Compare and Contrast Early vs Late Selection Models of Attention. How Well Do They Explain How We Selectively Attend to Informatio

The Stroop effect is demonstrated by the reaction time to determine a color when the color is printed in a different color’s name. Participants respond slower or make more errors when the meaning of the word is incongruent with the color of the word. Despite knowing the meaning of the word, participants showed incapability of ignoring the stimulus attribute. This reflects a clear instance of semantic interference and an unfathomed failure of selective attention (Stroop, 1935).

Following classical conditioning the data show a decrease in variability and in the latency between stimulus presentation and the response. There is also a change in trend from increasing to no trend.

Being able to pay attention is something that some people take for granted without appreciating it. Bereft of this luxury, we wouldn’t be able to properly communicate with others, focus on our goals, and most importantly, live as who we are

Attention is thought to be selective-focused on one subject at a time. Traditionally, it has been assumed that automatic processing is involuntary, it does not require attention, and is relatively fast; whereas, controlled processing is voluntary, does require attention, and is relatively slow. We can conclude from this that the more we repeat a certain material or tasks the more it becomes automatic and effortless to us.

Attention is considered to be a core cognitive process, it refers to how people actively process specific information in the environment. Attention refers to how people select from information and stimuli in the environment, facilitating processing of some of the stimuli and inhibiting processing of others. "Everyone knows what attention is, it is the taking possession by the mind in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought...It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state. “This definition of attention was proposed by psychologist William James (1890). This review will focus on literature that gives explanation to selective attention. Selective attention refers to the process where a person is able to select out of many stimuli and focus on the one they want and ignore other stimuli.

Evidence for space-based attention comes primarily from a variety of cuing tasks, which assume that reaction time for detecting a target indicates processing efficiency. Since attention enhances processing efficiency, one would expect that reaction times are faster for attended features, and slower for unattended ones. For example, Posner (1980) showed that target letters were identified more quickly when they had been pre-cued by a dot in the same location. This suggests that attention was directed at the cued region of space. Egly and Homa (1984) used a task in which a general circular area was pre-cued. They found that stimulus detection was

Selection. Selection is defined in the book as the following “The process of attending to a stimulus.” (Floyd, pg. 109) I have watched this video over and over before writing this paper, but the first time I watched it nothing really stood out to me besides

It was therefore hypothesised that the reaction times for global judgments would be faster than the reaction times of local judgments. It was also hypothesised that consistent stimuli would be faster than conflicting stimuli in the local tasks.

This was achieved by presenting central cues, indicating the position of the target letter thus increasing focus. Through these experiments they found that when a subject is in a diffuse attention state (unfocussed) SOD do cause attentional capture and increase reaction time. However, if the subject was presented with a cue this same increase in reaction time was not observed. This led them to conclude that attentional capture from SOD is not automatic and instead propose a priority based visual attention system. In 2006 Neo and Chua conducted research which built upon Yantis and Jonides’ to further demonstrate effects of attentional capture on reaction time. They investigated whether sporadic use of the SOD increased the effect of attentional capture as well as investigated whether maintaining the same position for the target letter decreased reaction times. They found that SOD attentional capture did affect reaction times and unlike in Yantis and Jonides’ experiment they concluded SOD did trigger an automaticity response when used

This study examined whether participant’s response times to global target were faster than local targets. Participants had to identify global and local shapes and letters as quick as possible and the response times which were recorded to the computer data. The study was a replication of Navon’s (1977), (cited in Ness Smith and Thirkettle, 2014) experiment but differed, as it was a focused attention task whereas this experiment was a divided attention task. This was the same as Yovel (2001), (cited in Ness, Smith and Thirkettle, 2014) mixed attention task study which tested the global to local accounts. The current

Williams James used the paying attention method to demonstrate that in order to pay attention to one particular object completely, one must disregard all other objects within the same environment in order to concentrate.

The Speed of Processing theory, which is what tends to happen when a person processes an action without being aware of it, is one of them [5]. Naming the color of the font of a word is not as common as reading an actual word. What this means is that easy tasks that we tend to overlearn since childhood, such as reading every word we see, tend to go into effect in our brain right after visual contact. Another explanation lies in the Selective Attention theory. Broadbent's 1985 study can explain the Selective Attention theory. Broadbent declared that information first enters a "sensory buffer" [6]. After the information enters the sensory buffer, selection of one of the inputs takes place within the basis of its physical characteristics. Broadbent places emphasis on what he calls a "sensory buffer" or filter in his study. This filter is used to prevent the brain from processing excessive amounts of information that could cause it to become overwhelmed and lose its ability to process the data efficiently [6]. The data that does not go through the filter does not become processed and eventually disintegrates [6]. Reading words does not require as much attention as naming the font color of a word does, which is why selective attention takes place [6]. Overall, the mind chooses to work with the task that requires the least amount of

Early studies have widely researched attention with selective processing (Driver, 2001). Broadbent (1958) filter theory of attention states that certain information does not require focal attention. It is based on certain stimulus attributes such as colour and shape (Friedenberg, 2012). A previous study carried out by Treisman and Schmidt (1982) proposes that when attention is diverted from a display of several figures, the participants incorrectly combine the features of colour and shape therefore increases the illusory conjunctions portrayed by the participants (Tsal, 1989). Another study by Shaw (1978) found that reaction time of participant to identify targets varied with the probability that a target would appear in a particular display location. These results indicate that different amounts of attention towards the targets are distributed to different positions in the visual field. However, Houck and Hoffman (1986) found that the feature integration of colour and orientation can sometimes be accomplished without attention (James et al.,

The article by Avital-Cohen and Tsal (2016) discussed the flanker task experiment, which asserted that distractor interference happens unconsciously as a result of focused attention toward the target. The results from the original flanker task indicated that participants had slower responses for incongruent trials, since the distractors are inconsistent with the target and would require a different response (Avital-Cohen & Tsal, 2016). However, Avital-Cohen and Tsal (2016) questioned the findings from the flanker task experiment. They decided to challenge the idea that only the target stimuli receives top-down processing, and not the distractors (Avital-Cohen & Tsal, 2016). The first experiment aimed to test whether the distractor interference is purely bottom-up processing as claimed in the flanker task. The experiment manipulated participants’ expectations of the target using the context effect - a type of top-down processing - by changing the distractors to be either letters or digits (Psych 240 lecture, 9/21/16). Then, the researchers conducted a second experiment and eliminated the ambiguity of distractors. They wanted to test whether the result from experiment 1 was caused by an overall bias or the ambiguous distractors. In experiment 2, the researchers predicted that they would obtain similar results to the first experiment only if the results were due to an overall bias effect (Avital-Cohen & Tsal, 2016). This study allows us to deepen our understanding of available

Research carried out on attention has mainly been associated with the selective processing of incoming sensory information. It proposes, to some degree, our awareness of the world depends on what we choose to focus on and not simply the stimulation received by our senses. Attention is often linked to a filter that screens out most potential stimuli whilst allowing a select few to pass through into our conscious awareness, however, a great deal of debate has been devoted to where the filter is situated in the information processing chain (Martindale, 1991). Psychologists have made extensive contributions to this subject matter in the past century. Notable examples include Donald Broadbent's filter theory of attention (1958), which set the