Attention: Theories of Selection

Question 1

What is filtration based on in early selection?

Answer 1

Physical characteristics

Question 2

What is filtration based on in late selection?

Answer 2

Meaning

Question 3

What effect did Cherry (1953) find?

Answer 3

The ‘cocktail party effect’

Question 4

What did the dichotic listening task reveal?

Answer 4

• easily shadow the attended message, but could only report the physical characteristics of the unattended message
• rarely noticed when unattended was foreign language
• couldn’t remember any content from unattended, even when same word was presented 35 times

Question 5

What selection model did Broadbent (1958) support?

Answer 5

Early-selection

Question 6

Name the 4 components of Broadbent’s Filter Theory (1958)

Answer 6

• sensory store
• filter
• detector
• short-term memory

Question 7

What is the role of the filter in Broadbent’s Filter Theory (1958)

Answer 7

Analysing messages based on physical characteristics - e.g. tone, pitch, location of stimulus

Question 8

Identify 3 problems with Broadbent’s Filter Theory (1958)

Answer 8

• heard name in unattended stream
• bilinguals influenced by unattended if in their second language
• when switching between ears, skipped a switch to ensure sentence made semantic sense

Question 9

What did Moray (1959) find? - hint: name

Answer 9

During the dichotic listening task, participants heard their own name in the unattended stream

Question 10

What did Treisman (1960) find? - hint: bilingual

Answer 10

During the dichotic listening task, bilinguals were influenced by the unattended stream if it was in their second language

Question 11

What did Gray and Weddebum find? - hint: switching

Answer 11

During a version of the dichotic listening task where participants had to switch their attention between the streams, they skipped switches to preserve semantic meaning.

Question 12

How did Treisman’s attenuation model modify Broadbent’s filter theory?

Answer 12

Proposed that unattended messages were attenuated, not lost completely.

Question 13

How does Treisman’s attenuation theory explain breakthrough in dichotic listening?

Answer 13

Words must meet a certain threshold of signal strength to be attenuated; specific words have lower thresholds so are more easily detected

Question 14

In accordance with Treisman’s attenuation theory, give 2 examples of words with lower attenuation thresholds

Answer 14

• own name
• words primed by context

Question 15

In which theory does selection take place at a higher stage of processing?

Answer 15

Late-stage selection

Question 16

In which theory is selection based on an analysis of the importance that the input receives a response?

Answer 16

Late-stage selection

Question 17

What 3 things can late-stage selection explain?

Answer 17

• the effect of biasing words in dichotic listening
• response competition interference
• negative priming

Question 18

What did MacKay (1973) find? - hint: ‘bank’

Answer 18

In a version of the dichotic listening task, a biasing word in the unattended stream can influence an ambiguous sentence in the attended stream - e.g. if ‘money’ was presented in the unattended stream, more likely to interpret ‘bank’ in attended sentence as the financial institution

Question 19

Eriksen and Eriksen (1974) studied response competition interference; what does this show?

Answer 19

An incongruent distractor in an irrelevant location slows reaction time, showing that the distractor identity has been processed.

Question 20

What is the impact of negative priming on attention?

Answer 20

Responses to previously ignored stimuli are slowed

Question 21

What did Tipper and Driver (1988) do? - hint: negative priming

Answer 21

• Participants were tasked with categorising red stimuli and ignoring green stimuli.
• They found that responses to words were slowed when preceded by a semantically related ignored image.
• This suggests that the ignored stimuli is semantically categorised and inhibited.

Question 22

What does Lavie’s Load Theory suggest about selection?

Answer 22

Both early and late selection is possible; depends on availability of perceptual capacity, which depends on the perceptual load of the task.

Question 23

How does load theory link perceptual load with early/late selection?

Answer 23

Perceptual capacity is limited; - tasks with high perceptual load exhaust capacity so early selection
- tasks with low perceptual load leave spare capacity so opportunity for late selection

Question 24

Give 2 behavioural measures of distraction supporting Load Theory

Answer 24

• Response competition effects found under low load; reduced/eliminated under high load
• Similar effects found with irrelevant distractor measure

Question 25

What do Simons and Chabris (1999) and Cartwright et al. (2006) study? - hint: gorillas

Answer 25

Inattentional blindness (‘Gorillas in our midst’)

Question 26

What did Schwartz et al. (2005) do and find in support of Load Theory? - hint: neuroimaging and crosses

Answer 26

• The low load condition was to detect a cross, high load to detect a conjunction, both while ignoring background.
• Found high perceptual load reduces visual cortex response to background.

Question 27

What did Bishop et al. (2007) find supporting Load Theory? - hint: fearful faces and amygdala

Answer 27

High perceptual load reduces amygdala response to fearful faces

Question 28

What implications does Load Theory have for individual differences?

Answer 28

Individuals with a higher perceptual capacity will require an increased perceptual load to avoid distraction

Question 29

What 3 groups are perceptual capacity differences associated with?

Answer 29

• Autistic individuals (higher)
• Children and elderly (lower)
• Video game players (higher)

Question 30

What did Green and Bavelier (2003) find? - hint: videogame

Answer 30

Experienced video game players remained distracted under high load.