Technical Translation: Usability Strategies for Translating Technical Documentation

The Attenuator Model 
In light of the problems associated with the switch model highlighted in 
various experiments, Treisman (1964) developed a more flexible theory for 
the early selection of information. Rather than using a simple, binary 
switch, Treisman proposed the use of an attenuator. An attenuator is a type 
of switch which is used to control the volume or speaker balance on stereo 
controls signals in stages or gradations to allow more or less signal through.
1
Dichotic listening involves subjects wearing headphones and simultaneously lis-
tening to two separate audio inputs or speech recordings, the first through one 
earpiece and the second through the other earpiece. Shadowing involves sub-
jects repeating verbatim the speech that is heard through one of the earpieces. 
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or radio equipment. Instead of a simple on / off function, an attenuator 

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Attention & Selection
To give a practical example of this, if we think of the speaker balance on 
a stereo we know that if we turn the dial (attenuator) to the left, more 
sound passes through the left speaker channel and less passes through the 
right speaker channel. If we turn the dial to the right, the opposite happens. 
So rather than all of one channel and none of the other channel passing 
through for processing, we have a situation where virtually all of one chan-
nel and ssome of another channel are processed. Like Broadbent’s switch, all 
input is physically analysed and filtered before it reaches STM (Ellis & Hunt 
1993:57). Unlike Broadbent’s switch, however, all of the information pass-
ing through the attenuator can conceivably pass through to semantic proc-
essing (Gavin 1998:36). The difference here is that some of the information 
is “turned down”. Gavin (
ibid.
) maintains that such a model does not make 
“cognitive sense” and does not make effective use of the cognitive system 
because the level of processing carried out on unattended information is not 
far from full cognitive processing. Such a situation would undoubtedly use 
up all of the cognitive system’s resources. Ellis & Hunt (1993:58) state that 
the attenuator model is frequently regarded as being too cumbersome to be 
practical.