PSYCH207 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Electrodermal Activity, Automaticity, Long-Term Memory

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCH207
• Professor: Jennifer Stolz

Document Summary

Paying attention involves selecting relevant information and ignoring irrelevant information. Selective attention: when reading a passage, there are different elements such as: I(cid:374)di(cid:272)ated the pro(cid:272)essi(cid:374)g of (cid:862)u(cid:374)atte(cid:374)ded(cid:863) i(cid:374)fo: observers also produce gsrs when new city names were presented, despite the fact that they were not aware of having heard them, conclusion: Answer: attention acts like a filter and selects the attended information and largely blocks out the unattended information, however, some basic physical properties of the speech in the unattended ear is processed, like the volume or pitch. Theoretical characteristics of controlled vs. automatic behavior: controlled processing, serial, requires attention, capacity limited, under conscious control, eg. Riding bicycle, driving a car: required more attention to learn how to brake, how to balance, etc, automatic processing, without intention, no conscious awareness, no interference with other mental activities, parallel, does not constrain capacity limitations.