Lecture notes
Lecture Notes on Selective Attention: Cognitive Psychology
- Module
- Cognitive Psychology
- Institution
- Swansea University (SWAN)
This document contains lecture notes on Selective Attention theories in Cognitive Psychology.
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- Moray (1959) inserted into the message played in the unattended ear a word35times, yet still the participants did not notice.
- Deutsch (1986) even showed that something as low level as shadowing a
melody in the attended ear, participants struggled hear
Talk about processing bottlenecks-
● The preceding effects are due to a filtering that protects the primary processing
task from interference from potentially conflicting information, because if had all
information brain would overload
● Bottleneck, pinch point, can’t process everything must filter
Attentional Selection Theories-
- Key question? What process and when do we select information
1. Select out early life, Early selection theory. Select out information from early
stage of processing
2. second view is that we perform quite detailed analysis of the incoming stimuli
before making a decision what is attended to , Late Selection theories
Broadbent's theory-
- Keen investigating nature bottleneck
- Used dichotic listening task
- How people record information as you overload them
- In particular, if you play one set of information in one ear (E1), and, at the same
time, a different set of numbers in the other (E2), What do you report?
Tells us…
- Incoming information from multiple channels is initially processed in parallel
- One of those channels is selected to be allowed through a filter based on
physical characteristics e.g left or right ear
- Whilst selected message is passed further along a limited capacity channel,
message blocked by filter remains in sensory buffer during which time it is
decaying
- Although message short lived in buffer, switch between impact channels
Problems…
- Cherry’s (1953) results are compelling, but he primarily used naïve participants
- model doesn’t really allow for any of the unattended information to ‘leak through’.
It shouldn’t really matter if you are practiced or not.
, - Underwood (1974)naïve participants only detected 8% of digits presented to a
non shadowed ear, but experienced shadower detected 67%.
- Apparent that access to information presented in the unattended ear was
analysed beyond the purely physical.
- Moray (1959) found that participants were much more likely to detect their own
names in the unshadowed ear
Treisman’s (1964) attenuation theory-
- Broadbent (1958), Treisman believed there was a filter but disagreed as to its
nature.
- Incoming stimuli proceed through a hierarchy of processing levels (physical,
syllable pattern to meaning).
- If insufficient processing capacity test towards the top of the hierarchy are
omitted
Similarities and Differences-
- Rather like Broadbent , There is the assumption of a filter
- Physical differences between the sources are a part of the selection of one
channel over the other.
- Early selection account
- Unlike Broadbent ,Treisman’smodel does not assume a complete phasing out (all
or nothing) of the non-shadowed message
- pre-attentive analysis is more complex, It is not just on physical differences
Support for the Treisman model-
- when we hear our own name (Moray, 1959),in the Treisman model, we will
process that to a certain level, meaning that it is more likely to be perceived.
- Compare to Broadbent’s model that doesn't easily accommodate this finding
- reporting of different sets of numbers to each ear being serially reproduced is
easier to explain if we first assume they all have a level of processing, with
priority for one of the physical channels
Problems-
- Very complicated, preattentive analysis that extends as far as semantic
processing
- So far down processing, wonder what is left for attentional processing
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