If multiple gauges have indicators pointing to the right, but one points downward, you immediately notice the outlier, regardless of the number of other gauges. What directs your attention? a. A top-down process. b. A pre-attentive process. c. A random process. d. An attentive process.

Social Studies · High School · Tue Nov 03 2020

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b. A pre-attentive process.

  • Pre-attentive processing is an unconscious accumulation of information from the environment. All information is processed, but only certain stimuli will result in perception. It happens very quickly (in about 200 - 250 milliseconds) before the brain has time to consciously think about or "attend to" the information.
  • In the example you've given, the direction of the indicator on a gauge is a feature that can be processed in a pre-attentive manner. Your visual system naturally detects the anomaly without the need for focused attention, because it stands out as being different from the rest. This is known as an example of bottom-up processing, where perception starts with the stimulus which is inherently attention-grabbing.

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