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Donald Eric (D. E.) Broadbent
CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...
, FRS (
Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...
, 6 May 1926 – 10 April 1993) was an influential experimental
psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how indi ...
from the UK His career and research bridged the gap between the pre-World War II approach of Sir
Frederic Bartlett Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett FRS (20 October 1886 – 30 September 1969) was a British psychologist and the first professor of experimental psychology at the University of Cambridge. He was one of the forerunners of cognitive psychology as wel ...
and what became known as
Cognitive Psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...
in the late 1960s. A ''
Review of General Psychology ''Review of General Psychology'' is the quarterly scientific journal of the American Psychological Association Division 1: The Society for General Psychology. The journal publishes cross-disciplinary psychological articles that are conceptual, th ...
'' survey, published in 2002, ranked Broadbent as the 54th most cited psychologist of the 20th century. Educated at the
University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
, in 1958 he became director of the Applied Psychology Research Unit, set up by the UK Medical Research Council in 1944 to focus on Frederic Bartlett's work. Although most of the work at the APRU was directed at practical issues of the military or private industry, Broadbent became well known for his theoretical work. His theories of
selective attention Attentional control, colloquially referred to as concentration, refers to an individual's capacity to choose what they pay attention to and what they ignore. It is also known as endogenous attention or executive attention. In lay terms, attenti ...
and
short-term memory Short-term memory (or "primary" or "active memory") is the capacity for holding a small amount of information in an active, readily available state for a short interval. For example, short-term memory holds a phone number that has just been recit ...
were developed as digital computers were becoming available to the academic community, and were among the first to use computer analogies to make serious contributions to the analysis of human cognition. These theories were combined to form what became known as the "single channel hypothesis."
Broadbent's filter model of attention Broadbent's filter model is an early selection theory of attention. Description Donald Broadbent based the development of the filter model from findings by Kennith Craik, who took an engineering approach to cognitive processes. Cherry and Bro ...
proposed that the physical characteristics (e.g., pitch, loudness) of an auditory message were used to focus attention to only a single message. Broadbent's filter model is referred to as an Early Selection Model because irrelevant messages are filtered out BEFORE the stimulus information is processed for meaning. These and other theories were brought together in his 1958 book ''Perception and Communication,'' which remains one of the classic texts of cognitive psychology. In 1974 Broadbent became a fellow of
Wolfson College, Oxford Wolfson College () is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Located in north Oxford along the River Cherwell, Wolfson is an all-graduate college with around sixty governing body fellows, in addition to both research and ...
and returned to applied science; along with his colleague Dianne Berry, he developed new ideas about
implicit learning Implicit learning is the learning of complex information in an unintentional manner, without awareness of what has been learned. According to Frensch and Rünger (2003) the general definition of implicit learning is still subject to some controver ...
from consideration of human performance in complex industrial processes.


Biography

Although born in Birmingham, Broadbent considered himself Welsh and spent considerable time in Wales during his youth. Despite family and financial circumstances, Broadbent's mother managed to send him to
Winchester Winchester is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city in Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government Districts of England, district, at the western end of the South Downs Nation ...
; she didn't ever want him to be disadvantaged compared to others with a superior education. He said of her aims to do this that "instead of getting me to the best schooling she could afford, she made up her mind with sublime arrogance as to which she thought was the best school in the country, and that was where I went: Winchester." His father was by then gone, though earlier he had been part of their lives, and even at times successful in the business he helped run. He lived after his father left in Llandyman and later
Mold A mold () or mould () is one of the structures certain fungus, fungi can form. The dust-like, colored appearance of molds is due to the formation of Spore#Fungi, spores containing Secondary metabolite#Fungal secondary metabolites, fungal seco ...
. Before his military service, he struggled to find his niche in the realm of education after experimenting in the classics, history, and the physical sciences, of which his favorite was the sciences. During his time training in the United States however, he was exposed to a more widely accepted and studied field of psychology that piqued his interest. When he returned and attended Cambridge, he made this his field of study despite attempts to dissuade him by the admission committee. He studied
experimental psychology Experimental psychology refers to work done by those who apply experimental methods to psychological study and the underlying processes. Experimental psychologists employ human participants and animal subjects to study a great many topics, in ...
under the guidance of Frederic Bartlett who was a pragmatic teacher focused on evidence before theory. Another, less direct influence on his education was
Kenneth Craik Kenneth James William Craik (; 1914 – 1945) was a Scottish philosopher and psychologist. Life He was born in Edinburgh on 29 March 1914, the son of James Craik, a solicitor. The family lived at 13 Abercromby Place in Edinburgh's Second New ...
, who—though recently passed away—had been and was extremely influential on the department. Upon graduating in 1949 he became a member of the Applied Psychology Unit at Cambridge. That same year in April he married Margaret E. Wright, also from Mold, in the district of Holywel. Together they had two daughters before going separate ways; the marriage was dissolved in 1972 when Broadbent married Margaret Gregory, who had worked as his research assistant and became a lifelong collaborator. The Applied Psychology Unit was responsible for advising the government and he worked in studies with noise and technology. His work on attention stemmed out of his desire to develop better communication between squadron planes and control centers.Berry, D.C. (1995). Donald Broadbent and applied cognitive psychology. ''Applied Cognitive Psychology,'' ''9''(7). doi: 10.1002/acp.2350090702 He had begun this work previous to working at the Applied Psychology Unit while working for the Royal Navy, and eventually this focus led to the filter model of attention he is most famous for. He continued to visit the United States on occasion as part of his work. In 1958 he published his most-cited work, the book ''Perception and Communication'', and that same year he became the director of the Applied Psychology Unit and led it to become a world authority in applied psychology. His book changed the face of psychology and is attributed as a significant factor in the development of the field of cognitive psychology. In order to better pursue his personal research, he transferred to the Department of Experimental Psychology in Oxford in 1974. This is where he developed the CFQ—The Cognitive Failures Questionnaire—which examined effects of occupation on health, and continued his work on attention and memory. He went on to publish ''Behaviour'', ''Decision and Stress'', and ''In Defence of Empirical Psychology'' as well as nearly 250 miscellaneous articles or commentaries. He died only two years after his retirement on 10 April 1993.


Broadbent's filter model of attention

Broadbent's Filter Model of Attention proposes the existence of a theoretical filter device, located between the incoming sensory register, and the short-term memory storage. His theory is based on the multi-storage paradigm of
William James William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
(1890) and the more recent 'multi-store' memory model by Atkinson & Shiffrin in 1968. This filter functions together with a buffer, and enables the subject to handle two kinds of stimuli presented at the same time. One of the inputs is allowed through the filter, while the other waits in the buffer for later processing. The filter prevents the overloading of the limited-capacity mechanism located beyond the filter, which is the
short-term memory Short-term memory (or "primary" or "active memory") is the capacity for holding a small amount of information in an active, readily available state for a short interval. For example, short-term memory holds a phone number that has just been recit ...
. Broadbent came up with this theory based on data from an experiment: three pairs of different digits are presented simultaneously, one set of three digits in one ear, and another set of three digits in the other. Most participants recalled the digits ear by ear, rather than pair by pair. Therefore, if 496 were presented to one ear and 852 to the other, the recall would be 496852 rather than 489562. The theory has difficulties explaining the famous
cocktail party effect The cocktail party effect is the phenomenon of the brain's ability to focus one's auditory attention on a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli, such as when a partygoer can focus on a single conversation in a noisy room ...
, proposed by British scientist
Colin Cherry Edward Colin Cherry (23 June 1914 – 23 November 1979) was a British cognitive scientist whose main contributions were in focused auditory attention, specifically the cocktail party problem regarding the capacity to follow one conversatio ...
, which tries to explain how we are able to focus our attention toward the
stimuli A stimulus is something that causes a physiological response. It may refer to: * Stimulation ** Stimulus (physiology), something external that influences an activity ** Stimulus (psychology), a concept in behaviorism and perception * Stimulus (eco ...
we find most interesting. A lecture in Broadbent's honour is given at the annual conference of the
British Psychological Society The British Psychological Society (BPS) is a representative body for psychologists and psychology in the United Kingdom. History It was founded on 24 October 1901 at University College London (UCL) as ''The Psychological Society'', the organ ...
.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Broadbent, Donald 1926 births 1993 deaths People from Birmingham, West Midlands Speech perception researchers British psychologists Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Experimental psychologists Fellows of Wolfson College, Oxford Fellows of the Royal Society Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences Presidents of the British Psychological Society 20th-century psychologists