It is essential for humans to focus on specific objects, as they would not be able to perform one action at a time, and humans view their world in the objects. Another purpose of attention is to allow actions to be directed and controlled (Allport, 1987 cited in Naish 2010). It is important to conduct research on this topic in order to optimize health, safety and performance in professional fields and to make new discoveries in clinical neuropsychology. Some debates rage about how we attend to objects through our auditory and visual processes. Early selection theorists argue that all extraneous information is filtered out from the start and completely ignored. The brain has a limited ability to handle all the stimuli surrounding the object. From this, Broadbent (1958 cited in Naish 2010) devised his influential filter theory, one of the first selection theories in auditory research. Treisman (1980 cited in Naish 2010) was an attenuation theorist and her theory of feature integration was also extremely influential, arguing that some extraneous elements are taken into account before filtering. This essay will explore both theories and their contribution to our understanding of perception. He will make comparisons between theories and both directions. It will conclude that the research has made major contributions, but none has provided enough evidence to fully resolve the issues. Whether extraneous information is processed or not may depend on the volume. While some hearing researchers were interested in the Cocktail Party Effect (the way we focus on one conversation rather than others at a noisy party), Broadbent's main interest was research for the British Army . A notable project for him involved thinking about how fighter pilots could detect relevant radio damage...... middle of article...... neuroscience studies could make a contribution to the debate in revealing serial and/or parallel processing. of the brain in detecting brain pathways and oscillations (Schyns 2011). More natural studies could be considered using brain imaging during normal daily life to increase ecological validity, regardless of modalities. Works CitedDriver, J. (2001) 'A selected review of selected attention research from the past century' British Journal of Psychology 92, pp53-78Naish, P. (2010) 'Attention'. In Kaye (Ed) Cognitive Psychology (2nd edition): The Open University: Padstow. Pp29-59Schyns PG, Thut G, Gross J (2011) “Cracking the code of oscillatory activity”. PLoS Biol 9(5): e1001064. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001064Shinn-Cunningham, BG (2008) “Object-based auditory and visual attention, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol.12, no.5, pp.182–6.