Every day and every second we are exposed to a large stream of sound information. The horns of cars in the bustle of the city, the conversation of work colleagues, the hum of household appliances－ and this is only a small part of the sound factors that affect us every minute. Can you imagine what would happen if every such moment distracted our attention? But most of the noise we simply ignore and do not perceive. Why is this happening?
Imagine you are at your friend's party in a busy restaurant. A large number of sound effects, the clink of wine glasses and glasses, many other sounds - they all try to grab your attention. But amid all the noise, you prefer to focus on the funny story your buddy is telling. How can you ignore all other sounds and listen to your friend's story?
This is an example of the concept of “selective attention”. Its other name is selective or selective attention.
Definition
Selective attention is simply focusing on a particularobject for a certain period of time, while ignoring non-essential information that also occurs.
Because our ability to keep track of things around us is limited both in scope and duration, and is directly affected by individual psychological characteristics of the individual, we must be selective in what we pay attention to. Attention acts like a spotlight, highlighting the details we need to focus on and weeding out the information we don't need.
The degree of selective attention that can be applied to a situation depends on the person and their ability to concentrate on certain circumstances. It also depends on distractions in the environment. Selective attention can be a conscious effort, but it can also be subconscious.
How does selective attention work?
Some research suggests that selective attention is the result of a skill that helps store memories.
Because personality traits and working memory can only contain a limited amount of information, we often have to filter out unnecessary information. People are often inclined to pay attention to what appeals to their feelings, or to what is familiar.
For example, when you are hungry, you are more likely to notice the smell of fried chicken than the sound of a phone ringing. This is especially important if the chicken isone of your favorite foods.
Selective attention can also be used to purposefully attract interest to an object or person. Many marketing agencies are developing ways to get a person's selective attention using colors, sounds, and even tastes. Have you ever noticed that some restaurants or shops offer food tastings at lunchtime, when you are most likely to be hungry and will surely taste the offered samples, after which the likelihood of going to their restaurant or cafe will increase significantly. In this case, visual and auditory attention take over your senses, while the noise or activity of the crowd of buyers around you is simply ignored.
“In order to maintain our attention to one event in daily life, we must filter out other events－ explains author Russell Rellin in his text “Cognition: Theory and Practice.” － We must be selective in our attention, focusing on some events at the expense of others, because attention － is a resource to be reserved for important events.”
Selective visual attention
There are two main models that describe how visual attention works.
- The spotlight model assumes that visual attention works in the same way as a spotlight. Psychologist William James suggested that such a mechanism includes a focal point in which everything is clearly visible. The area surrounding this point, known as the edge, is still visible, but not clearly visible.
- The second approach is known as the “zoom lens” model. Although it contains all the same elements of the spotlight model, it additionally assumes that we can increase or decrease the size of our focus in the same way as a camera zoom lens. However, a large area of focus results in slower processing because it involves a significant flow of information, so limited attentional resources must be spread over a larger area.
Selective auditory attention
Some of the most famous auditory attention experiments－are those conducted by psychologist Edward Colin Cherry.
Cherry explored how people can track certain conversations. He called the phenomenon the "cocktail" effect.
In these experiments, two messages were presented simultaneously through auditory perception. Cherry found that when the content of the automated message was suddenly switched (for example, switching from English to German, or suddenly playing backwards), few of the participants noticed it.
It is interesting to note that if the speaker of the auto-broadcast message was switched from male to female (or vice versa), or if the message was changed to a 400Hz tone, the participants always noticed the change.
Cherry's findings were demonstrated in additional experiments. Other researchers have obtained similar auditory perceptions, including lists of words and musical melodies.
Selective attention resource theories
In more recent theories, attention is viewed as a limited resource. The subject of study is how these resources are bred among competing sources of information. Such theories assume that we have a fixed amount of attention and need to figure out how we allocate our available supply among multiple tasks or events.
“Resource oriented theory has been criticized as being overly broad and vague. Indeed, it may not be alone in explaining all aspects of attention, but it satisfies filter theory quite well, suggests Robert Sternberg in his text Cognitive Psychology, summarizing various theories of selective attention. － Attention theory filters and bottlenecks are more appropriate metaphors for competing tasks that appear to be incompatible… Resource theory seems to be the best metaphor for explaining the phenomena of divided attention into complex tasks.”
There are two patterns that are associated with selective attention. These are Broadbent and Treisman's models of attention. They are also referred to as narrow attentional patterns because they explain that we cannot simultaneously attend to every input of information on a conscious level.
Conclusion
Selective attention in psychology is studied quite thoroughly, and the conclusions drawn are quite different from each other. One of the most influential psychological models of selective attention was the Broadbent filter model, invented in 1958
He assumed thatmany signals entering the central nervous system in parallel with each other are stored for a very short time in a temporary "buffer". At this stage, the signals are analyzed for factors such as spatial location, tonal quality, size, color, or other basic physical properties.
They are then passed through a selective "filter" that allows signals with the appropriate properties required by a human to pass through one channel for further analysis.
The piece of information with lower priority stored in the buffer will not be able to pass this stage until the buffer expires. Items lost in this way have no further effect on behavior.
