From OpenLearn

After studying this course, you should be able to:

• understand different cognitive psychological aproaches used to examine such forms of attention as attention to regions of space, attention to objects and attention for action

• summarise the different cognitive psychological approaches under a fairly abstract definition of the term

• understand how ideas about attention have changed and diversified over the last fifty years and how well they have stood up to examination.

Auditory Attention

As we work through the subject, two basic issues will emerge. One is concerned with the mechanisms of attention, and raises such questions as:

• How much material can we take in at once?
• What happens to information to which we did not attend?
• In what circumstances does attention fail, allowing unwanted information to influence or distract us?

The other theme has a more philosophical flavour, and raises questions concerning why we experience the apparent limitations of attention:

• Are the limitations simply an inevitable characteristic of a finite brain?
• Have we evolved to exhibit attention - that is, does it confer advantages?

Disentangling Sounds

tl;dr the ears are able to compare wavelengths and see if it's the same sound. If the wavelength is shorted than the head, then it's likely the same sound and the extraneous doubled information can be safely filtered out. You can also detect the direction of the sound by wavelength size (it is difficult to sense the direction with a wavelength size of your head or larger). In short, the auditory system is able to separate different sounds on the basis of their source directions. This makes it possible to attend to any one sound without confusion.

Attending to sounds

We have the sensation of moving our 'listening attention' to focus on the desired sound.

Dichotic listening - the process of receiving different auditory messages presented simultaneously to each ear.

echoic memory - the store's quality of hanging on to a sound for a short time like a dying echo.

Eavesdropping on the unattended message

cocktail party effect - how are you able to hear your name being called, in a room filled with people, while attending to another conversation? The ability to pick out one's name can be explained by an attenuation process, which would function as a filter, turning the volume down for all but the attended signal.

priming - temporary sensitization to a word or words

Deutsch and Deutsch (1963) suggested that all messages received the same processing, regardless of attendance; Norman (1968) proposed that unattended information must at least receive significant processing to activate relevant semantic memories (ie the memory system that stores the meaning of words).

Summary

• The auditory system processes mixed sounds in such a way that it is possible to focus upon a single wanted message.

• Unattended material appears not to be processed:

  • The listener is normally unable to report significant details concerning the unattended information.

  • Only the most recent unattended material is available, while still preserved in the echoic memory.

• These results suggest parallel acquisition of all available information, followed by serial processing to determine meaning for one attended message.

• Although there is little conscious awareness of unattended material, it may receive more processing than the above results imply:

  • Words presented to the unattended ear can produce priming and physiological effects.

  • Participants trying to ‘shadow’ one ear will follow the message to the other ear.

• These results imply that processing takes place in parallel, to the extent that meaning is extracted even from unattended material.