Various theories and process of attention.

1. ATTENTION
Dr. Sushma Rathee
Assistant Clinical Psychologist , PGIMER,
Chandigarh
Email: sushmaratheecp@gmail.com
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2. What is Attention
• Attention is a cognitive/mental ability that allows you to take in
a limited portion of the vast stream of information available
from both your sensory world (environmental stimuli) and your
memory (personal internal states).
• Meanwhile the unattended items lose out, and they are not
processed in detail.

3. Types of attention

4. Cont…..
1. Divided Attention: you try to pay attention to two or more
simultaneous messages, responding to each as needed. In
most cases, your accuracy decreases, especially if the tasks
are challenging.
2. Selective/Focused Attention: It is closely related to divided
attention. In a divided-attention task, people try to pay equal
attention to two or more sources of information. In a selective
attention task, people are instructed to respond selectively to
certain kinds of information, while ignoring other
information.

5. Cont….
3. Sustained attention: It is the ability to focus on an activity or
stimulus over a long period of time.. It is what makes it possible
to concentrate on an activity for as long as it takes to finish, even
if there are other distracting stimuli present.
4. Alertness attention: It is the state of active attention by
high sensory awareness such as being watchful and prompt to
meet danger or emergency, or being quick to perceive and act.

6. Three basic categories of selective attention
(1) Dichotic listening: Have you ever held a phone to one ear,
while your other ear registers a message from a nearby radio?
(2) Stroop effect: Instructed to follow the message presented to
one ear and ignore the message presented to the other ear.
(3) visual search: You’ve probably conducted several visual
searches within the last hour, perhaps a notebook, a sweater, or a
yellow marking pen.

7. Theories of Attention:
• Bottleneck theories proposed a similar narrow passageway in
human information processing. In other words, this bottleneck
limits the quantity of information to which we can pay attention.
• Feature-Integration Theory: Anne Treisman has developed an
elaborate theory of attention and perceptual processing. Her
original theory, proposed in 1980, was elegantly simple.
• Early selection theory.

8. Cont…

11. What are the determining factors of attention?
1) External factors (external determiners): come from surroundings
and make concentration on relevant stimuli easier or more difficult.
Some examples are:
1. Intensity: the more intense a stimulus is (strength of stimulus) the
more likely you are to give attention resources to it.
2. Size: the bigger a stimulus is the more attention resources it
captures.
3. Movement: moving stimuli capture more attention that ones that
remain static.
4. Novelty: newer or strange stimuli attract more of our attention.

12. Cont…
5. Change: if a different stimulus appears that breaks the
dynamic, our attention will be directed to the new stimulus.
6. Colour: colourful stimuli are more attention grabbing than
black and white ones.
7. Contrast: stimuli that contrast against a group attract more of
our attention.
8. Emotional burden: positive just as much as negative stimuli
attract our attention more than neutral ones.

13. 2) Internal factors (internal determiners): come from the
individual and therefore, depend on each person. Some examples
are:
1. Interests: we concentrate more on stimuli that interests us.
2. Emotion: stimuli that provoke stronger emotions attract more
attention. However, it must be kept in mind that positive
moods contribute to focusing attention resources, but negative
moods make concentration more difficult.
3. Effort required by the task: people make a prior evaluation
of the effort required to do a task and depending on this, it
will attract more or less attention.

14. Cont….
5. Organic state: depends on the physical state that the person is
in. So, states of tiredness, discomfort, fever, etc. will make
mobilising attention more difficult. If, on the other hand, a person
is in a state relating to survival, for example, thirst or hunger,
stimuli related with the satiation of these needs will attract more
attention resources.
6. Trains of thought: when thoughts follow a determined course,
based on concrete ideas, the appearance of stimuli related to these
will capture more of our attention.