Lecture 4 - Selective Attention Flashcards
What did Cherry (1953) do
Cherry (1953)
- Dichotic listening
- ‘Shadow’ the message to one ear and
ignore message to other ear
What did Cherry (1953) find
- After shadowing, pps were asked about semantic content of ‘unattended’ message
- Didn’t notice if language changed from English to German
-or if speech was reversed - Gender of speaker and if the message contained speech or nonspeech sounds was remembered
What are the conclusions of Cherry (1953)
- People process ‘unattended’ information ONLY to level of physical features
- No semantic information is available from ‘unattended’ message
What is the early selection model
Broadbent (1958)
- Filtering occurs at early stage of analysis (before meaning)
- Brain filters out any message without appropriate ‘physical’ characteristics
Arrows represent information passing through different stages
What did Moray (1959) find in his version of a dichotic listening task
Used 2 alternative forced choice procedure (2AFC)
- Even a word repeated 35 times in unattended ear wasn’t recognised
- BUT if that word was pp’s own name, they did report hearing it (only for 33% of pps)
2AFC means that instead of asking an open ended q 2 options are presented and pps are asked to pick which is right
What did Gray & Wedderburn (1960) find in their version of a dichotic listening task
Split-span experiment
- 40% reported by ear
- 60% reported by meaning
Conlusion is the ‘unattended’ message was processed for content after all (by at least 60% of pps)
What is the late selection model
Deutsch and Deutsch (1963)
- All inputs encoded & analysed in
parallel to semantic level - Selective filtering only occurs at conscious awareness
Arrows represent information passing through different stages
What is evidence in support of the late selection model
Deutsch and Deutsch (1963)
Corteen & Dunn (1974)
Training: City names paired w/ electric shock
-Subjects sweat when they hear any
city name
What was the procedure of Corteen & Dunn (1974)
- Training: City names paired w/ electric shock
-Subjects sweat when they hear any city name - Test: Shadow one ear and ignore other
-Press a button if you hear a city name in either ear
What is the measures of Corteen & Dunn (1974)
- Test: Shadow one ear and ignore other
-Press a button if you hear a city name in either ear - Measures: galvanic skin responses (GSRs) & button presses to city names.
What is a galvanic skin response (GSR)
Measures the skin’s electrical changes
irt sweat gland activity in fingers & palms
What did Corteen & Dunn (1974) find
- 42% of city names in ‘unattended’ ear elicit a GSR (30% for non shock associated city names)
- On only 2% of these trials did the pp make a button press response
- Different measures of awareness of ‘unattended’ stimuli give different results
What is the attenuator model
Treisman (1964)
- Unattended information is ‘attenuated’
-not filtered out completely - All inputs are analysed for meaning
-but some signals are now weaker than others
What is the dictionary analysis filter in the attenuator model
Treisman (1964)
- The dictionary analysis units act as the final filter
- Different words have different trigger thresholds (e.g. your name has a low threshold)
words are attenuated based on significance
-words with little significance have high thresholds and get stopped by this filter
vice versa
What are the advantages of the attenuator model
Treisman (1964)
- Allows for nuance
- Builds upon the foundation of previous models
- Aims to explain why some words pass through & others don’t
-which other models fail to explain - Thresholds of certain words can change over time as well
-taking into account the “dear aunt jane” / “1 2 3” example, the context of the prior words lowers the threshold for the following ones, which explains why those words are more easily detected
