Theories of Selective Attention

simplypsychology.org/attention-models.html

Saul McLeod, updated 2018

We are constantly bombarded by an endless array of internal and external stimuli, thoughts,
and emotions. Given this abundance of available data, it is amazing that we make sense of
anything!

In varying degrees of efficiency, we have developed the ability to focus on what is important
while blocking out the rest.

The process of directing our awareness to relevant stimuli while ignoring irrelevant stimuli
is termed selective attention.

This is an important process as there is a limit to how much information can be processed
at a given time, and selective attention allows us to tune out unimportant details and focus
on what really matters.

This limited capacity for paying attention has been conceptualized as a bottleneck, which
restricts the flow of information. The narrower the bottleneck, the lower the rate of flow.

Broadbent's and Treisman's Models of Attention are all bottleneck models because they
predict we cannot consciously attend to all of our sensory input at the same time.

Broadbent's Filter Model

Broadbent (1958) proposed that physical characteristics of messages are used to select
one message for further processing and that all others are lost

Information from all of the stimuli presented at any given time enters an unlimited capacity
sensory buffer. One of the inputs is then selected on the basis of its physical
characteristics for further processing by being allowed to pass through a filter.

1/6
Because we have only a limited capacity to process information, this filter is designed to
prevent the information-processing system from becoming overloaded.

The inputs not initially selected by the filter remain briefly in the sensory buffer store, and if
they are not processed they decay rapidly. Broadbent assumed that the filter rejected the
unattended message at an early stage of processing.

According to Broadbent the meaning of any of the messages is not taken into account at
all by the filter. All semantic processing is carried out after the filter has selected the
message to pay attention to. So whichever message(s) restricted by the bottle neck (i.e. not
selective) is not understood.

Broadbent wanted to see how people were able to focus their attention (selectively attend),
and to do this he deliberately overloaded them with stimuli.

One of the ways Broadbent achieved this was by simultaneously sending one message to a
person's right ear and a different message to their left ear. This is called a split span
experiment (also known as the dichotic listening task).

Dichotic Listening Task

The dichotic listening tasks involves simultaneously sending one message (a 3-digit
number) to a person's right ear and a different message (a different 3-digit number) to their
left ear.

2/6
Participants were asked to listen to both messages at the same time and repeat what they
heard. This is known as a 'dichotic listening task'.

Broadbent was interested in how these would be repeated back. Would the participant
repeat the digits back in the order that they were heard (order of presentation), or repeat
back what was heard in one ear followed by the other ear (ear-by-ear).

He actually found that people made fewer mistakes repeating back ear by ear and would
usually repeat back this way.

Evaluation of Broadbent's Model

1. Broadbent's dichotic listening experiments have been criticized because:

The early studies all used people who were unfamiliar with shadowing and so found
it very difficult and demanding. Eysenck & Keane (1990) claim that the inability of
naive participants to shadow successfully is due to their unfamiliarity with the
shadowing task rather than an inability of the attentional system.

Participants reported after the entire message had been played - it is possible that
the unattended message is analyzed thoroughly but participants forget.

Analysis of the unattended message might occur below the level of conscious
awareness. For example, research by Von Wright et al (1975) indicated analysis of
the unattended message in a shadowing task. A word was first presented to
3/6
 participants with a mild electric shock. When the same word was later presented to
the unattended channel, participants registered an increase in GSR (indicative of
emotional arousal and analysis of the word in the unattended channel).

More recent research has indicated the above points are important: e.g. Moray
(1959) studied the effects of practice. Naive subjects could only detect 8% of digits
appearing in either the shadowed or non-shadowed message, Moray (an experienced
'shadower') detected 67%.

2. Broadbent's theory predicts that hearing your name when you are not paying attention
should be impossible because unattended messages are filtered out before you process
the meaning - thus the model cannot account for the 'Cocktail Party Phenomenon'.

3. Other researchers have demonstrated the ' cocktail party effect' (Cherry, 1953) under
experimental conditions and have discovered occasions when information heard in the
unattended ear 'broke through' to interfere with information participants are paying
attention to in the other ear. This implies some analysis of meaning of stimuli must have
occurred prior to the selection of channels. In Broadbent's model the filter is based solely
on sensory analysis of the physical characteristics of the stimuli.

Treisman's Attenuation Model

Treisman (1964) aggress with Boradbent’s theory of an early bottleneck filter. However, the
difference is that Treisman's filter attenuates rather than eliminates the unattended
material.

Attenuation is like turning down the volume so that if you have 4 sources of sound in one
room (TV, radio, people talking, baby crying) you can turn down or attenuate 3 in order to
attend to the fourth.
This means that people can still process the meaning of attended message(s).

4/6
In her experiments, Treisman demonstrated that participants were still able to identify the
contents of an unattended message, indicating that they were able to process the meaning
of both the attended and unattended messages.

Treisman carried out dichotic listening tasks using the speech shadowing method.
Typically, in this method participants are asked to simultaneously repeat aloud speech
played into one ear (called the attended ear) whilst another message is spoken to the other
ear.

For example participants asked to shadow "I saw the girl furniture over" and ignore "me
that bird green jumping fee", reported hearing "I saw the girl jumping over"

Clearly, then, the unattended message was being processed for meaning and Broadbent's
Filter Model, where the filter extracted on the basis of physical characteristics only, could
not explain these findings. The evidence suggests that Broadbent's Filter Model is not
adequate, it does not allow for meaning being taken into account.

Evaluation of Treisman's Model

1. Treisman's Model overcomes some of the problems associated with Broadbent's Filter
Model, e.g. the Attenuation Model can account for the 'Cocktail Party Syndrome'.

2. Treisman's model does not explain how exactly semantic analysis works.

3. The nature of the attenuation process has never been precisely specified.

4. A problem with all dichotic listening experiments is that you can never be sure that the
participants have not actually switched attention to the so called unattended channel.

References
Broadbent, D. (1958). Perception and Communication. London: Pergamon Press.

Cherry, E. C. (1953). Some experiments on the recognition of speech with one and with two
ears. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 25, 975–979.

Eysenck, M. W. & Keane, M. T. (1990). Cognitive psychology: a student's handbook . Hove:

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd.

Moray, N. P. (1959). Attention in dichotic listening: Affective cues and the influence of
instructions. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 11, 56–60.

Treisman, A., 1964. Selective attention in man. British Medical Bulletin , 20, 12-16.

Von Wright, J. M., Anderson, K., & Stenman, U. (1975). Generalization of conditioned GSRs
in dichotic listening. In P. M. A. Rabbitt & S. Dornic (Eds.), Attention and performance (Vol.
V, pp. 194–204). London: Academic Press.

Keep Learning

How to reference this article:

5/6
McLeod, S. A. (2018, Oct 24). Selective attention. Retrieved from
https://www.simplypsychology.org/attention-models.html

6/6