Cognitive Psychology

• Involuntary attention


  Data-driven, bottom-up, automatic process
• Involuntary attention


  • Arousal and alertness: a pre-condition
  • Spotlight attention (Posner task) and visual search (Treisman)
  • Inhibition of return
• Voluntary attention


  Controlled attention, more top-down process, conceptually driven; a deliberate, voluntary allocation of mental effort or concentration
• Selective attention


  Based on mental resources available (capacity limited) and conscious processing
• Controlled attention


  Controlled by supervisory attentional system (central executive?)
• Models of attention


  • Broadbent's (1958) Early Filter Model
  • Treisman's Attenuation Model (1964)
  • Deutsch & Deutsch (1963) and Norman (1968)'s Late Filter Models
  • Kahneman's (1973) Capacity Model of Attention
  • Johnston & Heinz (1978) Multimode theory
• Selective attention


  The ability to attend to one source of information while ignoring or excluding other ongoing stimuli around us
• We cannot attend to all incoming stimuli at the same time; we must select what is important and relevant and ignore what is not
• Our attention is capacity limited
• Driving and talking on the phone leads to inattentional blindness
• Selective attention in visual perception seems straightforward - you can move your eye to the stimuli you wish to attend
• How we selectively attend to auditory information is entirely cognitive as there is no equivalent to eye-movement in hearing
• Dichotic listening task


  Participants are presented with different spoken messages in each ear and asked to attend to and shadow one message while ignoring the other
• In the dichotic listening task, participants' shadowing performance is consistent but they fail to report much information from the unattended channel
• Broadbent's Early Filter Model


  1. All sensory information enters the attentional system and reaches a bottleneck or filter

  2. At this point the system chooses which message or visual stimulus to process further

  3. Irrelevant information rejected by action of the filter - anything that is not task relevant

  4. Filter is placed directly after the sensory store (visual or auditory)
• Broadbent's Early Filter Model


  • Filter function is based on physical characteristics - motion, colour, shape and spatial location (visual modality), pitch, loudness & spatial location (auditory modality)
• Broadbent's Early Filter model is consistent with Cherry's (1953) findings that participants only detected physical changes in the unattended input and failed to notice changes in semantic characteristics
• Treisman's Attenuation Model


  1. Initial screening assesses signal based on physical characteristics

  2. Instead of irrelevant information being excluded, the Attenuator turns their perceptual 'volume' down - no longer the focus of attention but available for higher level processing if required
• Late Selection Models


  • Deutsch & Deutsch (1963)
  • Norman (1968)
• Late Selection Models


  Suggested that the filter occurs after all the information has been processed, and all information is processed in an unattended format
• According to late selection models, the limitation is on the response system rather than the perceptual system
• Wood & Cowan (1995) found that only a small proportion of participants detected their own name in the unattended channel, contradicting late selection theory</b>
• Wood & Cowan (1995) suggested this could be due to the failure of participants to switch attention to the unattended channel
• When participants were instructed to be ready for new instructions in the unattended channel, 80% detected their own name
• Based on evidence, it is assumed the participant has some control over where the filter occurs, depending on the task requirements
• It is suggested that late selection requires more mental effort than early selection
• Capacity theories


  Concerned with the amount of mental effort required to perform a task
• Kahneman's Capacity Model


  Assumes there is a limit on a person's capacity to perform mental work, and that interference occurs when the demands of two activities exceed the available capacity
• Kahneman's Capacity Model


  Differs from filter models in that it attributes interference to non-specific demands on capacity rather than specific interference from shared mechanisms
• Kahneman's Capacity Model


  The amount of mental capacity available varies according to the individual's level of arousal, with more capacity available at intermediate levels of arousal
• Kahneman's Capacity Model


  The choice of which activities are supported is influenced by enduring dispositions (involuntary attention) and momentary intentions (current goals)
• Johnston & Heinz's Multimode Theory


  Proposes an interaction between filter and capacity models, with the listener having control over the location of the filter along a continuum from early to late selection
• Johnston & Heinz's experiments showed that response times and error rates increased when the filter had to be based on meaning rather than physical properties, supporting their assumptions
• Models of attention


  • Broadbent's (1958) Early Filter Model
  • Treisman's Attenuation Model (1964)
  • Deutsch & Deutsch (1963) and Norman (1968)'s Late Filter Models
  • Kahneman's (1973) Capacity Model of Attention
  • Johnston & Heinz (1978) Multimode theory
• Today's material was taken mostly from Ashcraft & Radvansky (2014) and Reed (2007)
• Attention related phenomena


  • Inhibition control
  • Attentional blink
  • Automaticity