1. Cognitive Psychology PSYC231
Attention 1
Dr. Jan Lauwereyns, EA619, ext. 5042

4. Too much information –
How do we select what’s relevant?
Bottleneck metaphor

5. Read the bold print. Somewhere Among hidden the in most the spectacular Rocky Mountains cognitive near abilities Central City is Colorado the an ability old to miner select hid one a message box from of another. gold. We Although do several this hundred by people focusing have our looked attention for on it, certain they cues have such not as found type it style.

6. What do you remember from the regular print text?

7. Early selection: before pattern recognition
Late selection: after pattern recognition

8. Example of Early Selection Model: Donald Broadbent’s Filter

9. Properties: 1. Selection (filtering) is based on physical properties of the stimulus (e.g., pitch, loudness, etc...). 2. Attention is directed to information that passes the filter or to physically salient information that leads to a shift in attention. 3. Only one input channel can be processed at a time. It takes time to shift attention. But: Dear 7 Jane vs. 9 Aunt 6

10. Figure 4.5 (p.105 ) In Gray and Weddebum’s (1960) “Dear Aunt Jane” experiment, the message “Dear Aunt Jane” starts in the left ear, jumps to the right ear and then goes back to the left. Participants were told to shadow the message presented to the left ear.

11. Example of Early Selection Model: Anne Treisman’s Attenuation

12. Examples of Late Selection Model: Norman, (MacKay,) Deutsch & Deutsch

13. Electrophysiological evidence for evidence of early effects of attention