What is attention?
- Something everyone has a basic understanding of
- Day to day life
- Intuitive knowledge
- Its not a unitary entity
What are the two basic conceps of attention?
Attention as a cognitive process
- Mental process of concentrating effort on external or internal stimulus (one classification)
As a limited resource for cognitive processing
- There is limitation
- Driving when its dark
Controlled Attention
- Deliberate effort or concentration
- Selective attention
- Cant attend to everything or be interrupted constantly
Perceptual attention
- External or internal stimulus
Stimulus-driven attention
- What you attend to relies on the information you get from the environment
- Bottom up
- Influences external attentional processes
Goal-dirceted attention
- What you attend to relies on your goals, intentions, expectations, knowledge etc
- Top-down
- Influences internal and external attentional processes
Input attention
Involved in getting sensory information into the cognitive system
- Vigilance or sustained attention
Maintaining attention over long period of time
Influenced by a persons state
Declines after some time
- Sudden inputs
Attention Blink
A brief slow-down after just processing a recent event
- Not noticing 1 number among letters - research
Automatic processing
- Happens without intention, unpreventable
- Without awareness, you cant describe the process
Some meanings are primed - Shouldnt interfere with other processes
- Things can get automatic with practice and memory
Driving a car - Implicit Processing
Controlled Processing
- Similiar to controll attention
- Demanding process, consumes resources
- Usually focus on one demanding task
Mind wandering
- Can we control attention?
- Attention wander from current tasks to other thoughts
Loose of focus, often has some relevance
Inhibition
A cognitive process that actively surpresses irrelevant info
- Helps with selection
Finding a green object among red objects
Is attention the same as awareness?
- Some says it can, loosely speaking
- But there is a seperation
Some attention processes happens without awareness - Less clear to what extent awareness of a stimulus can happen without attention
