Meaning and Definition of Attention:

Attention is the term used or given to the perceptual processes that select certain
inputs for inclusion in our conscious experience, or awareness at any given time. It is
the process involving the act of listening, and concentrating on a topic, object or event
for the attainment of desired ends.

“Attention is the process of getting an object or thought clearly before the mind”—
Ross.

attention is not merely a cognitive factor but is essentially determined by

emotions, interest, attitude and memory.
Thus attention is a process which is carried out through cognitive abilities and helped
by emotional and behavioural factors
Types of Attention:
Varieties are zeroed (nullified) by classification of Ross.
According to him attention is branched with:

(a) Non-volitional or Involuntary Attention:

This type of attention is aroused without the play of will. Here we attend to an object or
condition without making any conscious effort, e.g. attention towards the members of
the opposite sex, and towards bright colours, etc.
The attention which is aroused by the instincts is called “enforced non-volitional
attention”. A young man when we remark on his sex instinct or his curiosity, he
becomes quite attentive in his task.
The other subtype of non-volitional attention, produced by the sentiments is called
“spontaneous non-volitional attention”. It is the result of properly developed sentiment,
towards the object, or idea of a person around which our sentiments are formed with.
(b) Volitional or Voluntary Attention:
When the ‘exercised will’ is called upon, it becomes volitional attention. Because it
demands the conscious efforts on our part it is least automatic and spontaneous like
that of non-volitional attention. Attention payed at the time of solving an assigned
problem of mathematics, answering question in an examination hall and so on comes
under volitional attention category.
Volitional attention is further subdivided into two categories:
i. A single act of volition is sufficient to bring about attention in the case of implicit
attention, e.g. for single act of will can arouse attention.
ii. In explicit volitional attention we need repeated acts of will to sustain it, e.g. here
attention is obtained by repeated acts of will. eg reading difficult para
Determinants of Attention:
One of two types.
1. External factors or condition
2. Internal factors
I. External Factors or Condition:
These conditions are generally those characteristics of outside situation or stimuli
which make the strongest aid for capturing our attention.
1. Nature of the stimulus:
All types of stimuli are not able to bring the same degree of attention. A picture attracts
attention more readily than words. Among the pictures, the pictures of human beings
invite more attention and those of human beings related to beautiful women or
handsome men, who attract more attention. In this way an effective stimulus should
always be chosen for capturing maximum attention.
2. Intensity and size of the stimulus:
In comparison with the weak stimulus, the immense stimulus attracts more attention of
an individual. Our attention become easily directed towards a loud sound, a bright light
or a strong smell, and also a large building will be more readily attended to, than a
small one.
3. Contrast, change and variety:
Change and variety strike attention more easily than sameness and absence of
change, e.g. we do not notice the ticking sound of a clock put on the wall until it stops
ticking, that is any change in the attention to which you have been attracted
immediately capture your attention. The factor, contact or change is highly responsible
for capturing attention of the organism and contributes more than the intensity, size or
nature of the stimulus.
4. Repetition of stimulus:
Repetition is the factor of great importance in securing attention. Because one may
ignore a stimulus at first instance, but if it is repeated for several times it captures our
attention, e.g. a miss-spelled word is more likely to be noticed, if
it occurs twice in the same paragraph than, if it occurs only once. While giving lecture
the important aspects of the speech are often repeated so that the attention of the
audience can be easily directed to the valuable points.
5. Movement of the stimulus:
The moving stimulus catches our attention more quickly than a stimulus that does not
move. We are more sensitive to objects that move in our field of vision, e.g. advertisers
make use of this fact and try to catch the attention of people through moving electric
lights.
Duration and Degree of Attention:
People may possess the ability to grasp a number of objects or in other words, to
attend a number of stimuli in one short “presentation”. This ability of an individual is
evaluated in terms of the span of attention, which differs from person to person and
even situation to situation.
The term “span of attention” is designed in terms of the quality, size extent to which the
perceptual field of an individual can be effectively organized in order to enable him to
attain a number of things in a given spell of short duration.
II. Internal or Subjective Factors:
These factors predispose the individual to respond to objective factors, to attend
to those activities that fulfill his desires and motives and suit his interest and
attitude. It is the mental state of the perceiver.
Some of the subjective factors are:
1. Interest:
Interest is said to be the mother of attention. We attend to objects in which we have
interest. We would like to watch a movie or a serial in TV because we are interested in
the subject around which the movie or serial revolves. In any get-together if any
subject of our interest is discussed that attracts our attention easily and makes us to
participate in the discussion. In our day-to-day life we pay attention to the stimulus we
are interested in.
2. Motives:
Our basic needs and motives to a great extent, determine our attention, thirst, hunger,
sex, curiosity, fear are some of the important motives that influence attention, e.g.
small children get attracted towards eatables.
3. Mind set:
Person’s readiness to respond determines his attention. If we are expecting a
stimulus, occurrence of that stimulus along with many other stimuli may not come in
the way of attending to that particular stimulus. At a time when students are expecting
the examination time table by the end of the semester the time table put out on the
notice board along with other notices would attract their attention easily.
4. Moods and attitudes:
What we attend to is influenced by the moods and attitudes. When we are disturbed or
in angry mood, we notice the smallest mistake of others very easily. Likewise our
favourable and unfavourable attitudes also determine our attention. After discussing
subjective and objective factors, we realize that these factors are interrelated. How
much or in what way we attend to a stimulus depends on subjective as well as
objective factors
Sustained Attention
Sustained attention is the ability to focus on one specific task for a continuous amount
of time without being distracted. Sustained attention is probably what you think of when
you hear the words “attention”, “focus”, “concentration”, or “vigilance.” You use
sustained attention when you continuously maintain focus on one task or concentrate
on an activity for a prolonged period of time without getting distracted. Examples of
sustained attention may include listening to lecture, reading a book, playing a video, or
fixing a car.
It can be challenging to maintain this type of attention for a significant amount of time
without becoming distracted. Therefore, your level of sustained attention will often vary.
You may be intensely focused one minute and then your attention may begin to lapse.
However, a key aspect of sustained attention is the ability to re-focus on the task after a
distraction arises.
Selective Attention
Selective attention is the ability to select from the various factors or stimuli that are
present and to focus on only the one that you want. Every day, you are constantly
exposed to a number of environmental factors or stimuli, but your brain naturally
responds by selecting a particular aspect or factor to focus on. Selective attention
basically allows you to be able to “select” what you want to pay attention to. You may
need to use selective attention when attending a loud party and you are focusing on one
person’s voice, or if you are trying to study in a noisy room.
When employing selective attention you are able to avoid distractions from both external
(e.g. noise) and internal (e.g. thoughts) influences. If you are good at selective attention,
you are good at ignoring distractions. You are able to maintain a specified level of
performance in the presence of distracting stimuli.

Alternating Attention
Alternating attention is the ability of mental flexibility that allows you to shift your focus
of attention and move between tasks having different cognitive
requirements. It is alternating your attention back and forth between two different
tasks that require the use of different areas your brain.
You probably use alternating attention almost all the time. You constantly need to make
sudden changes on your activities or actions which requires your attention to shift. You
may use alternating attention when reading a recipe (learning) and then performing the
tasks of recipe (doing). It could also be alternating between unrelated tasks such as
cooking while helping your child with her homework.

Divided Attention
Divided attention is the ability to process two or more responses or react to two or more
different demands simultaneously. It is often referred to as multi-tasking. Basically,
dividing your attention between two or more tasks.
Examples of divided attention include checking email while listening in a meeting,
talking with friends while making dinner, or talking on the phone while getting
dressed.
Unlike alternating attention, when you are using divided attention, you do not change
from one task to another completely different task. Instead, you attempt to perform
them at the same time. So you are really splitting your attention, instead of alternating
it. Therefore, you are only really focusing part of attention on each task.
Although divided attention is thought of as the ability to focus on two or more stimuli or
activities at the same time, it is humanly impossible to concentrate on two different
tasks simultaneously. Your brain can only process one task at a time. So you are really
not “focused” on one task at a time, you are really continuously alternating your
attention between tasks. That is why it is so difficult and dangerous to text and drive or
talk and drive.
You are able to use divided attention successfully because of muscle memory and/or
habit. It allows you to perform two or more tasks seemingly simultaneously such as
reading music and playing an instrument, talking to a person while typing, or driving
your car while listening to the radio. However, you are really not focusing on hand
positions when playing the instrument or concentrating on the individual acts of driving.
You are able to do the task without conscious effort or actually paying attention.
Broadbent’s Filter Model (1958)
• Landmark model because it used an information processing analysis to develop a
model to account for performance on selective listening tasks.
• 1958 –Perception and Communication (Book).
• It is called filter model – related to Single Channel Theory (Shannon and Weaver
1949).
• Messages travelling along a specific nerve can differ either according to which of
the nerve fibers they stimulate or according to the number of nerve impulses
they produce.
• These would processed through a number of parallel sensory channels.
• Further processing of information would then occur only after the signal was
attended to and passed on through a selective filter into a limited-capacity
channel.
• – task modelled: subject presented different messages played
simultaneously to different ears
• task is very difficult, but why?
• Broadbent’s model proposed that simultaneous processing is difficult because
pattern recognition has limited capacity; only if information is processed by the
 pattern recognition system can it be interpreted and remembered.
Sample experimental paradigm
• Simultaneous presentation to the two ears of pairs of digits with a .5 second
delay between successive pairs of digits
• left ear right ear
•73
•41
•15
– condition 1: report digits in any order
• subjects almost always reported digits by one ear and then the other – condition
2: report digits by order of presentation

Criticism
• Gray and Wedderburn (1960) - EXPERIMENT
• Left ear right ear
OB 6
2 JEC
TIVE 9
“Dear Aunt Jane” or “What the Hell”
left ear right ear
Dear 3
5 Aunt
Jane 4
Attenuation Model – Treisman (1960)
• Problems with filter/bottleneck models of Attention seems to be more flexible
• Humans can learn through practice (automatic processing) • Filter model,
too serial, information can be processed in parallel

• Evidence show that people can actually attend to meaningful material – e.g.
cocktail party phenomenon.
• Properties:
• Early to Mid Selection
• Selection (attenuation) based on physical properties of stimulus (e.g., pitch,
loudness)
• Attention directed toward information that reaches a threshold of recognition
Several inputs can be processed at the same time
• Filter weakens the strength of unattended information.
• Model proposes that attention doesn’t completely block out the unattended
ear but attenuates it
• Ss notice words in unattended ear that are familiar with (i.e. your name) or follow
the same meaning as the attended ear
• Treisman hypothesized that selective attention occurs after some low level
semantic processing
• While information in attended ear is being processed actively:
• -information in the unattended ear is processed too, but it is attenuated
(Loudness in information value is reduced).
• -Information value reduced and not enough to boost its threshold • -But when
value boosted, possible to attend to the message

Top down and bottom up processing

Top-down processing - start with expectations & context to help
sense/interpret incoming data stream
Defined as the development of pattern recognition through the use of contextual
information. E.g., a paragraph written with difficult handwriting - It is easier to
understand - whole paragraph rather than reading the words in separate terms -
perceive and understand the gist - the context supplied by the surrounding words.
Gregory's Theory

In 1970, psychologist Richard Gregory - perception is a constructive process - top-down

processing - past experience and prior knowledge related to a stimulus help us make
inferences - best guess or a hypothesis about what we see - about 90% of visual
information is lost by the time it arrives in the brain for processing - creation of a
perceptual hypothesis about the stimulus, - based on his memory and past experience -
When it comes to visual illusions, such as the Necker tube, Gregory believed that the
brain may create incorrect hypotheses, leading to several errors of perception.

Empiricists: All information is acquired via experience, thru the senses The mind
as a blank slate

British movement, John Locke

Bottom-Up Processing - start with distal stimulus (sensory data) and build up
representation.

Perception starts at the sensory input, the stimulus - described as data-driven. E.g.,
there is a flower at the center of a person's field. The sight of the flower and all the
information about the stimulus are carried from the retina to the visual cortex in the
brain. The signal travels in one direction.

Gibson's Theory

Psychologist E.J Gibson criticized the explanation of Gregory - perception is a direct,

"What you see is what you get" phenomenon. He explained that our environment can
sufficiently supply details related to the stimulus (e.g. size, shape, distance, etc.), so
perception of the stimulus may not depend on prior knowledge or past experience -
Motion parallax supports this argument – e.g. train travel - objects closer to us pass
by faster, while farther objects pass us slowly.

Nativists: Some information is innate

Nothing in the mind but the mind itself
German movement, Immanuel Kant