CHAPTER 3: ATTENTION

Characteristics of Attention (William James: The Principles of Psychology, 1980)

- Focalization
o Implies selectivity
 Allows selection of perceptual stimuli
 Prevent overloading of information
 Spend less time on each input
 Disregarding low-priority inputs
 Completely blocking off some sensory input
 Overloading  influence role performance, evolution of social
norms, cognitive functioning
- Concentration
o Requires mental effort
 Affected by language, distraction (two-timing conversations), diseases
(Alzheimer’s)

Bottleneck Theories
Broadbent’s Filter Model
- To account for performance on selective listening tasks
o Subjects find it difficult when asked to listen simultaneously to different
messages played in each ear

Filter Model:
 -

o Multiple sensory input can enter the sensory store (ball 1, 3, 2, 5)

o Attention is controlled by the filter (flap between the two pipes; selecting
which ball rolls into the narrow stem – shift from left to right)
 Completely block out one side
o Messages can only be recognised if they pass through the filter and before it
decays from sensory store

Treisman’s Attenuation Model

- Explain why usually very little is heard on the unattended channel, but occasionally
some words are recognised
o Shadow: an experimental method (to test out Broadbent’s assumption) that
requires people to repeat the attended message out loud
 If filter completely blocks out unattended messages, how could
subjects report hearing shadow words on unattended channels?
 ……SITTING AT A MAHOGANY/ walking TABLES
o Contextual effects: the influence of the surrounding context on recognition of
patterns
- Proposed a model consisting of a selective filter and a “dictionary”
o Filter: distinguishes between two messages on the basis of their physical
characteristics (location, intensity, pitch)
 Does not completely block out unattended message but attenuates it,
making it less likely to be heard
o Dictionary: recognition of word if the intensity or subjective loudness of the
word exceeds its threshold
  Characteristics of threshold
 Vary across words; some has permanently lower threshold
thus more easily recognised (name, danger signals)
 Thresholds can be momentarily lowered by the listener’s
expectation (hearing sitting at a mahogany  threshold for
table momentarily lowered)
- Attenuation of words on unattended channel implies that they will be subjectively
less loud than words on the attended channel
o Attenuation: decrease in perceived loudness of an unattended message
o ∴ usually not loud enough to exceed threshold

The Deutsch-Norman Memory Selection Model

- Bottleneck occurs after pattern recognition
o Problem is not one of perception but of selection into memory
o Selection occurs later  referred to as late-selection models
Capacity Theories
- Concerned with the amount of mental efforts required to perform a task

Kahneman’s Attention and Effort (1973)

- Assumes there is a general limit on a person’s capacity to perform mental work
- Designed to supplement rather than replace bottleneck models

Bottleneck Theories Capacity Theories

Both predicts that simultaneous activities are likely to interfere with each other
- Proposes that interference occurs - Proposes that interference occurs
because the same mechanism, such when the demands of two activities
as speech recognition, is required to exceed available capacity
carry out two incompatible - Implies that interference is
 operations at the same time nonspecific and dependant on total
- Implies that interreference between demands of the task
tasks is specific and dependant on
degree to which the tasks use the
same mechanism

- Assumes that a person has considerable control over how limited capacity can be
allocated to different activities (allocation of capacity)
o Drive car + sing to songs  when heavy traffic turns off music
- Assumes that amount of capacity available varies with level of arousal
o High arousal = high capacity
o Level of arousal controlled by feedback (evaluation) from attempt to meet
demands of ongoing activities; provided do not exceed capacity limit
 Choice of which activities influenced by enduring dispositions and
momentary intentions
 Enduring dispositions: an automatic influence where people
direct their attention (novel event, object in sudden motion,
mention of our own name)
 Momentary intentions: a conscious decision to allocate
attention to certain tasks or aspects of environment (listen to
a lecturer, scan a crowd at an airport to recognise a friend)

Capacity and Stage of Selection

- Johnston and Heinz (1978) demonstrated the flexibility of attention and interaction
between a bottleneck and a capacity theory; multimode theory
o Proposed that listener has control over the location of the bottleneck (before
recognition to late mode of selection)
o Observer can adopt any mode of attention demanded by or best suited to a
particular task
- Use of late mode of selection  collects more information about secondary
message, reduces capacity to comprehend primary message
o Comprehension of primary message will decline

Automatic Processing
- Performing mental operations that require very little mental effort
- When is a skill automatic?
o Occurs without intention
o Does not give rise to conscious awareness
o Does not interfere with other mental activities
- Initially required intention, conscious awareness, mental effort
o Riding a bicycle
- Advantage
o Allows us to perform complex skill that would otherwise overload our limited
capacity
 Encoding information into memory, reading
- Disadvantage
 o Once automatic, difficult to stop
o Stroop effect
 The finding that it takes longer to name the colour of the ink a word is
printed in when the word is the name of a competing colour ( blue )

Automatic Encoding
- Automatically understand and perceive information into memory
- Two kinds of memory activities
o Those that require considerable effort or capacity
o Those that require very little or none
- Support incidental learning
o Incidental learning: learning that occurs when we do not make a conscious
effort to learn
- We can automatically record frequency, spatial, and temporal information without
consciously intending to keep track of this information
o Frequency information
 Data that specifies how often different stimuli occur
 Eg. How many times each picture appeared
o Spatial information
 Data about where objects occur in the environment
 Eg. Recollection of locations
o Temporal information
 Data about when or for how long events occur
 Eg. Relative recency or duration of events