Lecture 5: Attention I & II

Question 1

List and explain the two senses of attention.

Answer 1

1. sustained attention - psychological arousal (alertness)

2. selective attention - limited capacity systems

Question 2

How did Cherry study what happens to unattended messages?

Answer 2

Dichotic listening and shadowing.

Two channels of speech in L and R ear. Shadow message 1, ask about contents of of message 2.

Question 3

What were Cherry’s findings for the following dichotic listening conditions.

i. switch english to german
ii. switch male to female
iii. reversed speech
iv. switch from voice to pure tone

Answer 3

i. not noticed
ii. noticed
iii. ‘something queer’
iv. noticed

Question 4

What did Cherry conclude from his dichotic listening experiments?

Answer 4

The superficial features of ignored channels were perceived but not semantically analysed.

Question 5

What did Cherry find when conducting binaural presentation experiments?

Answer 5

Both ears, both messages, same voice, different content.

Difficult! Source localisation in space important cue.

Question 6

What is the main criticism of Cherry’s work?

Answer 6

Measured what is remembered rather than what is perceived.

Question 7

How did Broadbent obtain evidence for Filter theory?

Answer 7

Split-Scan experiments - dichotic digit stream.

People preferred ear-by-ear recall over temporal. Requires fewer ‘filter switches’, which take time as STS trace decays

Question 8

List and explain 2 pieces of evidence against filter theory.

Answer 8

1. Dear Aunt Jane - preferred recall follows semantic context
2. Dichotic listening task - persons name detected on unattended channel

Question 9

What is the fundamental difference between early and late selection theory?

Answer 9

LS: all stimuli have access to LTM, not sufficient for awareness - must pass filter

ES: LTM activation = awareness

Question 10

What is the main tenet of the Attenuation Model?

Answer 10

The filter partly rather than completely blocks stimuli; it can be biased by context and message salience

Question 11

Explain the evidence for the Attenuation Theory.

Answer 11

‘Tap’ command on shadowed and ignored channel. % followed higher on shadowed, but not 0 on ignored.

Question 12

What is the main criticism of Attenuation theory?

Answer 12

The degree of complexity required for the filter.

Question 13

What is the main tenet of Late selection theory?

Answer 13

There are bottom-up (stimulus-driven) and top-down (pertinent) mechanisms - both must be required to pass filter

Question 14

Explain two pieces of evidence for late selection theory.

Answer 14

1. Recognition is biased by previous shadowing task - possible only if contents of message access semantic level
2. classically conditioned GSR to target word; ignored stream contains target word which elicits GSR