Auditory Selective Attention (Lecture 3)

Question 1

Selective attention (auditory and visual domains)

Answer 1

Vision: we can typically see more than one thing in the visual field at once- we need to attend to visual info of interest and ignore irrelevant visual info.
Auditory selective attention: need to select from simultaneous, overlapping sounds- verbal shadowing task: attend to one stream of sound and ignore the irrelevant stream.
Some selection mechanism is necessary to process the information of interest.

Question 2

Models of auditory attention

Answer 2

Early filter model (Broadbent, 1958).
Attenuation models (Treisman, 1964). 
Late filter models (Deutsch & Deutsch, 1963).

Related to the positioning of the bottleneck.

Question 3

Shadowing task

Answer 3

Typical outcome: shadowing performance normally very good.
What about unattended info- ppts hear remarkably little from the unattended channel (Cherry, 1953).

Treisman (1964): after 1 minute of shadowing the attended channel, only 4/30 participants detected peculiar characteristic of unattended channel (it was in Czech).

Cherry (1953): ppts report physical characteristics of the voice in unattended channel even if semantic content is not processed.

• Moray (1959): poor memory for unattended channel even when words were presented 35 times.
• findings were developed by Broadbent (1958) into early filter model of attention

Question 4

Early filter model- Broadbent

Answer 4

Prefer to report digits ear by ear.
Only info that makes it through the filter is processed for meaning.
Prevents cognitive overloading.
Evaluation: model can account for Cherry’s findings by assuming the unattended channel is rejected by the filter.
- it can account for dichotic listening findings by assuming the filter selects one stream of info based on physical characteristics.
- Gray & Wedderburn (1960)- semantics played a role: “who…6…there”, “4…goes…1”.

Question 5

Summary so far

Answer 5

Broadbent suggested unattended stream of sound was filtered out early on and not processed for meaning.
But evidence suggests that some of the unattended channel is processed semantically.
- need another model to account for the data.

Question 6

Deutsch & Deutsch’s (1963) late filter theory

Answer 6

All info from both channels is attended and processed semantically.
Irrelevant info filtered out at the time of STM.
Both channels are processed to the same degree, only the most relevant channel to the task at hand is responded to .
This accounts for how sometimes info from unattended channel can break through and be processed for meaning.

Question 7

Treisman’s (1964) attenuation theory

Answer 7

Treisman retained early filter that distinguished info on physical differences.
But rather than eliminating the unattended material, Treisman’s theory “attenuates” it (turns it down).
Accounts for findings such as hearing your name in the unattended channel (Conway, Cowan, & Bunting, 2001).

Overcomes problems with B’s model that sometimes info from unattended channel breaks through, as it allows for some processing (even though its attenuated).

Question 8

Conclusion

Answer 8

Evidence so far suggests Deutsch & Deutsch’s theory is the least adequate and Treisman’s is best supported.