Attention

Front 1

Cocktail Party phenomenon

Back 1

How do people focus on one conversation while ignoring others in a room full of many people talking?

Front 2

Cherry (1953)

Back 2

Dichotic listening task- participants listened to a different message in each ear whilst shadowing one of the message. Little or nothing of unattended message could be recalled, therefore attention can only be focused in one stimulus and most other info is blocked.

Front 3

Moray (1959)

Back 3

Seven words repeated 35 times in unattended ear, but recall poor, supports Cherry.

Also found that info with meaning can grab your attention even if unattended, e.g. your name

Front 4

Cherry (1953)

Back 4

Also found that physical features of info presented to unattended ear get through block, such as change from female to Male voice, or loud to quiet.

Front 5

Broadbent (1958)

Back 5

Participants heard three digits in one ear interleaved with 3 in other ear. Numbers where reported ear by ear, therefor attention can only be focused on one channel of info at a time, and switching is difficult.

Front 6

Broadbent's filter theory

Back 6

Two stimuli presented simultaneously access a sensory buffer. One stimuli is allowed through based on its physical property, while other is kept for later processing. Therefore info is not processed sementically until after it has been selected for attention.

Front 7

Von Wright, Anderson and Stenman (1975)

Back 7

Asossicated a word with electric shock (e.g. dog), then presented a word si.klar in sound (doll) or meaning (pet) in unattended ear. Produces increased skin response, suggesting people had accessed the meaning of unattended stimulus, as were expecting shock.

Cristism to early selection

Front 8

Triesman (1960); Gray & Wedderburn (1960)

Back 8

Found that if a word from the unattended stimulus was a good fit for the attended stimulus, it would sometimes intrude into subjects shadowing reports. "Sitting at the mahogany three possibilities" and "let's look at these table with jer head".

Criticism to early selection as it suggests attention can be switched easily form one channel to another

Front 9

Triesman's Attenuation theory (1964)

Back 9

More flexible than Broadbent theory., found solutions. Triesman's filter attenuated (weakens) rather than eliminated the unattended information. A second filter processes info for meaning, which may result in attenuated channel being selected if it is important, e.g. your name or alarm call.

Criticism: people think it is too complicated and does not explain HOW the process of attenuation occurs.

Front 10

Deutsch and Deutsch (1963) model

Back 10

Late election model. All information both attended and unattended is analysed for meaning in order to selected an input for full awareness. Whether or not info is selected is dependant on how relevant it is at the time.

Cristism: seems unlikely that all info should be processed romantically. Better at spotting key words in attended, whereas this model would suggest we should be equally good at each.

Front 11

Mackay (1973)

Back 11

Support for late selection. Participants presented with a sentence like "they were standing near the bank" and either "river" or "money" in unattended ear. The unattended word was found to I fluence interpretation of work bank e.g. regular bank or river bank.

Front 12

Lavie & Tsal (1994)

Back 12

The perceptual load framework, a compromise position. It assumes that attention has a limited capacity, and that the attention applied to a task is related to its perceptual demands. It assumes you cannot allocate less than the total amount of capacity at any time, and that any extra (surplus) attentional capacity will spill over onto unattended stimuli.

So, when an attended task is perceptually demanding, there will be no surplus attention spills which would indicate early selection. When the attended task isnt that demanding, surplus attention will spill over to unattended material, indicating late selection.