Tommy's mother always seems to know when he's up to no good. for example, the other day he had only mumbled the word "smoke" to his friend when his mom yelled at him from the other room. psychologist donald broadbent would explain his mom's abilities with this theory of attention.

Donald Broadbent would attribute this to his theory of attention called the filter model of attention. The filter model of attention states that stimuli can be filtered or selected to be attended to during processing. The stimuli can be filtered based on pitch or direction of the stimulus.