full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Amishi Jha: How to tame your wandering mind

Unscramble the Blue Letters

I'm going to give you a ssene of the kind of experiments that we actually do in the lab. We would show participants images like this one. You should see a face and a scene overlaid on each other. And what we do is we ask our participants as they're viewing a series of these types of orlaievd iegmas, to do something with their attention. On some trials, we'll ask them to pay attention to the face. And to make sure they're doing that, we ask them to tell us, by pressing a button, if the face appeared to be male or female. On other trials, we ask them to tell what the scene was — was it iodnor or outdoor? And in this way, we can manipulate attention and confirm that the participants were actually doing what we said. Our hypotheses about attention were as follows: if ateonttin is indeed doing its job and affecting perception, maybe it works like an alpiefimr. And what I mean by this is that when we direct attention to the face, it becomes clearer and more salient, it's easier to see. But when we dierct it to the scnee, the face becomes bleary perceptible as we process the scene information.

Open Cloze

I'm going to give you a _____ of the kind of experiments that we actually do in the lab. We would show participants images like this one. You should see a face and a scene overlaid on each other. And what we do is we ask our participants as they're viewing a series of these types of ________ ______, to do something with their attention. On some trials, we'll ask them to pay attention to the face. And to make sure they're doing that, we ask them to tell us, by pressing a button, if the face appeared to be male or female. On other trials, we ask them to tell what the scene was — was it ______ or outdoor? And in this way, we can manipulate attention and confirm that the participants were actually doing what we said. Our hypotheses about attention were as follows: if _________ is indeed doing its job and affecting perception, maybe it works like an _________. And what I mean by this is that when we direct attention to the face, it becomes clearer and more salient, it's easier to see. But when we ______ it to the _____, the face becomes ______ perceptible as we process the scene information.

Solution

  1. overlaid
  2. images
  3. sense
  4. barely
  5. indoor
  6. direct
  7. scene
  8. attention
  9. amplifier

Original Text

I'm going to give you a sense of the kind of experiments that we actually do in the lab. We would show participants images like this one. You should see a face and a scene overlaid on each other. And what we do is we ask our participants as they're viewing a series of these types of overlaid images, to do something with their attention. On some trials, we'll ask them to pay attention to the face. And to make sure they're doing that, we ask them to tell us, by pressing a button, if the face appeared to be male or female. On other trials, we ask them to tell what the scene was — was it indoor or outdoor? And in this way, we can manipulate attention and confirm that the participants were actually doing what we said. Our hypotheses about attention were as follows: if attention is indeed doing its job and affecting perception, maybe it works like an amplifier. And what I mean by this is that when we direct attention to the face, it becomes clearer and more salient, it's easier to see. But when we direct it to the scene, the face becomes barely perceptible as we process the scene information.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
mindfulness training 6
attention system 3
pay attention 3
paying attention 3
captain davis 3
human beings 2
brain capacity 2
medical professionals 2
captain jeff 2
jeff davis 2
paid attention 2
wandering mind 2
high stress 2
mindfulness exercises 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
captain jeff davis 2

Important Words

  1. affecting
  2. amplifier
  3. appeared
  4. attention
  5. barely
  6. button
  7. clearer
  8. confirm
  9. direct
  10. easier
  11. experiments
  12. face
  13. female
  14. give
  15. hypotheses
  16. images
  17. indoor
  18. information
  19. job
  20. kind
  21. lab
  22. male
  23. manipulate
  24. outdoor
  25. overlaid
  26. participants
  27. pay
  28. perceptible
  29. perception
  30. pressing
  31. process
  32. salient
  33. scene
  34. sense
  35. series
  36. show
  37. trials
  38. types
  39. viewing
  40. works