Psych 352 - Class 6

Attention
	Limited capacity of processing 
	Need for selection, de-emphasis of information

	Attention is the process of directing/focusing mental resources 
	to enhance processing

Selective Attention Experiments
	Overload processor by presenting too much information, such as
	two messages at once -- "dual task method"
	Look at performance on ONE task

	Dichotic listening/Shadowing tasks
	Cherry
		subjects notice human vs. tone, sex (basic sensory info)

		Cannot report meaning of second message, exact words,
		or if speech was backwards or in foreign language
		cannot detect changes in second message

	Early Selection/Filter (Broadbent)
	Attention is all or none (only one message is processed at all)
	But
		cocktail party effect (Moray)
		Treisman's study where meaning switched to unattended ear
		words presented to unattended ear influence interpretation
		of attended message (meaning of ambiguous words)
		shock experiments (country names)

	Supports Late Selection (Deutsch & Deutsch)
		all incoming messages get some amount of analysis
		But is all information in both channels processed well?

	Attenuation/Pertinence Models
		less capacity is devotedc to unattended channels
		only important/salient info gets recognized in
		unattended/less attended channel (Treisman/Norman)

	There is actually evidence that we use both early and late
	selection, depending on the difficulty of the task, and the
	quality of the unattended information.