Broadbent volunteered to be a pilot at the age of 17 during, his time in the Airforce. He became interested in psychology. He studied at psychology at Cambridge University. Broadbent was an applied and experimental psychologist. His work at the beginning of his career was focused on real life problems. He worked on improving the communication between planes and command centers. He supervised psychology students, sat on national committees. His work connected the laboratory to the field. He studied the areas: information processing concepts, stress in industry, being happy, attention, studies of implicit and explicit learning. In 1958 he wrote book Perception and Communication. He also developed a measure for absent-mindedness called
