According to Broadbent's early selection (filter) model, what happens to unattended sensory information?
AIt is fully processed for meaning before being filtered out
BIt is filtered out before perceptual analysis, based on physical characteristics like pitch or location
CIt competes with attended information at the level of conscious awareness
DIt is stored in long-term memory for possible later retrieval
Broadbent proposed a bottleneck that operates on physical features (e.g., ear of entry, pitch) before the signal is analyzed for meaning. This contrasts with late-selection models, which allow semantic processing of all stimuli before selection.
Question 2 True / False
Unattended stimuli in the ignored channel of a dichotic listening task receive no semantic processing whatsoever.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: False
Research by Moray (1959) showed that personally relevant words like one's own name can break through from an unattended channel, indicating some degree of semantic analysis occurs even for ignored information. This finding challenged strict early-selection accounts.
Question 3 Short Answer
What does the 'cocktail party effect' reveal about selective attention that early filter models struggle to explain?
Think about your answer, then reveal below.
Model answer: Meaningful stimuli — especially one's own name — can capture attention from an unattended channel, implying that unattended information receives at least some semantic processing before being filtered. Early selection models predict that unattended channels are blocked before meaning is extracted, so they cannot easily account for this name-detection effect.
The cocktail party effect demonstrates that selection is not purely based on low-level physical features. The significance of a stimulus (like your own name) must be recognized before attention can be redirected to it — which requires some semantic processing of nominally unattended input.