COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 7, 480-494 (1975)

Selective Looking: Attending to Visually

Specified Events

ULRIC NEISSER AND ROBERT BECKLEN

Cornell University

Subjectslooked at two optically superimposed video sccreens, on which two

different kinds of things were happening. In the principal condition, they were re-
quired to follow the action in one episode (by pressing keys when significant
events occurred) and ignore the other. They could do this without difficulty,
although both were present in the same fully overlapped visual field. Odd events
in the unattended episode were rarely noticed. It was very difficult to monitor
both episodes at once. Performance was no better when the two episodes were
presented to different eyes (dichoptic condition) than when both were given binoc-
ularly. It is argued that selective attention does not involve special mechanisms
to reject unwanted information, but is a direct consequence of skilled perceiving.

When two spoken messages are presented to a listener simultaneously,

he is usually able to follow one and ignore the other. This process of
“selective listening” has been studied intensively; for reviews of the rel-
evant literature see Neisser (1967), Moray (1969), or Kahneman (1973).
Typically the listener can report very little about the unselected mes-
sage, though words which are personally relevant or contextually mean-
ingful may be noticed. (Some recent evidence suggests that other as-
pects of the unattended message may be processed more completely
than had been supposed: cf. Lewis, 1970; Corteen & Wood, 1972.) Since
the first selective listening studies were done, as most still are, by pre-
senting one message to each ear, early theoretical accounts of the
process often described the messages as being handled on separate
“channels,” one of which was “filtered” or “attenuated.” It soon be-
came clear that the “channels” were not anatomical, since one can eas-
ily use voice quality or even context to select among messages which
reach the same receptor. Nevertheless, metaphors of channels, filters,

The Cornell Video Center, and its director, David Shearer, provided both equipment and
invaluable technical advice to this project. The Educational Development Project of the
Cornell Department of Human Development and Family Studies, directed by Herbert
Ginsburg, was equally generous in allowing us to borrow equipment, as was James Farber
of the Psychology Department. We are grateful to all of them. The paper itself was written
while the senior author was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral
Sciences, Stanford, CA; The Center’s support is happily acknowledged. Requests for
reprints should be sent to Ulric Neisser, Department of Psychology, Uris Hall, Cornell
University, Ithaca, NY 14853.
480
Copyright 0 1975 by Academic Press, Inc.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
 SELECTIVE LOOKING 481

and gates have continued to play a major role in theories of attention.

It seems to us, however, that attention is essentially positive rather
than negative. The perceiver picks up certain information (J. J. Gibson,
1966; E. J. Gibson, 1969) about an event or an object, and uses it to con-
struct a particular representation (Neisser, 1967). Other information is
simply left unused. We believe that there are no separate “mechanisms
of attention.” The phenomena observed in selection experiments are
simply the consequences of perceiving one particular event or object and
not picking up as much information about others. This view suggests
that similar phenomena should be observable in every perceptual act,
regardless of the sense modality involved.
In an earlier attempt to show the generality of the processes of atten-
tion, one of us (Neisser, 1969) developed a method called “selective
reading.” In this procedure, alternate lines of text are typed in red and
black. Subjects are then asked to read, say, the red lines aloud while ig-
noring the black ones. The familiar phenomena of selective listening are
readily replicated in this paradigm. The attended message is easy to
follow, while the subject can report little of the other one. Even words
that occur repeatedly are not picked up from the unattended lines,
though the subject’s own name is often noticed. The selective reading
paradigm has since proved useful in the study of reading ability
(Willows, 1974; Willows & McKinnon, 1973). From a theoretical point
of view, however, it represents only a limited generalization of the lis-
tening studies. The material is still verbal, and the criterion which de-
fines the focal message-being on a given line of type-is trivial. And
like selective listening, it is already a much-practiced skill; even normal
reading requires the ability to focus attention on one line at a time.
In the present paper we report similar results with a nonverbal task:
the perception of episodes in which people are seen to throw a ball or to
play a hand-slapping game. Two disparate episodes, videotaped sepa-
rately, were shown to subjects in complete overlap. The original impetus
for our research came from a report by Kolers (1969, 1972). He devised
and wore a headgear fitted with a half-silvered mirror, in such a way that
the world ahead of him and the world behind were simultaneously given to
the binocular field of view. He reported being able to attend either for-
ward or backward at will, with the unattended scene simply “disap-
pearing.” It is easy to arrange a similar experience by looking out a
window from a lighted room at dusk. If the intensities are suitably bal-
anced, one can watch either the outdoor scene or the reflection of the
room as one pleases. In this case, however, and to some extent in
Kolers’ case as well, the alternative objects of attention may be at dif-
ferent optical distances. Thus selection might be ascribed simply to dif-
ferential accommodation of the lens of the eye. Indeed, when two sta-
tionary objects are optically superimposed at the same distance,
482 NEISSER AND BECKLEN

blending rather than selection occurs. This can be amusingly demon-

strated by asking someone to stand opposite you on the other side of a
half-silvered observation window, and manipulating the room illumina-
tions until the reflected and transmitted components are approximately
equal. You will see a single face whose features are a startling blend of
his and your own!
These prior findings suggested the use of videotape rather than
mirrors, and of naturalistic episodes rather than stationary displays. Our
principal hypothesis was that the subjects would easily be able to follow
one episode and ignore the other. No special practice should be neces-
sary, since everyone has had a lifetime of practice in observing events.
Note, however, that few people have ever had to select among visually
superimposed displays. If “selective attention” were a separate mecha-
nism developed to “filter out” undesired signals, as some have sup-
posed, long practice would be essential.
Although unrelated and optically superimposed displays do not occur
in ordinary vision, they are produced by certain optical devices, Micro-
scopes, telescopes, gun sights, television cameras, and similar instru-
ments are usually constructed so that the critical field of view is pre-
sented only to one eye. Users are often advised to keep the other eye
open as well, though everything in its field must be ignored. Such de-
vices are therefore dichoptic: The two eyes are stimulated independently.
Their very design seems to reflect the assumption that separate percepts
require separate sensory channels. We believe, however, that selection
is most naturally based on objects of attention rather than on channels of
sense. To test this hypothesis, we performed our experiment in both a
binocular and dichoptic mode. In the former case, both eyes saw the
same optical display, on which two overlapping episodes were por-
trayed; in the latter, one episode was presented to the left eye and the
other to the right.
Our experiment was specifically aimed at answering the following
questions. First, how difficult (or how easy) is it to follow one episode
and ignore another when both are presented at the same optical distance
in the same binocular visual field? Second, does the substitution of di-
choptic for binocular presentation change the difficulty of the task?
Third, how complete is the selection? Will unusual events be noticed if
they are not part of the episode being observed? Fourth, is it possible to
follow two independent episodes at the same time if instructed to do so?
METHOD
The aims of our experiment imposed definite constraints on the
choice of stimulus material. To determine whether subjects can attend to
certain events without being distracted by others, one must have an
operational measure of attention similar to that which overt “shadow-
ing” provides in the selective listening studies. In other words, we
 SELECTIVE LOOKING 483

needed an episodic framework in which a certain type of event could

occur repeatedly but irregularly, so we could ask observers to respond
to each occurrence. Moreover, we needed two such episodic frame-
works, very different in kind and scale, so that subjects would not con-
fuse them even when they were presented simultaneously. A further
constraint was added by our desire to avoid artificial stimuli such as
flashing lights and moving lines in favor of meaningful objects and
events.
After considerable pilot work, we settled on two types of episodes.
The first of these was the handgame. This familiar game requires two
players. Player A Holds his hands out, palms up, and B places his hands,
palms down, over A’s. A then tries, with a quick movement, to slap B’s
hands by bringing one or both of his own up, over, and down onto B’s.
B tries to elude him by jerking his own hands back or sideways. If A
succeeds in his stroke they replace their hands in the initial position and
A is free to try again. If he fails they exchange roles; B takes the bottom
(aggressive) position and attempts to slap A. Successful aggressive play
requires quick movements at unexpected intervals; successful defensive
play requires that one jerks one’s hands away quickly as the other
begins his stroke. A skilled aggressive player will often make feints:
small movements of his hands that induce the other to jerk his hands
back for nothing, no actual attack having been made.
To make the handgame videotapes, the two authors played the game
with each other. An associate operated the camera from a position
somewhat higher than their hands; the field of view included only the
hands and forearms of both players. The background was a chalk board,
blank except for an index number in the top center of the screen, which
was changed for each new episode. The videotape of each episode lasted
about 74 sec. One of the players tapped the index number twice with one
hand at 6 and again at 10 set to provide synchronization signals; play
began after 14 set and lasted for 1 min. In a “slow” episode, the players
made a total of about 20 (occasionally 19) attacking strokes irregularly
during this min; in a “fast” episode, about 40 strokes. Except for their
control of the average rate, (aided by the cameraman who called out the
time at 15sec intervals), they played naturally and attempted to score
hits.
For an experimental subject who attended to the videotape of a
handgame, each attacking stroke was a target event. He kept his right
forefinger on a microswitch, which he was to press at each synchro-
nization signal and then whenever attacking stroke occurred, whether or
not a hit was scored. He had to be careful not to be deceived by feints.
An event recorder connected to the microswitch provided a full record
of his responses on paper tape.
The second type of episode was the ballgame. It was played by three
men with a basketball, which they threw back and forth to one another
484 NEISSER AND BECKLEN

while moving around as irregularly as possible in the camera’s field of

view. The light-colored walls of the room, including a door and floor-
length drapes, provided the background. The actual playing area was
some 12 x 15 ft (37 x 46 m) but it was not rectangular since the cam-
era’s field is wider at greater distances. The distance of the camera was
such that the image of a player took up about 80% of the height of the
screen when he was in the foreground, and about 50% at the rear. A
small index number, changed for each episode, was visible in the lower
right corner of the screen.
One player bounced the ball off the floor twice at 8 and again at 12 set
to provide synchronization signals; play started at 14 set and continued
for 1 min. In a “slow” episode the ball was thrown about 20 times; in a
“fast” episode, about 40 times. Except for their control of the average
rate, the players tried to throw and move irregularly and unpredictably.
They also occasionally dribbled the ball and made fake throws. (On a
few occasions when two players were in a direct line with the camera, a
real throw could not be seen on the videotape. The occurrence of such a
throw immediately became evident, however, because a new player
came into possession of the ball.) An experimental subject, who at-
tended to the videotape of a ballgame, kept his left forefinger on another
microswitch. He was to press it at the synchronization signals, and
thereafter whenever the ball was thrown from one player to another.
It should be noted that the “action” of a ballgame occurred more or
less all over the screen. It consisted of the exchange of the ball, whose
video image was small, between players whose images were large and
unpredictably located. The “action” of the handgame, in contrast,
always took place near the center of the screen, where the images of the
players’ hands loomed rather large. Figures la and lb, traced from mo-
mentary video images, suggest these sizes and positions.
In addition to the standard and fast episodes of both games, we video-
taped a number of “odd” episodes, to determine whether unusual
events in an unattended episode would be noticed, The odd events used
in this experiment included: (a) handgame-handshake: after 15 set of
normal handgame play at the standard rate, the players stopped and
shook hands; they resumed play for 30 set, shook hands again, and re-
sumed play once more; (b) ballgame-disappearance: after 20 set of stan-
dard play, one of the players threw the ball out of the field of view; all
three players remained, moving as before and making fake throwing
movements with an imaginary ball for 20 set until the real ball was
thrown back in and normal play resumed; (c) handgame-throw: after fti-
teen seconds of standard handgame play, one of the players stopped,
picked up a small ball and threw it to the other, who quickly threw it
back to the first; they resumed handgame play for 30 set, repeated the
ball-throwing sequence, and once again resumed play; (d) ballgame-
exchange: after 20 set of normal play, one of the (male) players slipped
 SELECTIVE LOOKING 485

FIG. 1. Outline tracings of typical video images. A, handgame alone, B, ballgame alone,
C, handgame and ballgame superimposed.

offscreen and was replaced by a woman, and after a few set this hap-
pened to the second man, then the third player as well; the three women
continued to play for about 20 set, after which the men slipped back in
one at a time to replace them and play normally.
All episodes were videotaped, without sound, using Sony CV-series
half-inch equipment. All the handgame episodes were recorded on one
videotape, and all ballgame episodes on another; the videotapes were
marked so that the onset of each episode was easy to find. They were
played back with two separate videotape recorders, each connected to
its own monitor. The monitor screens were S/2 in. high by 7l/4 in. wide
(140 x 184 mm). In one condition, the two monitors were optically
superimposed with the aid of a half-silvered mirror set at a 45” angle to
the subject’s line of sight. One screen, displaying the handgame, was
directly ahead of the subject and was viewed through the mirror. The
other, displaying the ballgame, was at his left and was reflected in the
mirror (Fig. 2a). The subject’s head position was fixed with a chin rest.
486 NEISSER AND BECKLEN

FIG. 2. Schematic top view of the optical arrangement. A, binocular condition, B, di-
choptic condition. (Abbreviations: S = Subject; TV = Television monitor; 1 for ballgame:
2 for handgame; M = half-silvered mirror; OS = opaque screen; AP = apparent position
of superimposed images.)

Both monitors were at an optical distance of 35 in. (889 mm) from his
eyes subtending a visual angle of 12” horizontally and 7” vertically. With
this arrangement he saw what appeared to be a single television screen.
There was no way to tell on which monitor an episode was actually
being shown, except that the small index number on the ballgame video-
tape was reversed left-for-right by the mirror. Since the subject saw the
same (superimposed) episodes with both eyes in this arrangement, we
termed it the binocular condition, A traced outline of a typically over-
lapped pair of episodes is shown in Figure lc.
In the dichoptic condition, two mirrors were placed in a V-shaped
arrangement (the apex toward the subject) so that each one was at 45” to
 SELECTIVE LOOKING 487

the line of sight (see Fig. 2b). When his head was properly positioned,
the subject could see a reflection of the monitor which displayed the
ballgame with his left eye and a reflection of the handgame with his right
eye. As in the binocular case, the images of the two monitors were per-
fectly aligned so that one had the impression of looking at a single
screen. Again each monitor was at an optical distance of 35 in. (889
mm). (We made no attempt to measure or control for eye dominance,
but every subject was asked whether two episodes seemed about equal
in clarity and brightness. All replied affirmatively.) In both conditions,
the actual optical arrangement was fully open to view. All the observers
were quite aware that there were really two video screens which were
being made to appear as one.
The subjects were 24 Cornell undergraduate students, 15 males and
nine females, who volunteered for the experiment. Half were assigned at
random to the binocular, and half to the dichoptic condition. Each sub-
ject was presented with a series of 10 trials in a fixed order. In the first
two trials, a fast (40/min) episode was presented on one monitor while
the other remained blank. The ballgame was shown on trial 1, the
handgame on trial 2. These two trials served to establish baselines of
performance. On trial 3, two episodes were presented simultaneously,
but the subject was instructed to respond to the ballgame and ignore the
handgame; on trial 4 he had the opposite task. Fast episodes were used
in both of these trials as well. On trials 5 and 6, the subject was to
respond to target events in both episodes, ball-throws with his left hand
and hand-slaps with his right. Slow (20/min) episodes were used, so that
the combined response rate required was no higher than in trials l-4. On
the last four trials the subject was again instructed to follow one game
and ignore the other. Slow episodes were used. The unattended episodes
actually included the “odd” events described above, in the order indi-
cated, but no mention of them was made. After each of the 10 trials, the
subject was asked questions about the difficulty of the task, about his
strategies, and about anything else he might want to report. In a more
extensive inquiry at the end of the session, the experimenter specifically
mentioned the four “odd” events and asked if the subject had noticed
them.
Each videotaped episode has its own particular characteristics and its
own pattern of difficulty. To counterbalance this variable, episodes used
in one condition for half the subjects were used in a different condition
for the remainder. Thus, although the order of conditions was the same
for everyone, the individual episodes were shown in two different
orders. Each order was used with six binocular and six dichoptic sub-
jects. Episodes used in trials 1 and 2 (without accompaniment) in one
order were used in trials 3 and 4 (with a distracting episode of the other
game) in the other. Episodes used in the divided-attention trials 5 and 6
in one order were used as “covers” for the odd episodes, trials 7-10, in
488 NEISSER AND BECKLEN

the other order. Although some individual episodes did indeed produce
more errors than others, the pattern of results was the same for the two
orders, and they have been combined in the presentation of data.
The event-recorder tapes produced by subjects responding to a given
episode were scored by aligning them against a standard tape. In pre-
paring this tape, each of us independently viewed the episode in the un-
distracted condition (i.e., with the other screen blank), responding to the
synchronization signals and the target events just as the subjects were to
do. If we felt unsatisfied with our performance, we repeated it. This task
is very easy, and so the two independent records we prepared for each
episode were in close coincidence. When discrepancies occurred (none
was over 0.25 set) the earlier response (i.e., the shorter reaction time)
was selected. Thus one standard tape was prepared on the basis of our
two independent records. In scoring a subject’s tape, his responses to
the synchronization signals were placed in coincidence with the corre-
sponding responses on the standard tape (this had the effect of cor-
recting for systematic differences in reaction time). Each subsequent
response was scored as a “hit” if it occurred in a critical interval, de-
fined as extending from 0.25 set before to 1.50 set after each response
on the standard tape; otherwise it was a “false alarm.” A “miss” was
scored if the subject failed to respond during a critical interval.
In order to determine whether the length of the critical interval af-
fected the pattern of results, the tapes were also scored with a shorter
one, extending from 0.25 set before the standard to 0.75 set after it. Any
response with a measured latency between 0.75 and 1.50 set, which had
been scored as a “hit” with the longer interval, had to be counted as
both a “miss” and a “false alarm” when this more stringent criterion
was applied. Altogether 73 such slow responses occurred in the
ballgame, and 29 in the handgame. Since the pattern of results was es-
sentially unchanged by these additional “misses” and “false alarms,”
they are not included in Table 1. The analyses below are based on the
longer critical interval.
RESULTS
Table 1 shows how the various conditions affected the subjects’ abil-
ity to follow the episodes. Results for viewing the handgame and the
ballgame are presented separately. We have not combined misses (M)
and false alarms (FA) into a single index of sensitivity, because the false
alarms do not occur randomly. Many of them were produced by specific
events, such as feints executed by the handgame players or aborted
throws in the ballgame. Since the players had more time to make these
misleading gestures in the slow episodes (5-10) than the fast ones (l-4),
more false alarms resulted. This should not be interpreted as an effect of
rate or condition per se.
The first row of Table 1 shows that one can easily follow episodes of
 TABLE 1
MONITORING ERRORS IN VARIOUS CONDITIONS”

Binocular viewing (n = 12) Dichoptic viewing (n = 12)

Ballgame Handgame Bahgame Handgame

E M FA E M FA E M FA E M FA

Attend to one 40/min

episode shown alone 480 1 1 480 4 10 480 4 4 480 10 13
(trial 1 or 2)
Attend to one 40/min
episode, ignore the 480 12 5 480 7 10 480 13 6 480 14 5
other (trial 3 or 4)
Attend to both 20/min
episodes at once 479 101 56 459 135 67 480 148 61 466 183 52
(trials 5 and 6)
Attend to one 2Olmin
episode, ignoring the
other, which contains 479 12 15 473 7 27 480 7 9 473 18 11
odd events
(trials 7 and 9, or 8
and 10)

a E is the number of events presented either in one 40/min or two 20/min episodes, summed over 12 subjects. A few trials were sometimes
lost because only 19 events were shown or because the onsets of the two videotapes were not properly synchronized. M is the totaled number
of misses, FA of false alarms (see text for definition).
490 NEISSER AND BECKLEN

the types used here when they are presented alone. Binocular subjects
missed less than 1% of the target events; for the 80 targets in trials 1 and
2, the median number of misses/subject was zero. Dichoptic subjects
were nearly as good, with a combined miss rate of about 1.5%. There
were few false alarms.
The second row of the table gives a clear-cut answer to our principal
experimental question. Subjects had little difficulty in following the ac-
tion of a given episode, even when another irrelevant one was superim-
posed on it. To be sure, there was a slight drop in accuracy compared to
the control conditions. The median number of errors/subject rose to 1 (of
80 targets). Fourteen subjects missed more targets when following one
episode and ignoring another (trials 3 + 4) than when following an epi-
sode shown alone (trials 1 + 2); six missed equally often in these two
conditions; only four showed the opposite tendency. A binomial test in-
dicates that this trend is significant at the 0.01 level. Nevertheless, miss
rates in the superimposed condition remained under 3% for both games
and both types of viewing. Further confirmation of this finding appears
in the last line of the table, which gives the results of four additional
trials under the same instruction, but with an event rate of 20/min. Again
only about 3% of the targets were missed. Binomial tests show that the
miss rate on these trials was significantly (p < .Ol) higher than on the
control trials (1 + 2), but not significantly different from the earlier trials
with the same instruction trials (3 + 4). The false alarm rate was higher,
however, for reasons considered above.
The third line of the table shows a very drastic deterioration of per-
formance when subjects were asked to monitor both episodes simulta-
neously. Twenty to forty percent of the target events were missed; the
miss rate increased by a factor of eight for binocularly-viewed ballgame
targets and by larger factors in the other conditions. Every subject
missed more ballgame targets in the double task (trials 5 + 6) than in the
single one (trial 3); p = (M)24. This was also true for the handgame. A
great many false alarms occurred. The subjects’ own descriptions of the
double task ranged from “demanding” to “impossible.”
Comparison of the left and right halves of Table I indicates that the
subjects who viewed the episode dichoptically-one to each eye-missed
more targets than those for whom the episodes were superimposed and
presented to both eyes together. The binocular condition is superior in all
four conditions of viewing the handgame, and in three of the four condi-
tions for the ballgame. If this difference in miss rates reflects area1 effect, it
probably can be ascribed to spontaneous binocular rivalry. In any case, it
is apparent that selection among visually-given episodes is made no easier
by presenting them to different eyes.
The “odd” events in the unattended episodes were rarely noticed, and
then only in a fragmentary way. While watching the ballgame on trial 7,
a single subject (of 24) spontaneously reported seeing a handshake in the
 SELECTIVE LOOKING 491

handgame; only three others mentioned it in the postexperimental in-

quiry. No subject reported the disappearance of the ball which took place
while he was watching the handgame in trial 8, although one later re-
membered “thinking that something was wrong in the ballgame.” In trial
9, the handgame players twice threw a ball back and forth while subjects
watched the baligame. Three of the viewers spontaneously reported
seeing such a throw, and three more mentioned it in the inquiry, four of
these six were among those who had noticed something odd on an ear-
lier trial. Two other subjects remarked spontaneously that they had seen
an unusual motion of the to-be-ignored hands-one even responded to
the motion as if it were a throw in the ballgame, though he realized his
mistake-but insisted that they had not seen a ball being thrown by the
hands. In trial 10 three subjects, including two who had seen the ball-
throw on the previous trial, remarked spontaneously on some aspect of
the exchange of women for men in the unattended ballgame, and two
others described some aspect of the exchange in the later inquiry.
All the comments were incomplete, in that they specified only partial
aspects of the odd events. No subject saw more than one handshake or
ball-throw, for example, although each occurred twice on its respective
trial. Although a few subjects noticed something like “a girl’s legs and
skirt” on trial 10, none could describe the whole exchange. Those who
did notice anything were quite vague about what they had seen; one said
“I thought I saw a different person, but I thought it was my imagina-
tion.” Half the subjects (12) gave no indication that they had observed
or been influenced by any of the odd events at all. Indeed, the most
common response to the inquiry was incredulity. Nearly everyone, in-
cluding those who had picked up one or more fragments, expressed
astonishment that the odd events described to them (or shown in a re-
play) had actually been presented. These events are normally quite obvi-
ous, and pilot subjects monitoring the odd episodes have always re-
ported them. Nevertheless, they were rarely noticed in the experimental
conditions.
CONCLUSIONS
Without any prior practice, it is easy to attend to one sequential epi-
sode and ignore another, even when both are presented in haphazard
overlap. What defines one episode and distinguishes it from the other is
not its distance or its clarity, or the sense organ involved, but its in-
trinsic properties and structure. Once picked up, the continuous and
coherent motions of the ballgame (or of the handgame) guide further
pickup; what is seen guides further seeing. It is implausible to suppose
that special “filters” or “gates,” designed on the spot for this novel sit-
uation, block the irrelevant material from penetrating deeply into the
“processing system.” The ordinary perceptual skills of following
visually-given events, which develop in the first year of life (Bower,
492 NEISSER AND BECKLEN

1971), are simply applied to’the attended episode and not to the other.
One of the most important of these skills, of course, is the ability to
follow the flow of events with o&s eyes; to insure that the critical infor-
mation falls on the foveae. Though we have no eye-movement records
for the subjects of the study reported here, it can be assumed that they
generally fixated the critical events of the episode which they were attend-
ing, and made pursuit movements appropriate to it. Thus much of the
action of the to-be-ignored episode must have been imaged on the ret-
inal periphery, and blurred by motion relative to the eye, while the ac-
tion of the attended episode remained more consistently on the fovea.
For empirical and logical reasons, however, this difference cannot have
been responsible for the successful selection we observed. Empirically,
it appears that these episodes can be followed with peripheral vision
alone. We have conducted pilot trials requiring subjects to follow one
episode and ignore another while fixating a point at the edge of the
screen. A videotape record of the subject’s eye positions showed that
only three or four inadvertent losses of fixation per trial occur under these
conditions. Nevertheless, while the observed miss rates in these pilot
studies were somewhat higher than in the main experiment, selection
remained relatively efficient. Thus, it is not peripheral registration per
se which prevents subjects from noticing unattended events.
Moreover, logical considerations suggest that eye movements cannot
be the principal “mechanism” of selective attention; they are more
nearly one of its consequences. In order to follow one episode rather
than the other with his eyes, a subject must already have selected the
former rather than the latter. Without some prior basis for selection, his
eyes would be drawn to features or movements in either episode with
equal probability. An appropriate eye movement is as much a selective
response as the press of a button. Therefore the (assumed) fovea1 status
of an attended episode cannot explain how the subject managed to
follow it, but rather requires explanation in itself. Such an explanation
must eventually be given in terms of the general mechanisms of event
perception, whatever they may be.
It is not surprising that dichoptic presentation afforded no advantage
to our subjects. In general, attentive selection must depend on the struc-
ture of events, not on the separation of sensory channels. In the special
case of vision, it is particularly obvious that the nervous system func-
tions to provide an efficient combination of the inputs from the two eyes
rather than a separation between them. Indeed, dichoptic viewing may
present peculiar difficulties of its own, as the higher miss rate in our di-
choptic condition suggests. If the scenes presented to the two eyes had
been at different distances, as they are in many optical devices, con-
flicting cues for depth of accommodation might well have led to eye-
strain and other problems. The design of some existing optical systems
may not be optimal from this point of view.
 SELECTIVE LOOKING 493

Our results show that the subjects had great difficulty in keeping track
of both episodes at once, and rarely noticed odd events in the unat-
tended episode. There are several possible reasons for this. First, the
unattended episodes must have been imaged peripherally much of the
time. Given the poorer acuity of the peripheral retina, it may be that
fewer details of these episodes were available to the observers. Second,
our subjects had to choose between two responses in the double condi-
tion; disjunctive reactions are known to be more difficult than simple
ones. A third possibility is more basic. Event perception may be so
organized that when a particular structured flow of information is being
followed, or a particular representation constructed, the perceiver
cannot follow or construct an unrelated one. The results of the selective
listening studies suggest that this is true, at least for certain levels of
complexity and certain stages of learning. Further research will be
needed to clarify these issues.
Finally, some introspective comments should be presented. The
reader may wonder, as we did, whether the unattended episode “really
disappears” or not. Can people fail to see what is directly before their
eyes? The subjects’ answers to such questions were somewhat inconsis-
tent, and as unsatisfactory to them as to us. Moreover, no subject
served in both the binocular and the dichoptic conditions, and so none
was able to clarify his introspections by comparing the two. We were
able to do this ourselves, however, and offer the following observations.
In the dichoptic case, the unwanted episode really does disappear (or
parts of it do), and we can attend to its disappearance. This is the famil-
iar phenomenon of binocular rivalry; the disappearances are so visible
that one can count and report them. These fluctuations are most obvious
when we look passively at the display. They are less apparent when we
are deliberately attending to one episode rather than the other, and least
of all if we are actually responding to it with the microswitch. Under
these latter conditions we do not see the unwanted episode disappear; it
simply “isn’t there.” In all dichoptic viewing we experience a certain
feeling of effort when we switch our attention from one episode to the
other, as if some inertia has to be overcome.
The binocular case is quite different. We would not say that the un-
wanted episode ever “disappears,” although it is not really seen. There
is no moment at which we are aware that it is going or has just gone out
of sight. The term “disappearance” can refer either to the visible van-
ishing of images in binocular rivalry (as in our dichoptic case) or to the
way a real object can leave the field of view, perhaps by going behind an
obstacle or by being destroyed. No such disappearances are perceived in
the binocular condition. It is also noteworthy that when we attend to one
of the episodes and ignore the other, we almost always remain aware
that “something else is going on.” The total experience is not like look-
ing at a single episode with the other screen turned off. Sometimes, how-
494 NEISSER AND BECKLEN

ever, we forget the secondary episode completely; then we no longer no-

tice the difference in quality between these two conditions. If we
respond to events in the attended episode, this kind of forgetting occurs
almost all the time. A further difference is that in binocular viewing we
find it easy to switch from one episode to the other. There is no feeling
of effort or inertia as in the dichoptic case. The desired episode is avail-
able instantly when we look for it, though we cannot attend to its
appearance any more than to its disappearance.
These introspective observations suggest that selective looking in the
binocular case, while full and efficient, does not involve anything like
“suppression.” Something of the sort does occur in our dichoptic condi-
tion, but it is largely under the control of selective attention itself. In this
respect dichoptic suppression resembles eye fixation, another mecha-
nism pressed into service to improve the accuracy with which the se-
lected event is perceived. Neither is basic to the process of selective
looking. In that process, nothing disappears. One event is perceived be-
cause the relevant information is being picked up and used; other infor-
mation is not picked up in the first place, and consequently not used.

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(Accepted March 3, 1975)