Attention
Attention is the selective allocation of processing to particular information or activities. It allows some features of a situation to receive priority while others receive less processing. Attention may follow a person’s goals or be drawn by something in the environment.[1]
Forms and selection
Selective attention concerns prioritising some information over competing material. Sustained attention concerns maintaining performance over time, while divided attention is studied through tasks requiring responses to more than one source of information. Spatial attention concerns selection by location.[1]
In dichotic-listening experiments, different messages are presented to the two ears and a participant repeats one of them. Such studies helped generate competing accounts of selection. Donald Broadbent proposed an early filter; Anne Treisman proposed attenuation, in which unattended information is weakened rather than completely eliminated. Later-selection models place more processing before selection. These are explanatory models, not separate kinds of attention that a single test can identify without further assumptions.[1]
Switching tasks
Researchers also compare performance when a task repeats with performance when a person must switch tasks. Switching commonly takes additional time, and this cost can vary with task complexity and familiarity. Preparation can reduce the cost without necessarily removing it. The American Psychological Association’s synthesis distinguishes simultaneous activity from rapid switching between tasks, both of which are often called multitasking. The experimental result concerns the demands of particular tasks; it does not establish one fixed attention span or one percentage loss applying to everyone.[2]
Attention is closely related to cognitive psychology and memory, especially the selection of information available for further processing.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Frances Friedrich. Attention. Noba Project.
- ↑ American Psychological Association. Multitasking: Switching costs.
Attribution
Prepared with reference to the structure and linked topics of the English Wikipedia article, revision 1377463817. Rewritten and checked against the sources cited above; changes have been made. Wikipedia contributors’ material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0.