Chapter 5: Attention
Learning Objectives
- Describe why selective attention is important and how it can be studied.
- Differentiate between pre-attentive and focused attention stages of visual processing, explaining how each contributes to visual search performance
- Compare and contrast feature search and conjunction search tasks, providing examples of each and explaining why conjunction searches typically take longer to complete.
- Describe inattentional blindness and why it occurs.
- Better understand the link between focused attention and failures of awareness.
- Understand how divided attention or multitasking is studied, and implications of multitasking in situations such as distracted driving
We use the term “attention“ all the time, but what processes or abilities does that concept really refer to? This chapter will focus on how attention allows us to select certain parts of our environment and ignore other parts, and what happens to the ignored information. A key concept is the idea that we are limited in how much we can do at any one time. So we will also consider what happens when someone tries to do several things at once, such as driving while using electronic devices.
