Amity Institute of Behavioural & Allied Sciences
Module II Attention
Dr Deepa Pandey
AIBAS, Amity University
Lucknow Campus
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Attention Amity Institute of Behavioural & Allied Sciences
A large number of stimuli hit upon our sense organs
simultaneously, but we do not notice all of them at the same
time. Only a selected few of them are noticed. “paying
attention” is concentrating—shutting out other activities or
information to devote more mental resources to the object
on which you want to focus.
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Definition Amity Institute of Behavioural & Allied Sciences
• Attention is a concentration of mental activity.
• Attention allows our cognitive processes to take in selected
aspects of our environment. i.e. limiting information.(Palmer,
1999)
• ‘Attention is the means by which we actively
process a limited amount of information from the enormous
amount of information available through our senses, our stored
memories, and our other cognitive processes’. (De Weerd, 2003a;
Rao, 2003).
• Ross (1951) has defined it as “the process of getting an object or
thought clearly before the mind”.
• William James defined “attention is focusing of consciousness on
a particular object.
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Process / Nature Amity
of Attention
Institute of Behavioural & Allied Sciences
The process through which certain stimuli are selected from a
group of others is generally referred to as
attention. Besides selection, attention also refers to several
other properties like alertness, concentration, and search.
• Alertness refers to an individual’s readiness to deal with stimuli
that appear before her/him. For Example, Alertness at starting
point of race.
• Concentration refers to focusing of awareness on certain
specific objects while excluding others for the moment. For
example- Teachers voice rather than other noises.
• In Search, an observer looks for some specified subset of objects
among a set of objects. For example we search for a friend.
• Attention in this sense refers to “effort allocation”. 4
Types of Attention
Amity Institute of Behavioural & Allied Sciences
1. Selective Attention
2. Sustained Attention
3. Divided Attention
4. Alternative Attention
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Selective Attention
Amity Institute of Behavioural & Allied Sciences
Our brain selectively focuses on particular stimuli and blocks out
other stimuli consciously. It is a process oriented view.
Factors Affecting Selective Attention –
External factors - are related to the features of stimuli- constant, the size,
intensity, motion, Large, bright, and moving stimuli easily catch our attention.
Internal factors- Motivational, Biological & Social needs;
Cognitive factors-include factors like interest, attitude and
preparatory set.
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Selective Attention-Models
Amity Institute of Behavioural & Allied Sciences
1. Early Selection Theory (Filter theory by Donald Broadbent (1958)
2. Filter-attenuation theory by Annie Treisman (1960)
3. Late Selection Theory by Deutsch & Deutsch (1963)
4. The Cocktail Party by Cherry (1953)
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Selective Attention-Filter Model
Amity Institute of Behavioural & Allied Sciences
Broadbent’s and Treisman’s Models 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.
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Selective Attention-
AmityFilter theory
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• 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.
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Selective Attention-Early Selection Theory (Filter theory by
Amity Institute of Behavioural & Allied Sciences
Donald Broadbent (1958)
Broadbent’s Filter Model. Many researchers have investigated how
selection occurs and what happens to ignored information.
Donald Broadbent’s Filter Model was based on the dichotic listening
tasks described above as well as other types of experiments (
Broadbent, 1958). He found that people select information on the
basis of physical features:
The sensory channel (or ear) that a message was coming in, the pitch
of the voice, the color or font of a visual message.
People seemed vaguely aware of the physical features of the
unattended information but had no knowledge of the meaning. As a
result, Broadbent argued that selection occurs very early, with no
additional processing for the unselected information.
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Selective Attention-Early Selection Theory (Filter theory by
Amity Institute of Behavioural & Allied Sciences
Donald Broadbent (1958)
A flowchart of the model might look like this:
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Selective Attention-Amity
Broadbent’s Filter &Model
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According to Broadbent, the meaning of any of
the messages is not taken into account at all by
the filter. All semantic processing is carried out
after the filter has selected the message to pay
attention to. So whichever message(s) are
restricted by the bottleneck (i.e., not selective)
is not understood.
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Selective Attention-Amity
Broadbent’s Filter &Model
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Selective Attention-
Broadbent wanted Broadbent’s
toInstitute
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see of howFilter Model
people
Behavioural &
could
Allied Sciences
focus their attention (selectively attend), and to
do this; he deliberately overloaded them with
stimuli.
One of the ways Broadbent achieved this was by
simultaneously sending one message to a
person’s right ear and a different message to
their left ear.
This is called a split-span experiment (the
dichotic listening task).
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2. Treisman’s Attenuation Model
Amity Institute of Behavioural & Allied Sciences
Broadbent’s model makes sense, but if you think about it you
already know that it cannot account for all aspects of the
Cocktail Party Effect. What doesn’t fit? The fact is that you
tend to hear your own name when it is spoken by someone,
even if you are deeply engaged in a conversation. We
mentioned earlier that people in a shadowing experiment
were unaware of a word in the unattended ear that was
repeated many times—and yet many people noticed their
own name in the unattended ear even it occurred only once.
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Treisman’s Attenuation Model
Amity Institute of Behavioural & Allied Sciences
• Anne Treisman (1960) presented two different stories to
the two ears.
• As usual, she asked people to shadow the message in one
ear.
• As the stories progressed, however, she switched the
stories to the opposite ears. Treisman found that
individuals spontaneously followed the story, or the
content of the message, when it shifted from the left ear to
the right ear.
• Then they realized they were shadowing the wrong ear
and switched back.
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Treisman’s Attenuation Model
Amity Institute of Behavioural & Allied Sciences
• Tend to hear meaningful information even when you aren’t
paying attention to it, suggest that we do monitor the unattended
information to some degree on the basis of its meaning.
• Therefore, the filter theory can’t be right to suggest that
unattended information is completely blocked at the sensory
analysis level.
• Treisman suggested that selection starts at the physical or
perceptual level, but that the unattended information is not
blocked completely, it is just weakened or attenuated.
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Treisman’s Attenuation Model
Amity Institute of Behavioural & Allied Sciences
As a result, highly meaningful or pertinent information in the
unattended ear will get through the filter for further processing at the
level of meaning.
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Late Selection Models- Deutsch
Amity and
Institute of Deutsch
Behavioural (1963)
& Allied Sciences
A late selection or response selection model proposed by
Deutsch and Deutsch (1963) suggests that all information in
the unattended ear is processed on the basis of meaning, not
just the selected or highly pertinent information.
Acoustic and semantic analysis (Physical and meaning)
However, only the information that is relevant for the task
response gets into conscious awareness. This model is
consistent with ideas of subliminal perception; in other
words, that you don’t have to be aware of or attending a
message for it to be fully processed for meaning.
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Late Selection Models
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Multimode Model Models Johnston
Amity Institute and Heinz
of Behavioural & Allied(1978)
Sciences
The multimode model addresses this apparent inconsistency,
suggesting that the stage at which selection occurs can
change depending on the task. Johnston and Heinz (1978)
Demonstrated that under some conditions, we can select what
to attend to at a very early stage and we do not process the
content of the unattended message very much at all.
Analyzing physical information, such as attending to
information based on whether it is a male or female voice, is
relatively easy; it occurs automatically, rapidly, and doesn’t
take much effort
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Multimode Model Models Johnston
Amity Institute and Heinz
of Behavioural & Allied(1978)
Sciences
The multimode model addresses this apparent inconsistency,
suggesting that the stage at which selection occurs can
change depending on the task. Johnston and Heinz (1978)
Demonstrated that under some conditions, we can select what
to attend to at a very early stage and we do not process the
content of the unattended message very much at all.
Analyzing physical information, such as attending to
information based on whether it is a male or female voice, is
relatively easy; it occurs automatically, rapidly, and doesn’t
take much effort
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Multimode Model Models Johnston
Amity Institute and Heinz
of Behavioural & Allied(1978)
Sciences
Under the right conditions, we can select what to attend to on
the basis of the meaning of the messages. However, the late
selection option—processing the content of all messages
before selection—is more difficult and requires more effort.
The benefit, though, is that we have the flexibility to change
how we deploy our attention depending upon what we are
trying to accomplish, which is one of the greatest strengths of
our cognitive system.
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