Psychology Question

[victorias]

I am confused - why is focused attention not the right answer?

Here is my reasoning:

A. there is no such thing as bottom down processing - eliminate A
B. Top down processing is when we are using our previous knowledge to assign meaning to incoming sensory information. This does not apply to thins case since we are not trying to make sense of the incoming information in this scenario.
C. Focused attention - I thought this was plausible because if we are hungry, we tend to place greater selective attention on food items and thoughts
D. Bottom up processing is when we take bits and pieces of incoming sensory information and put them together, trying to figure out their meaning and interpret the information. I don't see how this is related to someone feeling hungry? Are they saying that the bottom up processing for food items will be faster because John is feeling hungry?

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[NextStepTutor_1]

Focused attention is more likely to refer to a specific focus on one task to the exclusion of all others. Here, John has to be paying attention to other pedestrians, obstacles in his way, his buzzing cellphone, etc.

The food is snagging some portion of his attention as he walks along, but the situation they're describing doesn't sound like focused attention to me. For focused attention, you should image someone who is really engrossed in a book or totally focused on a game of chess or something.

I agree that the situation doesn't feel like standard bottom-up processing, but I think it still fits - that is, your attention on the food in the window was not contingent upon some knowledge about the food and actively seeking for it. Rather, then sense perception came in out of the corner of your eye, which then created awareness of and attention to the food. Since the flow started at the sensory information about the food (the "bottom") and then lead to attention and thinking about the food (the "top"), we could think of this as bottom-up processing of this information.