What is selective attention? Characteristics, theories and examples

Attention is at the base of most psychological processes and is complex in itself. Conceptually we can divide it into different types, and one of these types is known as “selective attention.” Throughout this article you will be able to learn a little more about this process and the theories that have been formulated about how it works. Don’t miss it, because this information is intuitive, useful and the examples will surprise you.

Selective or focused attention is the ability of an organism to direct the focus of its mind towards a specific stimulus, removing competitors. In other words, when you focus on a stimulus and ignore what can distract you, you are using selective attention.

Selective attention is essential for carrying out specific tasks, learning and memory. Thanks to it we can respond to very demanding demands. Furthermore, it should be noted that the origin of most of these demands is found in our senses and that is why the studies from the end of the 19th century are fundamental, when psychology began to take shape as a science.

To understand the rest of the basic mental processes, scientists such as William James, Wilhem Wundt or Edward Titchener started from the basis of them.

Theories about selective attention

Since it is a process of selecting and discarding stimuli, models of selective attention are called filter or bottleneck models. Let us remember that a model, in this case functional, is the abstraction of a process that allows us to understand it better. We are going to describe the most important ones.

1. Broadbent: rigid filter model

Broadbent postulated that all stimuli are received, but they arrive at a short-term store, where one of them is selected for its physical characteristics and passes the attention filter. To demonstrate this, he devised the dichotic listening experiment.

In this experiment, he presented verbal messages with 3 different numbers for each ear, but simultaneous. Participants were asked to repeat the messages while listening to them. The idea was overload his senses to analyze how his brain filtered messages.

The results of his research led him to affirm that we can only pay attention to one ear canal at a time. The information that is lost through the channel that is not attended to will depend on the characteristics of the stimulus and the needs of the organism.

2. Treisman: attenuated filter model

Born as a modification of the Broadbent model, it differs from the previous one in that The filter does not discard unnecessary information, but rather softens it to allow relevant information to stand out..

Anne Treisman argued that, on an introspective level, a person may think that the information they are not paying attention to has been lost, but in reality this is not the case. Irrelevant messages from the environment also receive processing, but more superficially, to divert attention to them if they become relevant.

Deustch and Deustch: late filter selective attention model

This model states that all the stimuli that reach the organism are processed and achieve meaning, since otherwise it would not be possible to select the input that will pass into consciousness. The selection of this stimulus is made based on its importance in the present moment.

What differentiates this model from the previous two is that it rejects the idea that stimuli are filtered at the beginning of the cognitive process, but later. Otherwise there would be no way to know which stimulus needs priority attention.

Johnston and Heinz: the flexible filter

The fundamental characteristic of this model is that it proposes a flexible location of the filter. So, the selection of the relevant stimulus is carried out at a variable time, depending on its characteristics and the task it has to perform.

This model also introduces the concept of processing capacity or resources. . The idea of ​​a flexible filter that analyzes in a different way depending on the stimulus is followed by the idea that the more complete the analysis, the greater the cognitive demand it requires.

Studies on basic processes laid the foundations of scientific psychology, impacting the rest of the areas of psychology. His versatility was the key to progressing to neuromarketing models, definition of attention disorders or educational models. Will we ever see the end of the road?

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