Attention: Early vs late selection, and Load theory

Question 1

What is the early vs late selection debate?

Answer 1

How far the irrelevant information gets

Where is the ‘bottleneck’ that prevents us from attending (concentrating) everything?

Question 2

Define early selection

Answer 2

Irrelevent info = filtered / reduced @ perceptual stage of processing

Semantic info isn’t processed

Question 3

Define late selection

Answer 3

All stimuli = processed to the point of meaning

Selection takes place at later stage of processing + may
involve inhibition

Deutsch and Deutsch (1963), Kahneman (1973), Duncan (1980

Both attended and ignored inputs processed to stage of
semantic (meaning) analysis

Selection
– takes place at higher stage of processing
– based on analysis of which input is most
important/demands a response

Question 4

What is the ‘cocktail party effect’?

Answer 4

Colin Cherry (1953)
A paradigm = Dichotic listening task
- different messages to each ear
- subjects attended one ear + ignored the other
- repeated arranged message out load - shadowing

Question 5

What was the results of the dichotic listening results?

Answer 5

Ps = shadowed the attended message easily

Asked about the unattended message = physical characteristics reported usually e.g sex of voice, large changes in pitch) usually reported.

BUT not much else

Question 6

What is Broadbent’s Filter Theory (1958)?

Answer 6

An early-selection model = filtering occurs before incoming stimuli are analysed to the semantic level (e.g. surface features but not meaning analysed)

Sensory store - Holds incoming information for a short period
of time

Filter - Analyzes messages based on physical characteristics like
tone of voice, pitch, location of stimulus (which ear)

Detector - Information is processed to determine meaning

Short-term memory - Holds information for general processing

Question 7

What is the criticism of early selection?

Answer 7

Moray (1959) = Subjects heard their name in the unattended stream

Treisman (1960) = Bilinguals influenced by unattended stream if it is in second language

Gray & Weddeburn (1960) = Response should have been “Dear
7 Jane,” but subjects said “Dear Aunt Jane” = People were processing the 2nd stream. They combined the 2 messages.

Question 8

What is Treisman’s attenuation model

Answer 8

Another early-selection theory

key modification to filter theory = Unattended messages attenuated (gradually lost) rather than lost completely

Question 9

How does this explain the ‘breakthrough’ of Gary and Weddeburn (1960)

Answer 9

Words need to meet a certain threshold of signal strength to
be detected

Thresholds for certain words lowered = easily detected e.g. own name, or words primed by context

Question 10

What does MacKay (1973) show?

Answer 10

Attended stream = ambiguous sentence

Unattended stream = bias people’s understanding

RiverMoney

If “money”, “bank” was more likely interpreted as financial institution

Question 11

What does Eriksen and Eriksen (1974) late selection model show?

Answer 11

Response competition interference

Incongruent distractor in irrelevant location slows RTs = Distractor identity processed

Question 12

How does late selection models explain neg. priming?

Answer 12

Tipper & Driver (1988):

Task = Categorise red stimuli, ignore green.
Result = Responses to word slowed when you semantically-related IGNORED picture

Suggests ignored stimuli is semantically categorised +inhibited

Question 13

What is Lavie’s Load theory?

Answer 13

BOTH early _ late selection = possible

stage of selection depends on availability of perceptual capacity = depends on the perceptual demands/ or “load” of the task stimuli.

Question 14

What is the assumptions of load theory?

Answer 14

Perceptual capacity is limited

Tasks w/ high perceptual load exhaust capacity = Irrelevant distractors are filtered or attenuated at early, perceptual stage = Early selection

Tasks w/ low perceptual load leave spare capacity = Irrelevant distractors are processed = Late selection

Irrelevent distractors = processed = everything (late selection)

Question 15

What is the evidence supporting load theory

Answer 15

Behavioural measures of distraction:
* Response competition effects found under low load
* Reduced or eliminated under high
* Similar effects found with other measures e.g Irrelevant distractor measure

Inattentional blindness =”gorillas in our midst’ study by Simons and Chabris (1999)

Question 16

How does Cartwright Finch and Lava (2006) show inattention blindness?

Answer 16

6 trials = unexpected stimulus on final trial
People doing high perceptual load condition = don’t notice

Question 17

How does neuroimaging support load theory?

Answer 17

High perceptual load reduces visual cortex response to background

High perceptual load reduces amygdala response to fearful faces (Bishop et al., 2007)

Question 18

What are the implications for individual differences?

Answer 18

Efficiency of selective attention depends on availability of perceptual capacity = Individuals with high perceptual capacity need high load to avoid distraction (less vulnerable w/ inattention blindness)

Capacity differences associated with:
– Autism
– Age (children and older adults have reduced capacity)
– Video game experience

Question 19

What did Green & Bavelier (2003) do and how did show individual differences?

Answer 19

4 levels of perceptual load

Non-video games = low-load (distracted) + high-load (undistracted)
Video game players remained distracted throughout

Similar to autism, age + congenital deafness