L6B: Theories of Selective Attention

Question 1

So far, my examples of selective attention relate
mostly to blocks in response selection

Answer 1

Difficult to respond to both a primary and secondary task
(select a response to two or more things at same time)
EG: Distracted driving when talking on phone (deciding
what to say competes with deciding whether to slow
down/speed up)

Question 2

What is the Monkey Business Illusion?

Answer 2

Evidence that selective attention blocks information at stimulus identification stage

Once information is selected for processing, other information gets blocked…

Intentional selective processing (ATTENDING) blocks sensory processing of other information

Question 3

You will see 5 items in the next slide. SAY
the colour of each item <do></do>

What is happening in terms of selective attention?

Answer 3

• Non-selected (irrelevant/unattended) information “gets through” and is unintentionally processed.
• The typed colour name incidentally (automatically), captures attention
• Information can be processed (attended to) in parallel at stim. identification stage.

Question 4

What is the Stroop Effect?

Answer 4

Task irrelevant information is processed at SI stage … it interferes with response selection (saying the colour), so response time ↑

SO…Information can be processed (attended to) in parallel at stimulus identification stage.

The typed name incidentally captures attention (Reading). There is not a (complete) block at this stage.

Question 5

What is a Cocktail Party Effect?

Answer 5

Anything important or meaningful can make its way through.

Question 6

What is Dichotic Listening Paradigm?

Answer 6

check slides

Question 7

What is Semantic Processing?

Answer 7

Question 8

What is a “leaky filter”?

Answer 8

This slide explains Treisman’s Attenuation Model of Attention, which proposes that attention works as a “leaky filter” rather than a strict block. Unlike early models that suggested unattended information is completely blocked, this model suggests that some unattended information still gets through, but at a weaker level.

The example illustrates how context influences perception:
- One ear hears ambiguous information (“They threw stones at the bank”), while the other hears words like “Money” or “River” that affect the interpretation of “bank.”
- This demonstrates that even attenuated (weakened) information can influence meaning, supporting the idea that attention modulates, rather than completely blocks, incoming stimuli.

Question 9

Attentional limitations in movement programming:
Psychological Refractory Period (PRP)

Answer 9

While some tasks can be processed in parallel; attention required to initiate movements cannot.

Attending to a stimulus and programming a response introduces a cost that shows up in response time (RT) to a new, close in time stimulus

Suggests that we can only attend to some information in serial fashion

Question 10

This effect is often described in terms of
“Bottleneck” at programming stage

Answer 10

Question 11

What is the Psychological Refractory Period?

Answer 11

Psychological Refractory Period: A delay in processing a 2nd (closely spaced) stimulus

Motor system processes 1st stimulus of two closely spaced stimuli and programs 1st response.

If 2nd stimulus presented during the time the system is processing the 1st stimulus and programming the response, the onset of the second response can be delayed considerably.

– S1 S2, stimuli that follow each other
– R1 R2, responses to the individual stimuli

Question 12

Question 13

PRPs: The double stimulation paradigm is the
research method used to study these delays

Answer 13

Question 14

What is SOA?

Answer 14