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ATTENTION & PATTERN RECOGNITION:Word Superiority Effect

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Cognitive Psychology ­ PSY 504
VU
Lesson 20
ATTENTION & PATTERN RECOGNITION
Attention is required to combine features to perceive patterns.
Treisman & Gelade (1980) performed an experiment. They had the subjects try to detect a T in
an array of 30 I's and Y's. They reasoned that subjects could do this by simply looking for the
cross-bar feature of the T that distinguishes it from all I's and Y's. Subjects took about 800
milliseconds to make this decision. Triesman and Gelade also asked subjects to detect T in an
array of 30 I's and Z's. In this condition, they could not use just the vertical bar or just the
horizontal bar of the T; they could have to look for the conjunction of these features, performing
the feature combination required in pattern recognition. It took subjects more than 1200
milliseconds to make their decision.  Thus, a condition requiring them to recognize the
conjunction of features took about 400 milliseconds longer than one in which perception of a
single feature was sufficient. Triesman and Gelade varied the size of the display they found that
subjects were much more affected by display size in the condition that required recognition of the
conjunction of features. Subjects showed little difference between the single feature and the
conjunction condition for displays containing fewer than five letters. Only with displays presenting
more distracters did subjects' attention become substantially overload. It might seem surprising
that attention is required to detect patterns of features that define common letters. We have
experience of automatically recognizing letters. For familiar letters the deficit in perception of
feature conjunctions only becomes apparent with large displays.
Attention is not just orientation.
Context & Pattern Recognition
Look at the top line you see a hen, a rabbit, after the rabbit there is dog and cat. After that there is
an animal even it is not clear. In bottom line you can see a picture of man, woman, child and girl.
We perceive the last picture as a picture of human. Even this picture is same like the above
picture. Because of the context we perceive things. Same picture when is included in animals
picture we perceive it as animal and when this is in human pictures we perceive it as human.
Top-Down Processing
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Cognitive Psychology ­ PSY 504
VU
The general context provided by the words forces the appropriate interpretation. When context or
general world knowledge guides perception, we refer the processing as top- down processing,
because high-level general knowledge determines the interpretation of the low-level perceptual
units.
THE CAT
The middle letter can be seen as A or H.
Top Down Processing or contextual effects. It means surrounding has effect on our perception.
Word Superiority Effect
This phenomenon can be understood by the experiment of Reicher and Wheeler (1970).they
presented a brief presentation of either a letter (D) or a word (WORD). Immediately afterward
they were given a pair of alternatives and instructed to report which they had seen. If they had
been showed D, subjects might be presented with D or K as alternatives. If they had been shown
WORD, they might be given WORd, or WORK as alternatives.Subjects showed a letter alone or
in a word. Subjects were about 10% better in word condition. They more accurately discriminated
between D and K in the context of word than as letters alone. This phenomenon is called word
superiority effect (WSE).
Why WSE?
Rumelhart & Siple (1974) has provided one explanation for Why subjects are more accurate in
the word condition. Suppose subjects are able to identify the first three letters as WOR. Now
consider how many four-letters words are consistent with a WOR beginning WORK, WORD,
WORM, WORN, WORT
Suppose subjects only detect the bottom curve in the fourth letter. However, when the letter is
presented alone and subjects detect the curve, they will not know whether the letter was B, D, O,
or Q, since each of these letters is consistent with the curve feature. Thus, in WOR context
subjects need only detect one feature in order to perceive the fourth letter, but when the letter is
presented alone they must identify a number of features. Their analysis implies that Perception is
inferential. Like curve in D will help in recognition
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Table of Contents:
  1. INTRODUCTION:Historical Background
  2. THE INFORMATION PROCESSING APPROACH
  3. COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY:Brains of Dead People, The Neuron
  4. COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY (CONTINUED):The Eye, The visual pathway
  5. COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY (CONTINUED):Hubel & Wiesel, Sensory Memory
  6. VISUAL SENSORY MEMORY EXPERIMENTS (CONTINUED):Psychological Time
  7. ATTENTION:Single-mindedness, In Shadowing Paradigm, Attention and meaning
  8. ATTENTION (continued):Implications, Treisman’s Model, Norman’s Model
  9. ATTENTION (continued):Capacity Models, Arousal, Multimode Theory
  10. ATTENTION:Subsidiary Task, Capacity Theory, Reaction Time & Accuracy, Implications
  11. RECAP OF LAST LESSONS:AUTOMATICITY, Automatic Processing
  12. AUTOMATICITY (continued):Experiment, Implications, Task interference
  13. AUTOMATICITY (continued):Predicting flight performance, Thought suppression
  14. PATTERN RECOGNITION:Template Matching Models, Human flexibility
  15. PATTERN RECOGNITION:Implications, Phonemes, Voicing, Place of articulation
  16. PATTERN RECOGNITION (continued):Adaptation paradigm
  17. PATTERN RECOGNITION (continued):Gestalt Theory of Perception
  18. PATTERN RECOGNITION (continued):Queen Elizabeth’s vase, Palmer (1977)
  19. OBJECT PERCEPTION (continued):Segmentation, Recognition of object
  20. ATTENTION & PATTERN RECOGNITION:Word Superiority Effect
  21. PATTERN RECOGNITION (CONTINUED):Neural Networks, Patterns of connections
  22. PATTERN RECOGNITION (CONTINUED):Effects of Sentence Context
  23. MEMORY:Short Term Working Memory, Atkinson & Shiffrin Model
  24. MEMORY:Rate of forgetting, Size of memory set
  25. Memory:Activation in a network, Magic number 7, Chunking
  26. Memory:Chunking, Individual differences in chunking
  27. MEMORY:THE NATURE OF FORGETTING, Release from PI, Central Executive
  28. Memory:Atkinson & Shiffrin Model, Long Term Memory, Different kinds of LTM
  29. Memory:Spread of Activation, Associative Priming, Implications, More Priming
  30. Memory:Interference, The Critical Assumption, Limited capacity
  31. Memory:Interference, Historical Memories, Recall versus Recognition
  32. Memory:Are forgotten memories lost forever?
  33. Memory:Recognition of lost memories, Representation of knowledge
  34. Memory:Benefits of Categorization, Levels of Categories
  35. Memory:Prototype, Rosch and Colleagues, Experiments of Stephen Read
  36. Memory:Schema Theory, A European Solution, Generalization hierarchies
  37. Memory:Superset Schemas, Part hierarchy, Slots Have More Schemas
  38. MEMORY:Representation of knowledge (continued), Memory for stories
  39. Memory:Representation of knowledge, PQ4R Method, Elaboration
  40. Memory:Study Methods, Analyze Story Structure, Use Multiple Modalities
  41. Memory:Mental Imagery, More evidence, Kosslyn yet again, Image Comparison
  42. Mental Imagery:Eidetic Imagery, Eidetic Psychotherapy, Hot and cold imagery
  43. Language and thought:Productivity & Regularity, Linguistic Intuition
  44. Cognitive development:Assimilation, Accommodation, Stage Theory
  45. Cognitive Development:Gender Identity, Learning Mathematics, Sensory Memory