PSY 654 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Cognitive Load, Donald Broadbent, Inattentional Blindness

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 654
• Professor: Benjamin Dyson

Document Summary

Attention: selective attention, the ability to focus on one message while ignoring all others, has been demonstrated using the dichotic listening procedure, a number of models have been proposed to explain the process of selective attention. Broadbent"s filter model proposes that the attended message is separated from the incoming signal early in the analysis of the signal. Treisman"s model proposes later separation and adds a dictionary unit to explain how the unattended message can sometimes get through. Late selection models propose that selection doesn"t occur until messages are processed enough to determine their meaning: the flanker compatibility task has been used to determine how cognitive load affects attention. Generally, when the load is low, task-irrelevant stimuli are processed even if the observer is focusing attention on another stimulus. Divided attention for highly demanding tasks requires controlled processing: driver inattention is one of the major causes of automobile accidents.