Chapter 2 Learning outcomes

After reading this mini-text and participating in the lectures, you should be able to:

1. Explain why we need attentional selection.
2. Explain what limited capacity means.
3. Explain the reasons why people don’t notice changes in change blindness videos.
4. Know the three kinds of attentional selection.
5. Describe how the kinds of selection connect to visual search performance and Treisman’s FIT (feature integration theory).
6. Know two bottlenecks in human information processing and describe the roles they play in multiple phenomena.
7. Define, and distinguish between, top-down (endogenous) and bottom-up (exogenous) attention.
8. Explain why people miss important information in magic tricks and in the “inattentional blindness” videos.
9. Explain the role of bottom-up attention, top-down attention, expectation, task, and limited capacity in each of the phenomena discussed.
10. Understand how sensory signals can distract and the negative effects on human performance
11. Explain why learning is important for determining what attracts our attention

These are high-level outcomes. You’ll see more detailed points in each chapter, often with questions at the end to check your understanding of individual points.