INFORMATION PROCESSING

The process of thought and decision-making

is achieved by electro-chemical currents in the brain

 Detection
 Perception

 Decision

 Action

 Feedback
FUNCTIONAL MODEL
Short
OF INFORMATION Term memory
PROCESSING
Central
decision
Perception maker Action
Stimuli

Receptor&
Sensory Attention Long term
stores mechanism memory

Motor
programmes

feedback
 INFORMATION PROCESSING

Bottom-up
Data-driven Processing
Top- down
Conceptually-driven Processing
 ATTENTION
 Is the process of directing and
focussing psychological resources to
enhance perception, performance and
mental experience.
Attention - improves mental
processing, required effort
and is limitted
 WHY WE NEED ATTENTION
MECHANISMS?

 Limited recourses of:

 Short-term memory
 Central decision maker

 “Cocktail Party Effect”

 What is the cocktail party effect?

The ability to hear your own name or call sign

whilst concentrating on something else

With reference to human information

processing, why is attention mechanism
required?
Because the stimuli around us all happen
at the same time and we need a filter
mechanism of some kind
 Two types of attention
 selective attention

 divided attention
What are the two types of attention?

Selective and divided

 The major danger situation:
 Lack of attention / poor management

 Stress and attention /low and high

exposure to stressors

Arousal level, low/ high Efficient of the Central

processor
What is the relationship between arousal
and performance?
Performance is degraded by both low and
high arousal level.
Optimum

Low High

Arousal level
Overload -danger of attention
becoming narrowed so that
important information's is
disregarded.
Qualitative Overload
The information is perceived to be
beyond our attentional capacity and the
task too difficult
Quantitative Overload
There are just too many responses
to be made in the time available
 Symptoms of Overload
 Degradation of performance

 Degradation
Tunneling of performance

 Tunneling
Regression

 Regression
Mental “blocking”

 Mental “blocking”
Mood swing

 Mood swing
Restlessnes
 Trembling

 Trembling
Panic
 Panic
 PERCEPTION
 Involves the conversion of the sensory
information received into a meaningful
structure
PERCEPT
 is not a complete representation of the
information in the sensory store but an
immediate interpretation of it.
We generate a mental model on the basis of
past experience and learning

PAST EXPERIENCE
&LEARNING
Expectation ...

Confirmation Bias А

Having built mental model

we will tend to seek only
information that confirm our B

model and ignore other... C

 PERCEPTION

 It is true to say the perception is

SUBJECTIVE
On what is our mental model of the
world based?
Our experiences and learning

Having created a mental model what is the

danger?

To only seen information which supports

it (Confirmation bias).
 THREE DIMENSIONAL
MODELS
 Convergency
 Stereopsis
 Obscuration
 Atmospheric perspective
 Retinal size