Selective Attention

Question 1

What is selective attention?

Answer 1

Process of reacting to certain stimuli selectively when several occur simultaneously (Gross, 2015)

Question 2

Who created the dichotic listening task?

Answer 2

Cherry (1953)

Question 3

What was the dichotic listening task?

Answer 3

Participants presented with simultaneous messages in both ears where instructed to attend to one (shadow message)
Participants where unable to recall a word that played 35x in the unattended ear and better understood the shadowed message

Question 4

Broadbent (1954) introduced what procedure to test selective attention?

Answer 4

The split-span procedure

Question 5

What was the split-span procedure experiment?

Answer 5

Participants had to listen to two sets of digits within each ear and recall what they remembered
Accuracy was better for ear-by-ear recall than pair- attention can focus to one channel of information at a time

Question 6

When was Broadbents Filter Model established?

Answer 6

1958

Question 7

Explain Broadbent (1958) Filter model

Answer 7

This was a selection model that explained attention as a single channel ‘bottleneck’ of information. Input is selected on the basis of physical characteristics, however due to in the limited capacity, input is filtered selectively to limit what is processed further, the short term memory holds unattended information for a short time until it is lost through decay or interference

Question 8

What are physical characteristics?

Answer 8

Top Down (internal) such as voice intensity 
Bottom up (external) such as gender

Question 9

Strengths of this model

Answer 9

Evidence from air traffic control- they can only deal effectively with one message at a time

Testable and Falsifiable

Question 10

Criticisms of this model

Answer 10

Cocktail phenomena- the model does not explain how attention can shift attention to meaningful stimuli, such as hearing your name in unattended ear whilst engaged in conversation with someone else (suggests some semantic encoding)

Naive participants may of been unaware of what the task was about, so hindered performance due to unfamiliarity rather than competence of attention

Question 11

When was the attenuation model established

Answer 11

Treisman (1964)

Question 12

How does the attenuation model differ from Broadbents Filter model?

Answer 12

The filter attenuates (weakens) input rather than eliminates

Question 13

Does the model of attenuation account for meaningful stimuli?

Answer 13

Yes, for example a stimuli such as your name, permanently reaches a low threshold which means it goes straight though the attention filter, allowing us to switch attention to whenever it is in our environment, this theoretically means information is processed semantically and the significance of a stimuli increases our alertness

Question 14

Research evaluating dichotic listening task

Answer 14

Mackay (1973) used a speech shadowing task- sentences including a two word meaning, e.g standing near a bank
In unattended ear they presented the word money or river

Question 15

Factors the influence attenuation

Answer 15

Content, personal significance and level of alertness

Question 16

Evaluation of the attenuation model

Answer 16

We can’t be sure if participants have switched to unattended ear and it does not explain how attenuation occurs (too complex and not enough capacity)
Neisser (1976) argued that we don’t have a filter or attenuate instead we never acquire it in the first place

Question 17

Who proposed the late selection model and when?

Answer 17

Deutsh and Deutsh (1963)

Question 18

Explain the late selection model

Answer 18

All information is analysed/processed for its meaning, and whether it’s selected depends on its ‘pertinence value’ I.e. Its relevance and importance at the time
It requires representations from our LTM

Question 19

It was found target words where better detected in the shadow message than unattended ear, telling us that not all information is analysed the same in terms of meaning and performance differs considerably (only 8% in unattended ear). Who’s were these findings suggested from?

Answer 19

Triesman and Geffen (1967)

Question 20

Experimental support for the late selection model

Answer 20

Moray (1969) presented an electrical shock to a certain word, once switched off, a response was produced even when the word appeared in the unattended ear and participants were unaware

Question 21

Criticism of the late selection model

Answer 21

It seems unlikely that all information should be processed semantically before it’s made aware - lacks flexibility
Attention can’t be fully explained by a single conceptual model
Attention is studied largely in isolation and in laboratory conditions, which lacks ecological validity

Question 22

Explain the information processing approach

Answer 22

A person is a processor of information complimentary to computer analogy in terms of its input, encoding and storage- it follows a software system to produce an output/response
This serial processing of attention is also limited otherwise it overloads