Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience, 3rd Edition

Selective Attention • 83

Selective Attention

Psychologists’ early interest in selective attention is vividly illustrated by the following

statement in William James’ (1890) textbook, Principles of Psychology:

Millions of items...are present to my senses which never properly enter my experience.

Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend

to.... Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear

and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains

of thought.... It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with

others.

Thus, according to James, we focus on some things to the exclusion of others. As

you walk down the street, the things that you pay attention to—a classmate you recog-

nize, the “Don’t Walk” sign at a busy intersection, and the fact that just about everyone

except you seems to be carrying an umbrella—stand out more than many other things

in the environment.

According to this idea, selective attention not only highlights whatever is being

attended, but also keeps us from perceiving whatever isn’t being attended. Early

researchers found that this idea is generally correct, but that it needed to be revised

to account for the fact that some nonattended information is sometimes perceived.

The goal in these early experiments was to describe how humans process incoming

information.

SELECTIVE ATTENTION AS FILTERING

Many of the early experiments involved the idea of a “fi lter” that acted on incoming

information, keeping some information out and letting some information in for further

processing. These early experiments used mainly auditory stimuli. Later research also

included visual stimuli like the examples from Crystal’s run. The following demonstra-

tion illustrates how auditory stimuli were used in one of the early selective attention

experiments.

● (^) FIGURE 4.1 Crystal attends to various objects on the beach, illustrating a number of
diff erent types of attention.
Covert attention
Looking “out the side
of the eye”
Overt attention
Move eyes to
look at something
Divided attention
Attending to more
Eye movement than one thing
Selective attention
Focus on one object
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