PS425/952

Cognitive Psychology
•Units of Selection
•Guyan Sloane
•gs16502@essex.ac.uk
Today
• Locus of Selection debate
• Early selection
• Attenuation
• Late selection
• Load Theory
• Biased Competition
• Divided amongst the senses
• General processor
Auditory attention in the 21st Century
Dalton & Fraenkel (2012)
 Inattentional Deafness
Dalton & Fraenkel (2012)
% Noticed
1

0.9

0.8

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0
Attend Men Attend Women

% Noticed
 Shadowing: Cherry (1953)

It was a very The horses galloped

cold winters day across the field

The horses
galloped across the
field
 Moray (1959)

Car, House, Tomato, The horses galloped

Cup, Window across the field

The horses
galloped across the
field

Memory for unattended stream no better than chance

What do participants notice in the ignored
message?
Participants did not notice
• Speech reversal (talking backwards)
• Change of language (English to German)

But they did notice

• Change of speaker from male (low pitch) to female
(high pitch)
• Insertion of a steady tone (beep)
Broadbent (1958): Filter Theory

Extraction of Extraction of
“physical” “abstract”
properties properties

(Pitch, location, (Meaning,

etc) category, etc)
Broadbent (1958): Filter Theory
• We have a system for extracting meaning and it is limited
• We need to protect it lest it be overloaded and we can get
confused from information overload
• We use the physical properties to select what we will extract
meaning from
• Early Selection Model
• Filter is all or nothing
• Meaning of unselected stimuli is lost
The locus of selection debate
• The point in processing at which some stimuli are selected
and others rejected
• Early selection: Selection after extraction of physical
properties
• Late selection: Selection after complete processing
• This debate dominates the literature for decades
• Locus is derived from Latin meaning ‘place’ or ‘location’

10
Early selection
Broadbent (1958) is an example of an early selection model
• Extract physical properties
• Use physical properties to select certain stimuli for further
processing
• Translating physical properties into meaning is capacity
limited
• Filter protects this system from overload
 Challenges to filter theory

The horses galloped

GUYAN across the field

The horses
galloped across the
field

Moray (1959)
 Treisman (1960)
• Test of filter theory
• Pitted physical properties against meaning

song
I SAWwas
THEWISHING
GIRL … JUMPING in bird…
me that the street

•When the message switched ears

•Participants sometimes followed the message
 Attenuation theory: Treisman (1960)
Dictionary • Attenuation = the reduction of the force,
effect, or value of something
• Filtering is incomplete
Guyan John
Wooden Table Bus • Unattended leaks through the filter
• Different words in memory have different
thresholds
• Special words might be activated by reduced
input
• Same for primed words
Semantic Priming
Attenuation theory: Treisman (1960)
• Filter is not all or none
• Filter acts to weaken or attenuate stimuli
• Attended stimuli better able to activate LTM
• Some representations easier to activate
• Due to priming or special relevance some words have a head
start
 Late Selection: Deutsch & Deutsch (1963)
Challenges the need for any early filter
• Why have a complicated filter mechanism that is already deciding what to
pass on, on the basis of meaning?
All stimuli are analysed for meaning
• Still need to be selective for coherent behaviours
• You cannot act on or think on all the meaning that is processed
 Late Selection
Filter Theory
• The processes/mechanisms involved in meaning extraction is limited
• Meaning is lost if not selected/attended

Late Selection
• What is limited is our ability to act on information
• Meaning is processed but you do not know it
Evidence for late selection
• Researchers try to provide examples of processing meaning

• Even for unattended stimuli

• Quite difficult to do fully convincingly

 Corteen & Wood (1972)
MIRROR
Stage 1: Listen to words ZURICH
MOSCOW
Three words SHOCKED PENCIL
LONDON
INFANT
Takes advantage of BELFAST
conditioning GARBAGE
DALLAS
OBJECT
SYDNEY
LETTER
 Corteen & Wood (1972)
• Stage 2:
• Shadow prose ignore words in other ear
• Measure Galvanic Skin Response (GSR)
• GSR is change in conductivity of skin driven by
emotional response linked to sweating
• Ignored shocked names generate GSR
• Ignored unshocked city names also give some GSR
 Lewis (1970)

Car
Plug
House
Stick
Dog
Hound
Cup
 Lewis (1970)
Unattended words that do not Breakthrough
• Still affect RT
• Semantically related words slow down RT
• Some semantic processing of unattended
 Problems with late selection

• Is unattended information fully processed?

• Treisman & Riley (1969)

• Attend to speech in one ear (digits)
• Detect targets in either ear (letters)
• On target detection stop shadowing and tap
• Target detection much worse on unattended side
 Not all cues are equally effective
• Selection by meaning is more difficult
• Compare different targets
• e.g animal names, first names, letters vs. digits
• Filtering by physical cues much easier
• e.g. male vs. female voice
• e.g. Treisman & Riley (1969) Johnston & Heinz (1978)
• Easier for filter type theories (early selection) to explain
 Selective looking

• An analogue of dichotic listening for vision

• Dichotic listening in the VISUAL MODALITY
• Neisser (1976) Neisser & Becklen (1975)
• Becklen & Cervone (1983)
 Spatial attention

• Audition and vision are different

• You can’t move your ears (much)
• You can move your eyes
• What you attend visually and where you
move your eyes typically correlates
• We want to study attention not eye
movements
 Visual spatial attention

• Can you select a location and attend to it

• Even when you are looking at something else?
• If we can show this then we can separate:
• Overt attention:- what you are looking at with your
eyes
• Covert attention:- what you are attending to
psychologically (Posner)
Posner, Nissen, & Ogden (1978)

X X

20%
80%invalid
valid
Filter theory in the 21st Century:

vthsbm
jgnfrs
flute
scarf + toast
pvwqnk
mouse
lwdzcq
Colour

The case of words: White Palmer Boynton (2018)

• Attend only one side
• Respond to colour
• Equally good for both sides
 Filter theory in the 21st Century:

train
arm
jgnfrs
vthsbm + nose
pvwqnk
steel
lwdzcq
Anatomy

The case of words: White Palmer Boynton (2018)

• Much better on attended side
• Evidence for filter theory
Effects of unattended flanker stimuli
• Can visual stimuli be identified without attention?
 +
SMILE
RUBBISH THING
WASTE

Underwood and Thwaites (1982)

• Decide if the central item is a word or not
• Semantic interference
L’s or T’s

T+

T
L

T
T
 Load Theory
Evidence for early selection
• Filter theory and Attenuation Theory
Evidence for late selection

Load Theory (Lavie)

• Filter depends on a task difficulty
• More difficult = early selection
• Less difficult = late selection
• A resolution of the locus of selection debate?
Humans are limited in capacity
• Always use all capacity
• Prebooked = target
• Turn up = distractor
• Fine until capacity is exceeded
• Prebooked = get on the train
• Turn up = left behind
HK SC
 KKKHKKK
Response Compatible

CCC HCCC
Response Incompatible
 Inc
om
p
Eriksen and Eriksen

atib
le =
Slo
we
r
Com
pati
ble
= Fa
ster
According to load theory:
• Flanker interference can be a marker of late selection
• Interference is with the selection of the response
• Different flankers differ with respect to the RESPONSE
• Remember in the locus of selection debate
• RESPONSES come late, after other processing
• Any interference is with the selection of the response
• Indicates that late selection is happening
z

X
P
Z

INCOMPATIBLE
COMPATIBLE
NEUTRAL
mvznsk

X
Z
P

INCOMPATIBLE
COMPATIBLE
NEUTRAL
 High Load
19 ms
Flanker interference smaller

Low Load

Low Load
50 ms
Flanker interference larger
 Rees Frith Lavie (1997)

CHAIR sofa

Yes
No No
Yes

High load: Upper

Low load: Two sylables?
case?
Rees Frith Lavie (1997)
 Load theory Lavie (1995)

• Locus of selection is BOTH early and late

• It depends on how hard the task is
• People have limited processing resources
• Spare resources always spill over to irrelevant
stimuli
• If the task is hard enough resources run out
before they can spill over
 Cognitive control and cognitive load:
• Low load
• Even though stimuli are processed
• The correct response is still made (usually)
• We must at some point filter out what is irrelevant
• Late selection of the appropriate response

• Control processes to enable late selection

• Maintaining these control processes may recruit working
memory
Low task load:
• Making sure the right response gets made
• First class passengers go first
• Need a steward (additional cognitive resources) to supervise
• To make correct selection
Lavie, Hirst, DeFockert & Viding (2004)
 High Load
19 ms
Flanker interference smaller

Low Load

Low Load
50 ms
Flanker interference larger
 Load Theory Summary
• Perceptual/Task load
• The load that stimuli place on perceptual processing
• All processing resources are used up
• Low perceptual load = filtering fails
• Low perceptual load = late selection
• High perceptual load = filtering succeeds
• High perceptual load = early selection

• Cognitive load
• The load that task goals and priorities place on working memory
• Important for ensuring successful late selection
• High working memory load = impaired late selection
Receptive Field
Receptive Field
• Receptive field refers to the specific region of the sensory
space that, when stimulated, influences the activity of a
particular neuron
• Neurons firing rate increases for the feature it is tuned for
• Simple receptive fields typically respond to basic features
such as edges or lines
• Complex receptive fields respond to more complex stimuli
and might be influenced by the arrangement of simpler
features.
 Biased Competition (Desimone, 1998)

• Representation in the visual system (and other domains)

is competitive
• Because of limited capacity
• Competition is controlled/biased
• Competition can be biased by top-down and bottom-up
mechanisms
• Competition is integrated across brain systems
• If a representation gains dominance in one system it gains
similar dominance in other systems
 Biased Competition
Bottom-up/Salient stimuli
• Representation of salient stimuli are enhanced/ non-salient stimuli are
suppressed in the neuron
• Higher firing rates or enhanced activity
• Physical features
Top-down
• Enhances processing of stimuli related to goals and prior knowledge
• Lowers firing thresholds for relevant stimuli
• Inhibits irrelevant/distractor stimuli
• Increases firing thresholds
• Semantic features
Biased Competition
Flexible biasing of perceptual system
• Ever changing mix of top-down and bottom-up biasing
• When stimuli gains representation they become dominant
• Attention emerges from this competition and bias

Stimuli selected at multiple loci

• Selection is neither early or late
• Rejects locus of selection
 Summary
• Attention is mechanism to select
• Locus of Selection debate
• Filter theory - early selection filters out meaning, all or nothing filter
• Attenuation theory – filter attenuates
• Late selection – no filter everything is processed
• Load theory
• Attentional resources always used up
• Low perceptual load then late selection
• High perceptual load then early selection
• Biased competition
• Stimuli compete for representation
• Bottom-up and top-down bias this competition
 Broadbent (1958)

Extraction of
“physical”
properties

(Pitch, location,
etc)
 Kahneman (1973) Resource model

Limited capacity or resources

Shared across tasks
Kahneman (1973)
Dividing attention between the senses

• Broadbent (1958) considered the whole brain as a

single information processing channel
• Kahneman (1973) suggested there could be a
general pool of resources shared between tasks
• According to this view it might be as difficult to
divide attention between different sensory
modalities as it is to divide attention within a
modality
• Single Channel Hypothesis
Dividing attention between the senses
• Allport, Antonis, & Reynolds (1972)
• Based on Moray (1959)
• Shadow prose BUT show pictures

The horses
galloped across
the field

The horses
galloped across
the field
 Dividing attention between the senses

• Treisman & Davies (1973)

• Look or listen for a target animal name
• Compare:
• One or two visual locations: WITHIN
• One or two ears: WITHIN
• One location and one ear: BETWEEN
Within Modality

Knife
Ship
Cup
“Cup”
“Ship”
“Knife”“House”
“Book”
“Dog”
Book
House
Dog
Between Modality

Dog
Book
House “Spoon”
“Car”
“Phone”
 Dividing attention between the senses
100%

• Treisman & Davies (1973)

• Look or listen for a target animal
name
• Dividing attention between eye and
ear easier than dividing attention 50%

within modality
• Still some cost even cross modality

Within Between Within Between

 Modularity
• Problem for the single channel hypothesis
• Special processing systems for vision and
audition
• Each with its own limitations for information
processing
• e.g. Allport (1980)
• KEY POINT
• We are likely to be better at multitasking if the
two tasks involve different modalities
General Processing
• Cognitive Load?
• Evidence for general processing
• Evidence when we look at RT in
simple task
• The psychological refractory period
supports this
• D Telford (1931)
• Welford (1952)
 Response selection bottleneck

• “a stubborn bottleneck encompassing the

process of choosing actions”

Perception R Selection Action Action

Perception R SelectionR SelectionAction Action

 T2 100ms T2 200ms T2 400ms
T1: 0ms

Tone is low/medium/high
Colour of circle

RT ms

100ms 200ms 400ms

SOA (separation) ms
 Executive control and coordination
Attentional Control
Central Executive
Task Switching Working Memory

Updating and Manipulating

Information

Problem Solving and Decision

Making

Shows how both general and Visuo-spatial sketchpad Phonological loop

specific resources can coexist