 The early and late selection theories dominated discussions of attention in the decades following Broadbent’s seminal work, but by the beginning of the nineteen nineties it had become clear that the debate between advocates of the early selection theory and advocates of the late selection theory had become fruitless. Those debates were therefore thought to have been predicated on some sort of mistaken assumption. Several different diagnoses have been proposed as to what that mistaken assumption might have been. Little consensus has been reached as to which of these diagnoses is correct, with the result that some theorists—such as those discussed at the end of the preceding section—retain ideas from the early and late selection theories, while others regard this as a wrong-headedly retrograde step.