Attention Class Exercise Students sat quietly for a minute and took a mental note about all that they experienced in about thirty seconds of silence o At any given moment there are tons of stimuli internal and external yet we don t recognize them all at once In fact there are many stimuli that you didn t notice 10 12 15 Selective Attention Rough definition ignoring other stimuli William James Definition o Refers to the skill through which one focuses on one input or one task while o Everyone knows what attention is It is the taking possession of the mind in clear and vivid form of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought Focalization concentration of consciousness are of its essence It implies a withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others While everyone is able to recognize what attention is no sound definition has been agreed upon Dichotic Listening Early method to measure selective attention o Participants wear headphones and hear different speech signals in the left and right ears Their task is to shadow one speech signal this means to repeat the words they hear from one channel immediately as they hear them then flip and shadow the other Attended v Unattended channels The attended channel is the speech signal that you are focusing on and repeating The unattended channel is the speech signal that you are ignoring Main Findings o Shadowing the attended channel is pretty good o What happens to the unattended channel Participants can rarely recall or recognize what was presented in the unattended channel Didn t realize Czech words presented in unattended channel Unless the information is personally relevant o Cocktail party effect participants hear their own name or personally relevant words in the unattended channel Main takeaway it is suggested that information doesn t get through unless it is personally important Students watched Youtube videos on Inattentional Blindness links are in the Chapter Four Attention slideshow on Slide 8 Perceiving and the Limits of Cognitive Capacity Why does some information get through but not all o Older theory bottleneck theories 10 12 15 o Newer theories filter theories Attentional resources are limited some information must be lost Ex Traffic jam when the road goes down to one lane and traffic gets congested only a few cars are able to merge and continue on down the road the rest are left behind Selected information gets through while irrelevant information does not Ex Coffee filter the water gets through and the coffee grounds do not You need the filter to work this way in order to enjoy your coffee Water selected info Grounds Irrelevant info Booster theories sometimes attention is attenuated to what you are supposed to attend to