Donald Broadbent is a psychologist English (1926 - 1993), famous in particular for its research on the attention. Its book Perception and communication (1958) had a determining influence in the installation, in psychology, of the cognitive paradigm. It presents to it in particular its theory of the filter attentionnel , according to which the attention plays the part of a filter of low level which selects part of the information which comes from of the outside world to the sensory periphery. According to him, not selected information can be put on standby for short periods, and if it is not used, disappears. Since its formulation, this theory is in the middle of a good part of research on the attention, whether it is criticized, defends or modifies. This theory is based in particular on experimental results (in particular them his and those of another English psychologist, Cherry) using the technique of dichotic listening (a different message arrives in each ear); it is closely related on the idea of a modeling in terms of Information theory of the cognitive performances, and to the idea that there is on a certain level of treatment a bottleneck (a single channel ) by which must pass the ones after the others information --- from where need for a attentionnelle selection.