Attention can be referred to as the concentration of awareness on some phenomenon to

conclude other stimuli. Morgan and Gweiland : Attention is being keenly. alive to some specific
factor in environment, it is a preparatory adjustment for response. Psychologist and philosopher
William James wrote in his book “The principles of psychology” that attention is the taking
possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what may seem several
simultaneously possible objects or trains of thoughts, it implies withdrawal from some things in
order to dial effectively with other” Attention is limited in terms of both capacity & duration.
According to Sharma RN, “Attention is a process which compels the individual to select some
particular stimulus according to their interest and attitude out of the multiple stimuli present in
the environment.

Filter model of attention

Donald Broadbent proposed a theory, according to which a person can attend and process only
limited amounts of information, at any given point, therefore if the amount of information
available at any given time exceeds this capacity the person uses attentional filters to filter out
some information and block the rest. The theory proposed that the physical characteristics of
messages are used to select one message for further processing and that all others are then lost.
Information from all of the stimuli present at any given point enters an unlimited capacity of
sensory buffer. One of the inputs is then selected based on its physical characteristics for further
processing passing through a filter. However, Broadbent believed that the amount of information
we can process at a given time is limited but we can pay attention to two messages at once. when
the two messages contain little information, or when the information is presented slowly. The
filter thus avoids information overload my allowing important messages that have lower
threshold and have certain characteristics to be processed while the rest are not processed. It
mainly has two analogies 1) Bottleneck analogy and the cocktail party effect. Bottleneck theory
suggests that individuals have limited number of attentional resources that can be used
simultaneously. Therefore information & stimuli are filtered in a way that only the most salient
& vital information is perceived. The cocktail party effect was one of the theories that contradicts
filter theory. Cocktail parity effect is about our ability to pay attention to a particular stimulus
while filtering out a range of other stimuli. Our shadowing off some information is disrupted
sometimes when we hear a particular stimuli in either the attended or unattended message.
Hence it so was thought that some words or stimuli has lower threshold like our name or some
emergency or alerting information like the word fire hence such information gets through the
filter and is analyzed for meaning, as shown in the attenuation model.

ATTENUATION MODEL

Triesman agrees with Broadbent's theory of an early bottleneck filter. However, triesman's filter
attenuates rather than eliminates the unattended material. according to this theory people can still
process the meaning of the attended messages. In this experiment Triesman demonstrated that
participants were able to identify the content of an unattended message, indicating that they
could process the meaning of both, the attended and unattended messages. Treisman carried out
dichotic listening tasks, using the speech shadowing method. which showed that even some parts
of unattended. message was being processed. This evidence suggests that Broadbent's filter
module is not adequate. The filter only attenuates (weakens) their strength. Thus some stimuli
manage to escape through the selective filter to reach higher levels of processing, people process
information to only the level required to separated the attended message from unattended
message. If the two messages differ in physical characteristics, then we process both the
messages only to this level of discrimination and easily reject the unattended message, while if
the two we messages differ only semantically we process both through the level of meaning and
select the message to pay attention to based on this analysis. Messages unattended too are not
completely blocked but rather weakened while some parts of the message with permanently
lowered thresholds can still be recovered, even from an unattended message.

Multimode theory of attention

Multimode theory was developed by Johnston and Heinz (1978). This theory believes that
attention is a flexible system that allows selection of a stimulus over others at three stages. At
stage one the sensory representations (e.g., visual images) of stimuli are constructed; at stage two
the semantic representations (e.g., names of objects) are constructed; and at stage three the
sensory and semantic representations enter the consciousness. It is also suggested that more
processing requires more mental effort. When the messages are selected on the basis of stage one
processing (early selection), less mental effort is required than when the selection is based on
stage three processing (late selection).
Schema theory

Neisser proposed that we don't filter, attenuate or forget unwanted material, instead we do not
acquire it. Neisser & Becklen performed a study of visual attention wherein they should
participants one film where they were shown two pair of hands slapping each other. The second
film showed three people passing a basketball to each other. Participants were asked to shadow
one of the films and respond by pressing a key whenever a target event occurred in the film. they
found that the participants could follow the attended film easily, even when the rate at which the
target event occurred was quite fast However the participants completely ignored the unattended
film and its targeted action stimuli even when unexpected events were shown in the unattended
stimuli like one of the players in the hand game had stopped slapping and was instead bouncing a
basketball. Neiser hence believed that we rather do not acquire the unattended information.

Stroop task

A famous demonstration of the effects of practice on the performance of cognitive tasks was
given by john ridley stroop. In psychology, the Stroop effect is the delay in reaction time
between automatic and controlled processing of information, in a stroop test,the Stroop effect is
that people tend to be faster at identifying the font color when the word name and font color are
the same and are slower when they are different. which the names of words interfere with the
ability to name the colour of ink used to print the words. As an individual becomes well
practiced in a task, that act or process takes less of their attention to perform the task. An
important variable is the capacity that a given task consumes. Hence the unpracticed task
requires so much mental effort that little capacity is available for other tasks, while the automatic
task requiring automatic processing must occur without intension, must occur without involving
conscious awareness and must not interfere with other mental activity. in the stroop task There
are three parts of the experiment. The participant's task is to name the colour the word is printed
in instead of the word itself, In the first condition, also known as the color patch condition, the
participant is shown a few cards in which some color patches are printed. Participant’s task is to
name color patches correctly in a column wise sequence, as accurately and as fast as possible. In
the second condition, known as the congruent word condition the participant is again shown a
few cards on which some words are printed. Participant has to name the color of those words
correctly in a column wise sequence as accurate and as fast as possible. In this condition, the
color in which the word is printed. and the name of the color are same ie : congruent. In the third
part, known as the incongruent word condition, the participant is again shown a few cards on
which some words are printed participants has to name color of those words in a column wise
sequence, as accurately and as fast as possible. In this condition, however the color in which the
word is printed and the name of the color printed are different that is in congruent.

APPLICATION

Stroop effect has many applications like being used as a psychometric test to assess the level of
attention deficit, mental functionality in person. even some neurodevelopmental disorders such
as schizophrenia and cultism have been examined with stroop test it can also be used to find
problems like color blindness and other visual problems. Thus stroop effect may help to
understand & help with the mental skills in various other somatic disease conditions.

Research
A study was conducted with the aim to examine the acute effects of alcohol on attentional
inhibition, considering previous limitations. It was a single-blind study with a cross-over design,
having 40 non-dependent participants with a medium-to-high risk drinking behavior who
performed a Counting Stroop task (CST) under a baseline and an arterial blood alcohol
concentration (aBAC) clamp at 80 mg%. Attentional inhibition was assessed as the alteration of
reaction times (RT), error rates (ER), and inverse efficiency scores (IES) between incongruent
and congruent trials (interference score). Stroop performance was also assessed regardless of
trial-type. According to results Compared to saline, acute alcohol exposure via an aBAC clamp
did not affect CST interference scores but increased RTs and IES in both incongruent and
congruent trials. Hence it was concluded that Attentional inhibition (Stroop interference score)
was not impaired by clamped moderate alcohol exposure. Acute alcohol impaired Stroop
performance evidenced by a general increase in response times. Our findings suggest that
response and attentional inhibition do not share the same neurocognitive mechanisms and are
affected differently by alcohol. Results could also be explained by automated behaviors known
to be relatively unaffected by acute alcohol.

Reference
 Riedel, P., Wolff, M., Spreer, M. et al. Acute alcohol does not impair attentional
inhibition as measured with Stroop interference scores but impairs Stroop
performance. Psychopharmacology 238, 1593–1607 (2021).
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-021-05792-0
 Galotti, K. M. (2014). cognitive psychology in and out of the laboratory (5th ed.). Sage.
 Some Theories on Attention. (2012, February 17). Engineering & Computing Education:

Reflections and Ideation. https://goelsan.wordpress.com/2010/08/05/some-theories-on-

attention/