Attention is the concentration ofawareness directed at somephenomenon and excluding others.[1] The nature of that directedness has been conceptualized differently in various disciplines, ranging from philosophy to advertising. Incognitive psychology, attention has been described as theallocation of cognitive resources.[2] Inneuropsychology, attention involves a mechanism fromsensory cues toneuronal tuning that orients behavioral and cognitive processes.
John B. Watson callsJuan Luis Vives the father of modern psychology.[better source needed] In his bookDe Anima et Vita, Vives found that the more closely one attends to stimuli, the better they will be retained.[5]
Daniel E. Berlyne credited the first extended treatment of attention toNicolas Malebranche, for whom attention is necessary "to keep our perceptions from being confused and imperfect".[6]
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz introduced the concept ofapperception to this philosophical approach to attention. Apperception refers to "the process by which new experience is assimilated to and transformed by the residuum of past experience of an individual to form a new whole."[7] Apperception is required for a perceived event to become a conscious event. Leibniz emphasized a reflexive involuntary view of attention known as exogenous orienting. However, there is also endogenous orienting which is voluntary and directed attention.
Johann Friedrich Herbart agreed with Leibniz's view of apperception; however, he expounded on it in by saying that new experiences had to be tied to ones already existing in the mind. Herbart was also the first person to stress the importance of applying mathematical modeling to the study of psychology.[5]
In the beginning of the 19th century, it was thought that people were not able to attend to more than one stimulus at a time. However, with research contributions byWilliam Hamilton proposed a view of attention that likened its capacity to holding marbles. You can only hold a certain number of marbles at a time before it starts to spill over. His view states that we can attend to more than one stimulus at once.William Stanley Jevons later expanded this view and stated that we can attend to up to four items at a time.[8]
Wilhelm Wundt introduced the study of attention to the field of psychology. Wundt measured mental processing speed by likening it to differences in stargazing measurements. Astronomers in this time would measure the time it took for stars to travel. Among these measurements when astronomers recorded the times, there were personal differences in calculation. These different readings resulted in different reports from each astronomer. To correct for this, apersonal equation was developed. Wundt applied this to mental processing speed. Wundt realized that the time it takes to see the stimulus of the star and write down the time was being called an "observation error" but actually was the time it takes to switch voluntarily one's attention from one stimulus to another.
Franciscus Donders usedmental chronometry to study attention and it was considered a major field of intellectual inquiry by authors such asSigmund Freud. Donders and his students conducted the first detailed investigations of the speed of mental processes. Donders measured the time required to identify a stimulus and to select a motor response. This was the time difference between stimulus discrimination and response initiation. Donders also formalized the subtractive method which states that the time for a particular process can be estimated by adding that process to a task and taking the difference in reaction time between the two tasks. He also differentiated betweenthree types of reactions: simple reaction, choice reaction, and go/no-go reaction.
Hermann von Helmholtz also contributed to the field of attention relating to the extent of attention. Von Helmholtz stated that it is possible to focus on one stimulus and still perceive or ignore others. An example of this is being able to focus on the letter u in the word house and still perceiving the letters h, o, s, and e.
Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state which in French is called distraction, and Zerstreutheit in German.[9]
James differentiated between sensorial attention and intellectual attention. Sensorial attention is when attention is directed to objects of sense, stimuli that are physically present. Intellectual attention is attention directed to ideal or represented objects; stimuli that are not physically present. James also distinguished between immediate or derived attention: attention to the present versus to something not physically present. According to James, attention has five major effects. Attention works to make us perceive, conceive, distinguish, remember, and shorten reactions time.
During this period, research in attention waned and interest in behaviorism flourished, leading some to believe, likeUlric Neisser, that in this period, "There was no research on attention". However, Jersild published very important work on "Mental Set and Shift" in 1927. He stated, "The fact of mental set is primary in all conscious activity. The same stimulus may evoke any one of a large number of responses depending upon the contextual setting in which it is placed".[10] This research found that the time to complete a list was longer for mixed lists than for pure lists. For example, if a list was names of animals versus a list of the same size with names of animals, books, makes and models of cars, and types of fruits, it takes longer to process the second list. This istask switching.
In 1931, C.W. Telford discovered thepsychological refractory period.[11] The stimulation of neurons is followed by a refractory phase during which neurons are less sensitive to stimulation.
In the 1950s,research psychologists renewed their interest in attention when the dominant epistemology shifted from positivism (i.e.,behaviorism) torealism during what has come to be known as the "cognitive revolution".[12] The cognitive revolution admitted unobservable cognitive processes like attention as legitimate objects of scientific study.
Lecture by cognitive scientist Marie Postma (Tilburg University) on focused attention
Modern research on attention began with the analysis of the "cocktail party problem" byColin Cherry in 1953. At a cocktail party how do people select the conversation that they are listening to and ignore the rest? This problem is at times called "focused attention", as opposed to "divided attention". Cherry performed a number of experiments which became known asdichotic listening and were extended byDonald Broadbent and others.[13]: 112 In a typical experiment, subjects would use a set ofheadphones to listen to two streams of words in differentears and selectively attend to one stream. After the task, the experimenter would question the subjects about the content of the unattended stream.
By the 1990s, psychologists began usingpositron emission tomography (PET) and laterfunctional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to image the brain while monitoring tasks involving attention. Considering this expensive equipment was generally only available in hospitals, psychologists sought cooperation with neurologists. PsychologistMichael Posner (then already renowned for his influential work on visual selective attention) and neurologistMarcus Raichle pioneered brain imaging studies of selective attention.[14] Their results soon sparked interest from the neuroscience community, which until then had been focused on monkey brains. With the development of these technological innovations,neuroscientists became interested in this type of research that combines sophisticated experimental paradigms fromcognitive psychology with these new brain imaging techniques. Although the older technique ofelectroencephalography (EEG) had long been used to study the brain activity underlying selective attention bycognitive psychophysiologists, the ability of the newer techniques to measure precisely localized activity inside the brain generated renewed interest by a wider community of researchers. A growing body of suchneuroimaging research has identified afrontoparietal attention network which appears to be responsible for control of attention.[15]
The growing body of literature shows empirical evidence that attention is conditioned by the number of elements and the duration of exposition. Decades of research onsubitizing have supported Wundt's findings about the limits of a human ability to concentrate awareness on a task.[16][17][18][19][20] Latvian prof. Sandra Mihailova and prof. Igor Val Danilov drew an essential conclusion from the Wundtian approach to the study of attention: the scope of attention is related to cognitive development.[21] As the mind grasps more details about an event, it also increases the number of reasonable combinations within that event, enhancing the probability of better understanding its features and particularity.[21] For example, three items in the focal point of consciousness have six possible combinations (3 factorial), and four items have 24 (4 factorial) combinations. This number of combinations becomes significantly prominent in the case of a focal point with six items with 720 possible combinations (6 factorial).[21] Empirical evidence suggests that the scope of attention in young children develops from two items in the focal point at age up to six months to five or more items in the focal point at age about five years.[21] As follows from the most recent studies in relation to teaching activities inschool, "attention" should be understood as "the state of concentration of an individual'sconsciousness on the process of selecting by his own psyche the information he requires and on the process of choosing an algorithm for response actions, which involves the intensification of sensory and intellectual activities".[22]
Adefinition of apsychological construct forms a research approach to its study. In scientific works, attention often coincides and substitutes the notion ofintentionality due to the extent of semantic uncertainty in the linguistic explanations of these notions' definitions. Intentionality has in turn been defined as "the power of minds to be about something: to represent or to stand for things, properties and states of affairs".[23] Although these two psychological constructs (attention and intentionality) appear to be defined by similar terms, they are different notions. To clarify the definition of attention, it would be correct to consider the origin of this notion to review the meaning of the term given to it when the experimental study on attention was initiated. It is thought that the experimental approach began with famous experiments with a 4 x 4 matrix of sixteen randomly chosen letters – the experimental paradigm that informedWundt's theory of attention.[24]Wundt interpreted the experimental outcome introducing the meaning of attention as "that psychical process, which is operative in the clear perception of the narrow region of the content of consciousness."[25] These experiments showed the physical limits of attention threshold, which were 3-6 letters observing the matrix during 1/10 s of their exposition.[24] "We shall call the entrance into the large region of consciousness - apprehension, and the elevation into the focus of attention - apperception."[26] Wundt's theory of attention postulated one of the main features of this notion that attention is an active, voluntary process realized during a certain time.[24] In contrast, neuroscience research shows that intentionality may emerge instantly, even unconsciously; research reported to register neuronal correlates of an intentional act that preceded this conscious act (also seeshared intentionality).[27][28] Therefore, while intentionality is a mental state ("the power of the mind to be about something", arising even unconsciously), the description of the construct of attention should be understood in the dynamical sense as the ability to elevate the clear perception of the narrow region of the content of consciousness and to keep in mind this state for a time. The attention threshold would be the period of minimum time needed for employing perception to clearly apprehend the scope of intention. From this perspective, a scientific approach to attention is relevant when it considers the difference between these two concepts (first of all, between their statical and dynamical statuses).
Orienting attention can be controlled through external (exogenous) or internal (endogenous) processes. However, comparing these two processes is challenging because external signals do not operate completely exogenously, but will only summon attention and eye movements if they are important to the subject.[29]
Exogenous orienting is frequently described as being under control of a stimulus.[30] Exogenous orienting is considered to be reflexive and automatic and is caused by a sudden change in the periphery. This often results in a reflexive saccade. Since exogenous cues are typically presented in the periphery, they are referred to asperipheral cues. Exogenous orienting can even be observed when individuals are aware that the cue will not relay reliable, accurate information about where a target is going to occur. This means that the mere presence of an exogenous cue will affect the response to other stimuli that are subsequently presented in the cue's previous location.[31]
Several studies have investigated the influence of valid and invalid cues.[29][32][33][34] They concluded that valid peripheral cues benefit performance, for instance when the peripheral cues are brief flashes at the relevant location before the onset of a visual stimulus. Psychologists Michael Posner and Yoav Cohen (1984) noted a reversal of this benefit takes place when the interval between the onset of the cue and the onset of the target is longer than about 300 ms.[35] The phenomenon of valid cues producing longer reaction times than invalid cues is calledinhibition of return.
Endogenous orienting is the intentional allocation of attentional resources to a predetermined location or space. Simply stated, endogenous orienting occurs when attention is oriented according to an observer's goals or desires, allowing the focus of attention to be manipulated by the demands of a task. In order to have an effect, endogenous cues must be processed by the observer and acted upon purposefully. These cues are frequently referred to ascentral cues. This is because they are typically presented at the center of a display, where an observer's eyes are likely to be fixated. Central cues, such as an arrow or digit presented at fixation, tell observers to attend to a specific location.[36]
When examining differences between exogenous and endogenous orienting, some researchers suggest that there are four differences between the two kinds of cues:
exogenous orienting is less affected bycognitive load than endogenous orienting;
observers are able to ignore endogenous cues but not exogenous cues;
exogenous cues have bigger effects than endogenous cues; and
expectancies about cue validity and predictive value affects endogenous orienting more than exogenous orienting.[37]
There exist both overlaps and differences in the areas of the brain that are responsible for endogenous and exogenous orientating.[38] Another approach to this discussion has been covered under the topic heading of "bottom-up" versus "top-down" orientations to attention. Researchers of this school have described two different aspects of how the mind focuses attention to items present in the environment. The first aspect is called bottom-up processing, also known as stimulus-driven attention orexogenous attention. These describe attentional processing which is driven by the properties of the objects themselves. Some processes, such as motion or a sudden loud noise, can attract our attention in a pre-conscious, or non-volitional way. We attend to them whether we want to or not.[39] These aspects of attention are thought to involveparietal andtemporal cortices, as well as thebrainstem.[40] More recent experimental evidence[41][42][43] support the idea that theprimary visual cortex creates a bottom-up saliency map,[44][45] which is received by thesuperior colliculus in themidbrain area to guide attention or gaze shifts.
The second aspect is called top-down processing, also known as goal-driven,endogenous attention,attentional control orexecutive attention. This aspect of our attentional orienting is under the control of the person who is attending. It is mediated primarily by thefrontal cortex andbasal ganglia[40][46] as one of theexecutive functions.[29][40] Research has shown that it is related to other aspects of the executive functions, such asworking memory,[47] and conflict resolution and inhibition.[48]
Some people can process multiple stimuli, e.g. trained Morse code operators have been able to copy 100% of a message while carrying on a meaningful conversation. This relies on the reflexive response due to "overlearning" the skill of morse code reception/detection/transcription so that it is an autonomous function requiring no specific attention to perform. This overtraining of the brain comes as the "practice of a skill [surpasses] 100% accuracy," allowing the activity to become autonomic, while your mind has room to process other actions simultaneously.[49]
Based on the primary role of the perceptual load theory, assumptions regarding its functionality surrounding that attentional resources are that of limited capacity which signify the need for all of the attentional resources to be used.[50] This performance, however, is halted when put hand in hand with accuracy and reaction time (RT). This limitation arises through the measurement of literature when obtaining outcomes for scores. This affects both cognitive and perceptual attention because there is a lack of measurement surrounding distributions of temporal and spatial attention. Only a concentrated amount of attention on how effective one is completing the task and how long they take is being analyzed making a more redundant analysis on overall cognition of being able to process multiple stimuli through perception.[51]
Eric Knudsen identifies the fundamental components of attention: (a)working memory, (b) competitive selection, (c) top-down sensitivity control, and salience filters.[52][53]
Neurally, at different hierarchical levels spatial maps can enhance or inhibit activity in sensory areas, and induce orienting behaviors like eye movement.
At the top of the hierarchy, thefrontal eye fields (FEF) and thedorsolateral prefrontal cortex contain a retinocentric spatial map.Microstimulation in the FEF induces monkeys to make asaccade to the relevant location. Stimulation at levels too low to induce a saccade will nonetheless enhance cortical responses to stimuli located in the relevant area.
At the next lower level, a variety of spatial maps are found in theparietal cortex. In particular, the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) contains asaliency map and is interconnected both with the FEF and with sensory areas.
Certain automatic responses that influence attention, like orienting to a highly salient stimulus, are mediated subcortically by thesuperior colliculi.
At the neural network level, it is thought that processes likelateral inhibition mediate the process of competitive selection.
In many cases attention produces changes in theEEG. Many animals, including humans, producegamma waves (40–60 Hz) when focusing attention on a particular object or activity.[55][56][57][58]
Another commonly used model for the attention system has been put forth by researchers such asMichael Posner. He divides attention into three functional components: alerting, orienting, andexecutive attention[40][59] that can also interact and influence each other.[60][61][62]
Remaining focused on a non-arousing stimulus or uninteresting task for a sustained period is far more difficult than attending to arousing stimuli and interesting tasks, and requires a specific type of attention called 'vigilant attention'.[66] Thereby, vigilant attention is the ability to give sustained attention to a stimulus or task that might ordinarily be insufficiently engaging to prevent our attention being distracted by other stimuli or tasks.[67] ===
Multitasking can be defined as the attempt to perform two or more tasks simultaneously; however, research shows that when multitasking, people make more mistakes or perform their tasks more slowly.[68] Attention must be divided among all of the component tasks to perform them. In divided attention, individuals attend or give attention to multiple sources of information at once or perform more than one task at the same time.[69]
Older research involved looking at the limits of people performing simultaneous tasks like reading stories, while listening and writing something else,[70] or listening to two separate messages through different ears (i.e.,dichotic listening). Generally, classical research into attention investigated the ability of people to learn new information when there were multiple tasks to be performed, or to probe the limits of our perception (cf.Donald Broadbent). There is also older literature on people's performance on multiple tasks performed simultaneously, such as driving a car while tuning a radio[71] or driving while being on the phone.[72]
The vast majority of current research on human multitasking is based on performance of doing two tasks simultaneously,[68] usually that involves driving while performing another task, such as texting, eating, or even speaking to passengers in the vehicle, or with a friend over a cellphone. This research reveals that the human attentional system has limits for what it can process: driving performance is worse while engaged in other tasks; drivers make more mistakes, brake harder and later, get into more accidents, veer into other lanes, and/or are less aware of their surroundings when engaged in the previously discussed tasks.[73][74][75]
There has been little difference found between speaking on a hands-free cell phone or a hand-held cell phone,[76][77] which suggests that it is the strain of attentional system that causes problems, rather than what the driver is doing with his or her hands. While speaking with a passenger is as cognitively demanding as speaking with a friend over the phone,[78] passengers are able to change the conversation based upon the needs of the driver. For example, if traffic intensifies, a passenger may stop talking to allow the driver to navigate the increasingly difficult roadway; a conversation partner over a phone would not be aware of the change in environment.
There have been multiple theories regarding divided attention. One, conceived by cognitive scientistDaniel Kahneman,[79] explains that there is a single pool of attentional resources that can be freely divided among multiple tasks. This model seems oversimplified, however, due to the different modalities (e.g., visual, auditory, verbal) that are perceived.[80] When the two simultaneous tasks use the same modality, such as listening to a radio station and writing a paper, it is much more difficult to concentrate on both because the tasks are likely to interfere with each other. The specific modality model was theorized by cognitive psychologistsDavid Navon [he] andDaniel Gopher in 1979. However, more recent research using well controlled dual-task paradigms points at the importance of tasks.[81]
As an alternative, resource theory has been proposed as a more accurate metaphor for explaining divided attention on complex tasks. Resource theory states that as each complex task is automatized, performing that task requires less of the individual's limited-capacity attentional resources.[80] Other variables play a part in our ability to pay attention to and concentrate on many tasks at once. These include, but are not limited to, anxiety, arousal, task difficulty, and skills.[80]
Simultaneous attention is a type of attention, classified by attending to multiple events at the same time. Simultaneous attention is demonstrated by children in Indigenous communities, wholearn through this type of attention to their surroundings.[82] Simultaneous attention is present in the ways in which children of indigenous backgrounds interact both with their surroundings and with other individuals. Simultaneous attention requires focus on multiple simultaneous activities or occurrences. This differs from multitasking, which is characterized by alternating attention and focus between multiple activities, or halting one activity before switching to the next.
Simultaneous attention involves uninterrupted attention to several activities occurring at the same time. Another cultural practice that may relate to simultaneous attention strategies is coordination within a group. Indigenous heritage toddlers and caregivers inSan Pedro were observed to frequently coordinate their activities with other members of a group in ways parallel to a model of simultaneous attention, whereas middle-class European-descent families in the U.S. would move back and forth between events.[3][83] Research concludes that children with close ties to Indigenous American roots have a high tendency to be especially wide, keen observers.[84] This points to a strong cultural difference in attention management.
Social attention involves the allocation of limited processing resources in a social context. Previous studies on social attention often regard how attention is directed toward socially relevant stimuli such as faces and gaze directions of other individuals.[85] In contrast to attending-to-others, a different line of researches has shown that self-related information such as own face and name automatically captures attention and is preferentially processed comparing to other-related information.[86] These contrasting effects between attending-to-others and attending-to-self prompt a synthetic view in a recent Opinion article[87] proposing that social attention operates at two polarizing states: In one extreme, individual tends to attend to the self and prioritize self-related information over others', and, in the other extreme, attention is allocated to other individuals to infer their intentions and desires. Attending-to-self and attending-to-others mark the two ends of an otherwise continuum spectrum of social attention. For a given behavioral context, the mechanisms underlying these two polarities might interact and compete with each other in order to determine a saliency map of social attention that guides our behaviors.[87] An imbalanced competition between these two behavioral and cognitive processes will cause cognitive disorders and neurological symptoms such asautism spectrum disorders andWilliams syndrome.
Incognitive psychology there are at least two models which describe how visual attention operates. These models may be considered metaphors which are used to describe internal processes and to generate hypotheses that arefalsifiable. Generally speaking, visual attention is thought to operate as a two-stage process.[88] In the first stage, attention is distributed uniformly over the external visual scene and processing of information is performed in parallel. In the second stage, attention is concentrated to a specific area of the visual scene (i.e., it is focused), and processing is performed in a serial fashion.
In the twentieth century, the pioneering research of Lev Vygotsky and Alexander Luria led to the three-part model of neuropsychology defining the working brain as being represented by three co-active processes listed as Attention, Memory, and Activation. A.R. Luria published his well-known bookThe Working Brain in 1973 as a concise adjunct volume to his previous 1962 bookHigher Cortical Functions in Man. In this volume, Luria summarized his three-part global theory of the working brain as being composed of three constantly co-active processes which he described as the; (1) Attention system, (2) Mnestic (memory) system, and (3) Cortical activation system. The two books together are considered by Homskaya's account as "among Luria's major works in neuropsychology, most fully reflecting all the aspects (theoretical, clinical, experimental) of this new discipline."[89] The product of the combined research of Vygotsky and Luria have determined a large part of the contemporary understanding and definition of attention as it is understood at the start of the 21st century.
Attention is a very basic function that often is a precursor to all other neurological/cognitive functions. As is frequently the case, clinical models of attention differ from investigation models. One of the most used models for the evaluation of attention in patients with very differentneurologic pathologies is the model of Sohlberg and Mateer.[90] This hierarchic model is based in the recovering of attention processes ofbrain damage patients aftercoma. Five different kinds of activities of growing difficulty are described in the model; connecting with the activities those patients could do as their recovering process advanced.
Focused attention: The ability to respond discretely to specificsensory stimuli.
Sustained attention (vigilance andconcentration): The ability to maintain a consistent behavioral response during continuous and repetitive activity.
Selective attention: The ability to maintain a behavioral or cognitive set in the face of distracting or competing stimuli. Therefore, it incorporates the notion of "freedom from distractibility."
Alternating attention: The ability of mental flexibility that allows individuals to shift their focus of attention and move between tasks having different cognitive requirements.
Divided attention: This refers to the ability to respond simultaneously to multiple tasks or multiple task demands.
This model has been shown to be very useful in evaluating attention in very different pathologies, correlates strongly with daily difficulties and is especially helpful in designing stimulation programs such as attention process training, a rehabilitation program for neurological patients of the same authors.
Broadbent's Filter Model of Attention states that information is held in a pre-attentive temporary store, and only sensory events that have some physical feature in common are selected to pass into the limited capacity processing system. This implies that the meaning of unattended messages is not identified. Also, a significant amount of time is required to shift the filter from one channel to another. Experiments by Gray and Wedderburn and laterAnne Treisman pointed out various problems in Broadbent's early model and eventually led to the Deutsch–Norman model in 1968. In this model, no signal is filtered out, but all are processed to the point of activating their stored representations in memory. The point at which attention becomes "selective" is when one of the memory representations is selected for further processing. At any time, only one can be selected, resulting in theattentional bottleneck.[13]: 115–116
This debate became known as the early-selection vs. late-selection models. In the early selection models (first proposed byDonald Broadbent), attention shuts down (inBroadbent's model) or attenuates (inTreisman's refinement) processing in the unattended ear before the mind can analyze its semantic content. In the late selection models (first proposed by J. Anthony Deutsch andDiana Deutsch), the content in both ears is analyzed semantically, but the words in the unattended ear cannot access consciousness.[91] Lavie'sperceptual load theory, however, "provided elegant solution to" what had once been a "heated debate".[92]
The first of these models to appear in the literature is the spotlight model. The term "spotlight" was inspired by the work ofWilliam James, who described attention as having a focus, a margin, and a fringe.[93] The focus is an area that extracts information from the visual scene with a high-resolution, the geometric center of which being where visual attention is directed. Surrounding the focus is the fringe of attention, which extracts information in a much more crude fashion (i.e., low-resolution). This fringe extends out to a specified area, and the cut-off is called the margin.
The model and was first introduced in 1986.[94] This model inherits all properties of the spotlight model (i.e., the focus, the fringe, and the margin), but it has the added property of changing in size. This size-change mechanism was inspired by thezoom lens one might find on a camera, and any change in size can be described by a trade-off in the efficiency of processing.[95] The zoom-lens of attention can be described in terms of an inverse trade-off between the size of focus and the efficiency of processing: because attention resources are assumed to be fixed, then it follows that the larger the focus is, the slower processing will be of that region of the visual scene, since this fixed resource will be distributed over a larger area. It is thought that the focus of attention can subtend a minimum of 1° ofvisual angle,[93][96] however the maximum size has not yet been determined.
The attentional engagement theory posits that "there is an initial pre-attentive parallel phase of perceptual segmentation and analysis that encompasses all of the visual items present in a scene. At this phase, descriptions of the objects in a visual scene are generated into structural units; the outcome of this parallel phase is a multiple-spatial-scale structured representation. Selective attention intervenes after this stage to select information that will be entered into visual short-term memory."[97]
Feature integration theory is a theory of attention developed in 1980 byAnne Treisman and Garry Gelade that suggests that when perceiving a stimulus, features are "registered early, automatically, and in parallel, while objects are identified separately" and at a later stage in processing. The theory has been one of the most influentialpsychological models of human visual attention.
This debate relates to the "cocktail party problem": how do people at acocktail party select the conversation they are listening to and ignore the others? The models of attention proposed prior to Lavie's theory differed in their proposals for the point in the information processing stream where the selection of target information occurs, leading to a heated[100] debate about whether the selection occurs "early" or "late". There were also arguments about to what degree distractingstimuli are processed.
Children appear to develop patterns of attention related to the cultural practices of their families, communities, and the institutions in which they participate.[101]
In 1955,Jules Henry suggested that there are societal differences in sensitivity to signals from many ongoing sources that call for the awareness of several levels of attention simultaneously. He tied his speculation to ethnographic observations of communities in which children are involved in a complex social community with multiple relationships.[3]
ManyIndigenous children in the Americas predominantly learn by observing and pitching in. There are several studies to support that the use of keen attention towards learning is much more common in Indigenous Communities of North and Central America than in a middle-class European-American setting. This is a direct result of theobservational learning model.
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