Late Selection

Late selection is a perceptual system first processes all inputs equally and then selection takes place at higher stages of information processing that determine whether the stimuli gain access to awareness, are encoded in memory, or initiate a response” (Gazzaniga et al., 2019). The filtering happens at this stage, where only the relevant stimulus will be sent to the higher levels of processing for the formation of memories, awareness, and a cognitive or physical response (Gazzaniga et al., 2019).For example, a person standing in a crowded room would theoretically hear every conversation, and receive visual input from everything in their field of vision. Early selection models of attention are defined by the textbook as “the idea that a stimulus could be selected for further processing or be tossed out as irrelevant before perceptual analysis of the stimulus is complete” (Gazzaniga et al., 2019). This might occur in situations where an individual is primed to listen for a specific sound, or is expecting to hear words in a conversation. The prioritization of stimuli in this model is believed to be dictated by a top-down mechanism where the perception has already been formulated about what kind of information will be useful or pertinent for processing (Gazzaniga et al., 2019). Early selection mechanisms of attention influence the processing of sensory inputs before the completion of perceptual analysis, compared to late selection mechanisms of attention, which would only act after complete perceptual processing of the sensory inputs, at stages where the information had been recorded as a somatic or a categorical representation (Gazzaniga et al., 2019).