Selective attention

What is attention? William James 1890

What is attention? William James 1890

Taking possession of the mind of one out of several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought

Harold Pashler 1998 - attention

No one knows what attention is and there may not be an ‘it’ to be known about

Cherry 1953

Dichotic listening task

Dichotic listening

Research technique to investigate selective attention and the processing of auditory information/different auditory stimuli simultaneously to each ear/examine how individuals process and attend to competing auditory information

Dalton & Fraenkel 2012 - gorilla auditory experiment

70% missed gorilla when attending to women’s conversation/90% notice when attending to men’s conversation

Cherry 1953 - dichotic listening task results

Not aware if language in unattended stream changed English to German/could report gender of speaker and if it was speech or no speech

Conclusions of the dichotic listening task

People process unattended information only to level of basic physical features/no semantic information available

Criticisms of dichotic listening task

Not applicable to real life (not repeat message)/not just auditory information when talking/ppt expectations and understanding of the task

Broadbent 1958 - early selection model

Filtering occurs at an early stage prior to meaning/filters out message without appropriate characteristics/unattended information not processed for meaning

Components of Broadbent’s early selection model

Senses/sensory buffer/selective filter/limited capacity processor

Moray 1959

Two alternative forced choice procedure/35 times repeated word not recognised/word was ppt’s name - did hear 1/3 ppts

Gray and Wedderburn 1960 - split span experiment

Dichotic listening/alternate ears have logical words/40% reported by ear/60% reported by meaning/unattended message processed for meaning

Deutsch & Deutsch 1963

Late selection model

Components of the late selection model

Senses/unconscious semantic processing/selective filter/conscious attention

Late selection model assumptions

Selective filtering only occurs at stage of conscious awareness/all information unconsciously processed at semantic level

Corteen and Dunn 1974 - city names

City names paired with electric shocks/sweat when hear city name/shadow one ear and press button if hear city name/measure GSR and button press/42% city names in unattended elicit GSR/30% for non shock associated city names/2% button press - little explicit awareness

Attenuator model

Treisman 1964

What is the attenuator model?

Unattended information is attenuated or weakened/all inputs analysed for meaning but some weak and some strong

Components of the attenuator model

Senses/attenuating filter/dictionary analysis filter

Dictionary analysis filter of the attenuator model

Final filter/different words have different thresholds/name has low threshold/reduce threshold by expectation of what might come next

Simons & Chabrus 1999 - gorilla

50% people fail to notice gorilla when attending to white shirt team/more likely to notice if attending to black shirt team

Why are people more likely to notice the Gorilla if they are carrying out an easy task compared to a hard task?

Perceptual load theory

Rock and Gutman 1981 - shapes

Static shapes/superimposed shapes in different colours/rate pleasantness/people unable to recognise shapes in unattended colour even if familiar

What is negative priming?

Cognitive phenomenon that occurs when exposure to a stimulus that is initially ignored or inhibited leads to a delayed response or interference when that stimulus later becomes the target of attention

Negative priming - Tipper 1985

Primes before probe/test reaction time for probe

Categories in negative priming task

Attended repetition/attended semantic/neutral/ignored semantic/ignored repetition

What are the times for the negative priming study? (ms)

615/677/695/726/746

Lachter, Forster & Ruthruff 2004 - attention to unattended stream

Slippage

Lavie 1995 - PLT

Manipulate congruency of distractor and perceptual load/congruent and low perceptual load = fastest/high perceptual load - no difference in congruency - no or reduce distractor interference

Why is evidence so mixed?

Different performance measures/over extrapolation/perceptual load varies across tasks/different sensory modalities