Attention Theories

University:
California State University, Northridge
Course:
PSY 150 | Introduction to Psychology
Academic year:

2023
Views:

49

Pages:

2
Author:

JJIssac

ATTENTION THEORIES  All incoming messages processed for meaning initially.  Selection of which to attend to happens late, after meaning extraction.  Elaborated messages are remembered better, nonelaborated ones forgotten.  Accounted processing channels. Broadbent's Filter Theory  Proposes an early selection attentional filter that blocks processing of unattended messages based on physical properties like location or pitch.  Filter prevents exceeding limited processing capacity and overload.  Unattended messages are not analyzed for meaning, explaining poor recall of such content.  Doesn't account for cocktail party effect of hearing one's own name in unattended channel.    Messages undergo analyses of physical, linguistic and semantic properties. Unattended messages are attenuated rather than completely filtered. Some meaning can still be recognized. Words with personal significance like one's name have a permanently lowered threshold and require minimal attention to be noticed. Accounts for cocktail party effect within a filtering framework.  We actively pick up relevant information like picking apples off a tree rather than filtering.  Unattended information is simply not acquired in the first place.  Skilled perceivers can focus effectively on target events and ignore distractors based on expectations. Neuroscience of Attention  Parietal lobe is critical for spatial and sensory attention.  Frontal lobe involved in motor planning and controlling responses.  Two processing stages: preattentive parallel sensory feature extraction and focused attentive meaning processing. Automatic Processing  Deutsch and Deutsch Late Selection Theory semantic unattended Neisser's Schema Theory Treisman's Attenuation Theory  for of and Controlled Automatic processing is fast, parallel, requires minimal attention.  Controlled processing is slower, serial, capacity limited, requires attention.  Schneider and Shiffrin examined how factors like display time affect search efficiency, illuminating automatic detection.