Neon lights advertisements are seen everywhere in Hong Kong. How they distract car drivers?

Part 2:

Treisman, feature integration

Treisman agreed with Broadbent that indeed there is a bottleneck in our attention process, but disagreed with its location.

According to Treisman, attention binds different features of an object (e.g. colour and shape) into consciously experienced wholes, and the same filter mentioned could be more accurate and effective if in a different level than what Broadbent had located.

This filter is suggested far over and is mentioned as it will reduce or attenuate the analysis of unattended information, being the “absorbing barrier” more flexible to understand and differentiate various stimuli. Plus, this theory supports that stimulus are processed through a hierarchy, describing a process where each stimuli follows and moves to further detailed information at the same time the unattended information becomes gradually more attenuated throughout the process.

Considering the neon lights when driving in Hong Kong, the same thinking principles mentioned in the Broadbent case can similarly apply, since the driver still might not have ability enough to process instantly such powerful advertising details within a large amount of each billboard information at the first instance. Still, according with this theory, the driver will indeed process all the information presented but through a more flexible and gradually attenuating process, having the chance to understand advertising messages which spark its interest and rapidly choose naturally which will follow the hierarchy to a deeper level of understanding. This allows to better control in some way its various external stimulus when still based on a focus of the main activity of driving – the attended message, and gradually filtering unattended messages, understanding they could or not be of interest at a first instance.

: : :