Cognitive Scaffold

Preparing your thinking workspace

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MENTAL MODEL · M12423

Filter Theory

Filter Theory
Learn & MetacognitionHigh supportCognitive Psychology
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Updated 2026-09-10

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INTRODUCTION

English translation pending.

CORE DEFINITION

Proposed by Donald Broadbent, filter theory holds that attention works like a filter at the early stages of information processing, screening out irrelevant input by its physical features before it reaches awareness. The key condition is that the channel's capacity is strictly limited, which makes selection unavoidable. Its classic demonstration is the cocktail party effect, in which a person tracks one voice yet still catches a personally salient word.

SCAFFOLDING EFFECT

psychology

Reduce cognitive load

- Respect the bottleneck: treat attention as a narrow channel rather than an open field. - Set the filter early: remove distractions before they compete for the channel. - Guard the main channel: clear away notifications and interruptions for your most critical work.

anchor

Anchor fast decisions

Sensory input arrives far faster than the cognitive channel can carry it, so an early filter selects by physical characteristics such as pitch or location and discards the rest. Awareness therefore depends entirely on what the filter has already let through.

MINIMUM ACTION

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Source support: Explicit

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    wiki.mbalib.comhttps://wiki.mbalib.com/wiki/%E8%BF%87%E6%BB%A4%E5%99%A8%E7%90%86%E8%AE%BAZH · Explicit
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Reticular Activating System - RAS

A filter in the brain that determines which sensory information reaches consciousness.

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The Forgetting Curve

The Forgetting Curve is a curve used to describe the rate of forgetting in long-term memory. It was first proposed by psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus based on his experiments conducted from 1880 to 1885. In these experiments, Ebbinghaus used meaningless letter combinations. By memorizing these combinations and checking the forgetting rate after a series of time intervals, he obtained this curve. Therefore, this curve is also called the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve.

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