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1. When Sam listens to his girlfriend Susan in the restaurant and ignores other people’s conversations, he is engaged in
the process of __________ attention.
a. low load
b. divided
c. cocktail party
d. selective
ANSWER: d

2. Which of the following is an experimental procedure used to study how attention affects the processing of competing
stimuli?
a. Early selection
b. Filtering
c. Channeling
d. Dichotic listening
ANSWER: d

3. The technique where the participant’s task is to focus on the message in one ear, called the attended ear, and to repeat
what he or she is hearing out loud is known as
a. filter model attention.
b. shadowing.
c. dichotic listening.
d. detector listening.
ANSWER: c

4. The ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli is called
a. sensory memory.
b. cocktail party effect.
c. detection.
d. filtering.
ANSWER: b

5. Colin Cherry’s experiment in which participants listened to two different messages, one presented to each ear, found
that people
a. could focus on a message only if they are repeating it.
b. could focus on a message only if they rehearsed it.
c. could focus on one message and ignore the other one at the same time.
d. could not focus on a message presented to only one ear.
ANSWER: c

6. The cocktail party effect is

a. the ability to pay attention to one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli.
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b. the inability to pay attention to one stimulus in the presence of competing stimuli.
c. the diminished awareness of information in a crowd.
d. the equal division of attention between competing stimuli.
ANSWER: a

7. The “filter model” proposes that the filter identifies the attended message based on
a. meaning.
b. modality.
c. physical characteristics.
d. higher order characteristics.
ANSWER: c

8. Broadbent’s model is called the early selection model because

a. sensory memory holds all of the information for fraction of second and then transfers all of it to filter.
b. the output is sent to short-term memory, which holds the information for 10–15 seconds and also transfer the
information to long-term memory.
c. the attended information has been let through the filter, the detector processes all information that enters it.
d. the filter eliminates the unattended information right at the beginning of the flow of information.
ANSWER: d

9. Anne Treisman’s attenuator analyzes the incoming message in terms of all of the following EXCEPT
a. how sequences of words create meaningful phrases.
b. how the message groups into syllables or words.
c. whether the message is fast or slow.
d. whether the perceptual load is low or high.
ANSWER: d

10. Broadbent’s model is called an early selection model because

a. the filter eliminates unattended information at the beginning of the information flow.
b. the filtering step occurs before the information enters the sensory memory.
c. only a select set of environmental information enters the system.
d. incoming information is selected by the detector.
ANSWER: a

11. What contains the words, stored in memory, each of which has a threshold for being activated?
a. Attenuator
b. Dictionary unit
c. Detector
d. Filter
ANSWER: b
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12. Suppose twin teenagers are vying for their mother’s attention. The mother is trying to pay attention to one of her
daughters, though both girls are talking (one about her boyfriend, one about a school project). According to the operating
characteristics of Treisman’s attenuator, it is most likely the attenuator is analyzing the incoming messages in terms of
a. physical characteristics.
b. language.
c. meaning.
d. direction.
ANSWER: c

13. Which of the following is most closely associated with Treisman’s attenuation theory of selective attention?
a. Late selection
b. Stroop experiments
c. Precueing
d. Dictionary unit
ANSWER: d

14. According to Treisman’s attenuation model, which of the following would you expect to have the highest threshold
for most people?
a. The word “money”
b. Their child’s first name
c. The word “home”
d. The word “platypus”
ANSWER: d

15. Which stage in Treisman’s attenuation model has a threshold component?

a. The attenuator
b. The dictionary unit
c. The filter
d. The “leaky” filter
ANSWER: b

16. A high threshold in Treisman’s model of attention implies that

a. weak signals can cause activation.
b. it takes a strong signal to cause activation.
c. all signals cause activation.
d. no signals cause activation.
ANSWER: b

17. Which of the following is the process by which features such as color, form motion, and location are combined to
create our perception of a coherent object?
a. Change blindness
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b. Change detection
c. Illusory conjunctions
d. Binding
ANSWER: d

18. Suppose you are in your kitchen writing a grocery list, while your roommate is watching TV in the next room. A
commercial for spaghetti sauce comes on TV. Although you are not paying attention to the TV, you “suddenly” remember
that you need to pick up spaghetti sauce and add it to the list. Your behavior is best predicted by which of the following
models of attention?
a. Object-based
b. Early selection
c. Spotlight
d. Late selection
ANSWER: d

19. If you are folding towels while watching television, you may find that you don’t have to pay much attention to the act
of folding while keeping up with the storyline on the TV show. Folding the towels would be an example of a(n) ________
task.
a. attenuated
b. high-load
c. low-load
d. filtered
ANSWER: c

20. The Stroop effect demonstrates people’s inability to ignore the __________ of words.
a. meaning
b. color
c. size
d. font
ANSWER: a

21. With the Stroop effect, you would expect to find longest response times when
a. the color and the name matched.
b. the color and the name differed.
c. the shape and the name matched.
d. the shape and the name differed.
ANSWER: b

22. The Stroop effect occurs when participants

a. are told to divide their attention between colors and shapes.
b. try to name colors and ignore words.
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c. try to select some incoming information based on meaning.
d. are told to shadow two messages simultaneously.
ANSWER: b

23. The use of a machine that tracks the movement of one’s eyes can help reveal the shifting of one’s __________
attention.
a. overt
b. covert
c. divided
d. dichotic
ANSWER: a

24. A bottom-up process is involved in fixating on an area of a scene that

a. has high stimulus salience.
b. fits with the observer’s interests.
c. is familiar.
d. carries meaning for the observer.
ANSWER: a

25. When we search a scene, initial fixations are most likely to occur on __________ areas.
a. high-load
b. low-load
c. high-saliency
d. low-saliency
ANSWER: c

26. Eye tracking studies investigating attention as we carry out actions such as making a peanut butter sandwich found
that a person’s eye movements
a. usually follow a motor action by a fraction of a second.
b. are influenced by unusual objects placed in the scene.
c. are determined primarily by the task.
d. continually scan all objects and areas of the scene.
ANSWER: c

27. Which of the following illustrates how we can miss things even if they are clearly visible?
a. Inattentional blindness
b. Change blindness
c. Binding
d. Illusory conjunctions
ANSWER: a

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28. The notion that faster responding occurs when enhancement spreads within an object is called
a. high-load detraction.
b. divided attention.
c. location-based potentiation.
d. same-object advantage.
ANSWER: d

29. According to your text, the ability to divide attention depends on all of the following EXCEPT
a. practice.
b. the type of processing being used.
c. the difficulty of the tasks.
d. task cueing.
ANSWER: d

30. Imagine that lawmakers are considering changing the driving laws and that you have been consulted as an attention
expert. Given the principles of divided attention, in which of the following conditions would a person have the most
difficulty with driving and therefore pose the biggest safety risk on the road?
a. When the person has to drive to work early in the morning.
b. When the driver is stuck in stop-and-go traffic.
c. When the driver has to park in a crowded parking garage.
d. When the person is driving an unfamiliar vehicle that is more difficult to operate.
ANSWER: d

31. In Schneider and Shiffrin’s experiment, in which participants were asked to indicate whether a target stimulus was
present in a series of rapidly presented “frames,” divided attention was easier
a. once processing had become automatic.
b. when processing was done verbally.
c. when verbal processing was prohibited by the experimenters.
d. when processing was more controlled.
ANSWER: a

32. Which of the following statements is correct?

a. Peripheral vision is the area you are looking at.
b. Central vision is everything off to the side.
c. Objects in central vision fall on the small area called the fovea.
d. Everything to the right is outside your vision.
ANSWER: c

33. Each time you briefly pause on one face, you are making a(n) ______________.
a. fixation
b. saccadic eye movement
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c. overt attention
d. stimulus salience
ANSWER: a

34. Which of the following options would NOT be an important factor in automatic processing?
a. Close attention
b. Ease in performing parallel tasks
c. Tasks that are well-practiced
d. The use of few cognitive resources
ANSWER: a

35. Saccadic eye movement is a ______________.

a. rapid, jerky movement from one fixation to the next
b. shifting of attention from one place to another by moving the eyes
c. reaction to physical properties of stimulus
d. brief pause on another person’s face
ANSWER: c

36. Research on the use of cell phones while driving indicates that
a. the negative effect can be decreased by using “hands-free” units.
b. the problem with cell phones is that attention is distracted from the task of driving by the need to hold the
phone and drive with one hand.
c. the main effect of cell phone use on driving safety can be attributed to the fact that attention is used up by the
cognitive task of talking on the phone.
d. the public perception that using a cell phone while driving poses a significant risk to drivers’ safety is, in fact,
incorrect.
ANSWER: c

37. Strayer and Johnston’s (2001) experiment involving simulated driving and the use of “hands-free” versus “handheld”
cell phones found that
a. talking on either kind of phone impairs driving performance significantly and to the same extent.
b. driving performance was impaired only with the handheld cell phones.
c. driving performance was impaired less with the hands-free phones than with the handheld phones.
d. divided attention (driving and talking on the phone) did not affect performance.
ANSWER: a

38. The difficulty we have in recognizing even an obvious alteration in a scene is called __________ blindness.
a. covert
b. exogenous
c. endogenous
d. change
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ANSWER: d

39. Scene schema is

a. rapid movements of the eyes from one place to another in a scene.
b. short pauses of the eyes on points of interest in a scene.
c. how attention is distributed throughout a static scene.
d. knowledge about what is contained in a typical scene.
ANSWER: d

40. Lan has no idea what she just read in her text because she was thinking about how hungry she is and what she is going
to have for dinner. This is a real-world example of
a. the late-selection model of attention.
b. an object-based attentional failure.
c. mind wandering.
d. the cocktail party phenomenon.
ANSWER: c

41. According to Treisman’s feature integration theory, the first stage of perception is called the __________ stage.
a. feature analysis
b. focused attention
c. preattentive
d. letter analysis
ANSWER: c

42. Illusory conjunctions are

a. combinations of features from different stimuli.
b. misidentified objects using the context of the scene.
c. combinations of features from the masking field and the stimuli.
d. features that are consistent across different stimuli.
ANSWER: a

43. __________ is the process by which features such as color, form, motion, and location are combined to create our
perception of a coherent object.
a. Binding
b. Integration
c. Assimilation
d. Equilibration
ANSWER: a

44. During a visit to the local museum, you appreciate the incredible beauty of the paintings displayed. Your ability to see
the paintings as complete pictures rather than individual, disconnected dots of color, texture, and location occurs through a
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process called __________.
a. contiguity
b. proximity
c. accommodation
d. binding
ANSWER: d

45. Proponents of multitasking would note ________ to support their opinion, whereas opponents of multitasking would
point to ________ to justify their perspective.
a. selective attention; divided attention
b. distraction; selective attention
c. divided attention; distraction
d. attentional capture; divided attention
ANSWER: c

46. Which of the following attention model components produces two levels of output?
a. Treisman’s filter
b. Treisman’s attenuator
c. MacKay’s dictionary unit
d. Broadbent’s detector
ANSWER: b

47. How does perceptual load differ from processing capacity?

a. Perceptual load is static and processing capacity is variable.
b. Perceptual load is genetic and processing capacity is learned.
c. Perceptual load is sensory and processing capacity is cognitive.
d. Perceptual load is individual and processing capacity is universal.
ANSWER: d

48. As the ________ of a stimulus increases, ________ tends to ________.

a. sampling; warping; decrease
b. warping; salience; decrease
c. schema; sampling; increase
d. salience; fixation; increase
ANSWER: d

49. In which concept is an individual’s knowledge most important?

a. schema
b. precueing
c. salience

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d. binding
ANSWER: a

50. Which of the following best describes the result of attention in the context of perception?
a. warping
b. enhancement
c. accuracy
d. filtration
ANSWER: b

51. If you stand very close to a pointillist painting, all you will see are tiny colored dots. But as you step away from the
painting, larger areas of color become noticeable and eventually become recognizable objects such as flowers or clouds.
This is similar to which of the following?
a. sampling
b. scanning
c. synchronizing
d. binding
ANSWER: d

52. Placing tomatoes, onions, jalapenos, garlic, cilantro, and lime juice into a blender and turning it on to produce salsa is
similar to which of the following?
a. the detector of Broadbent’s filter model
b. the focused attention stage of feature integration theory
c. the dictionary unit of Treisman’s attenuation model
d. the synchronization stage of the executive attention network
ANSWER: b

53. Compare and contrast Broadbent’s and Treisman’s models of attention. How are they similar? How do they differ?
Which model is considered “leaky” and why?
ANSWER: Answer not provided

54. Compare and contrast stimulus salience and scene schemas. Give an example using one visual stimulus to identify
elements that fit each category.
ANSWER: Answer not provided

55. Explain how operant conditioning plays a role in people’s use of cell phones, even in situations where they should
not. What strategies could be employed to minimize this process?
ANSWER: Answer not provided

56. Explain the difference between inattentional blindness and change blindness. Give an example of each to support your
thinking.
ANSWER: Answer not provided

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57. Define selective attention, divided attention, and attentional capture. Give an example of each to support your
thinking.
ANSWER: Answer not provided

58. Compare and contrast processing capacity and perceptual load. Give an example of a low-load and a high-load task
that you experienced today.
ANSWER: Answer not provided

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