ShmoopTube

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and here's your shmoop du jour brought to you by names.. we

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know she has a cool one but come on Beyonce stop telling us to say your name [Beyonce stood on a stage]

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would having an actual conversation really hurt you? Alright, here's your

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question Lola is at a party she's standing in a crowded room talking about [Lola talking to Beth at a party]

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her last history exam with her friend Beth even though Lola is engrossed in

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the conversation in the room is quite loud she hears a person say her name [People talking about Lola across the room]

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across the room what best describes Lola's ability to hear her name and your

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potential answers ....All right let's

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just start with habituation....Habituation refers to the process of learning in

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which one decreases their response to repeated stimulus over time for example [A line decreasing on a graph]

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if someone was shouting Lola's name over and over and over and over again for no

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reason other than annoying the heck out of her she may respond to her name the [Lola looking angry at her name being shouted]

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first few times but chances are she eventually tune it out it's like when

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your mom yells at you to get out of bed and get ready for school so easy to tune [Mother yells at boy to wake up for school]

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that out anyway that's habituation, it aint E. Dishabituation is when we suddenly

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respond to that old stimulus as if it were new again so even if we learn to

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tune out a pestering parent at seven in the morning if said pestering parent

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decides to try a new approach say a megaphone well we might come back in we [Mother shouts through a megaphone to wake sleeping boy up]

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also might need to change our sheets all right long story short A is not our

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answer and B adaptation; refers to one's ability to adapt to their new

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environment whatever it may bring whether that means Lola adapting to our [Lola adapting to the environment at the party]

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name being yelled repeatedly or us adapting to our mom's voice amplified at

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a ridiculously early time in the morning it's not what we're looking for so let's

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get rid of B and divided attention is basically the act of multitasking or [Boy walking down a street and chewing gum]

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when we're required to pay attention to two or more tasks at a given time an

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admirable goal but not quite what we're looking for so that leaves us with D the

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ability to focus on an important stimulus among many is known as

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selective attention when we can quickly shift our attention to something [Boys trying to get Lola's attention at a party]

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important like someone yelling fire or someone uttering your name

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across the room..That's selective attention so while we can allocate our attention to

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something specific there's always a reserve for us to quickly focus on [Room sets on fire and Lola runs away]

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something we don't want to miss but our daily wake-up call well that's something

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we always want to miss seriously how do we unsubscribe from this thing [Mother driving a digger to wake boy up]

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