attention bottlenecks Flashcards
Serial bottlenecks
Refers to the filter points at which it is no longer possible to process incoming perceptual information (audio, lights, smells) from our senses simultaneously
Early selection theories
Theories of attention proposing that the selection of information occurs early in information processing
Late selection theories
Theories of attention proposing that the selection of information occurs late in information processing
Cocktail party phenomenon (Cherry, 1953)
How can we follow one conversation when several people are talking at the same time
Dichotic listening task
Participants hear two binaural messages simultaneously, having to repeat one ear and ignore the other
Used to see where filter/bottleneck is
Findings from dichotic listening task
Participants failed to notice the unattended message (semantic features related to meaning)
Participants noted the unattended message
Broadbent filter theory (1958)
Sensory information comes through the system until it reaches a bottle neck
Information can be selected based on physical selection criterion
Individual filters out information based on physical characteristics or features
Filter stimuli based on their physical characteristics
Moray (1959)
Challenged the theory of Broadbent
Participants name in non repeated ear
33% of participants detected their name
Gray and Wedderburn (1960)
Alternated ear in which words of meaningful sentence was played in dichotic listening task
Participants had no problems in reporting meaningful sentence correctly
Participants can alternate between channels based on semantic properties of stimuli
Filter must be located somewhere else (not after sensory memory)
Triesman (1960)
Results of his dichotic listening task show that selection of information can be flexible
Participants can sometimes select information bases on physical characteristic and sometimes based based on semantic characteristics
Triesman attenuation theory (1964)
Sensory information comes through the system until it reaches an attenuator
Information is attenuated (weakened) not filtered out
Information can be selected based on meaning of the message
Deutsch and D. Deutsch late-selection theory (1963)
All information is processed completely without attenuation (weakening)
Bottleneck is in the response system not the perceptual system
Comparison of the theories (Wood and Cowan, 1995)
34.6% of the participants recalled hearing their name in the channel that was meant to be ignored
More shadowing error after the presentation of the name
These results support Triesman attenuation theory (1964)
Visual shadowing task - Neisser and Becklen, 1975
When asked to monitor films for odd events, participants experienced great difficulty and missed many critical events
Intentional blindness - Mack and Rock (1998)
Phenomenon in which we are unaware of what is happening in our direct field of view if we aren’t paying attention to it
Participants more likely to detect a surprise stimuli if it was their name, opposed to something like a rectangle
