Psychology of Attention

Study Notes

Attention is the ability to focus on specific stimuli or locations in our environment, facilitating our interaction with the world.

There are three forms of attention: sustained, selective, and divided, each facilitating different activities and interactions.

Sustained attention is the ability to maintain focus over extended periods, essential for tasks such as studying, working on projects, or engaging in repetitive tasks.
Sustained attention is susceptible to fatigue or waning motivation, leading to a decline in performance over time (vigilance decrement).
The Mackworth Clock Task experiment demonstrates the dynamic nature of sustained attention, showcasing its impact on task performance in real-world scenarios.

Selective attention is the ability to focus on specific messages while disregarding others, allowing efficient allocation of cognitive resources.
Inattentional blindness illustrates the limitations of selective attention, as participants may fail to notice salient stimuli while focusing on a task.
Dichotic listening experiments demonstrate the selective nature of attention, showing our capacity to shadow one message while filtering out another.
The Cocktail Party Effect reveals that some level of processing occurs even when attention is not selectively applied to a stimulus.

Divided attention is the ability to juggle multiple tasks concurrently, essential for navigating everyday life.
Through practice and repetition, individuals can enhance their capacity to allocate cognitive resources across disparate tasks, increasing efficiency and productivity.