An endless array of internal and external stimuli, thoughts, and emotions constantly bombards us. 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.
What is Selective Attention?
Selective attention is the process of directing our awareness to relevant stimuli while ignoring irrelevant stimuli in the environment.
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 insignificant details and focus on what is important.
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.
The Filter Theory of Attention, also known as Broadbent’s Filter Model, posits that attention is a bottleneck through which only a limited amount of information can pass at any given time. The theory suggests that an internal “filter” selects which stimuli to process based on their physical properties, while the remaining information is either ignored or stored temporarily in short-term memory.
Broadbent’s Filter Model
Broadbent’s Attentional Theory, also known as the Filter Theory of Attention, proposes that humans can only process a limited amount of sensory information at any given time due to an attentional “bottleneck.”
Broadbent (1958) proposed that the physical characteristics of messages are used to select one message for further processing and that all others are lost.
Information from all stimuli presented at any time enters an unlimited-capacity sensory buffer.
Because we have only a limited capacity to process information, this filter is designed to prevent theinformation-processing systemfrom becoming overloaded.
Broadbent wanted to see how people could focus their attention (selectively attend), and to do this; he deliberately overloaded them with stimuli.
This is called a split-span experiment (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.
The Dichotic Listening Task is a psychological test commonly used in cognitive psychology to study selective attention. In this task, an individual listens to two different auditory streams, typically speech, presented simultaneously to each ear via headphones and is instructed to attend to one stream (the attended ear) while ignoring the other (the unattended ear).
Participants were asked to listen to both messages simultaneously and repeat what they heard. This is known as a “dichotic listening task.”
Evaluation of Broadbent’s Model
1.Broadbent’s dichotic listening experiments have been criticized because:
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.”
- 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 the 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) agrees with Broadbent’s theory of an early bottleneck filter. However, the difference is that Treisman’s filter attenuates rather than eliminates the unattended material.
This means people can still process the meaning of the attended message(s).
In her experiments, Treisman demonstrated that participants could still 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) while another message is spoken to the other ear.
For example, participants were 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 was extracted based on physical characteristics only, could not explain these findings. The evidence suggests that Broadbent’s Filter Model is inadequate and does not allow for meaning to be 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.
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Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education
Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.
Saul McLeod, PhD
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester
Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.
