BA II, SEM 4 UNIT – ATTENTION AND PERCEPTION 1

ATTENTION AND PERCEPTION

ATTENTION AS SELECTIVE PERCEPTION; PERCEPTION OF FORM, SPACE, AND

MOVEMENT

ATTENTION

Attention has sometimes been described not as a single concept but as the name of a complex
field of study. This is true only to the extent that around it have grown up a multitude of
ancillary and often poorly defined constructs, many of them overlapping. Some, like
consciousness and awareness, are related to subjective mental states. Others, like arousal,
activation, and orientation, are thought of more in physiological terms. Still others, like
alertness and expectancy, have been characterized principally in terms of behaviour and
performance. Another dimension considers the process in terms of effort, intention, drive, or
motivation, and, yet another, the notion of automaticity. Doubtless each of these facets
contributes to the overall picture, but there would seem to be a case for treating the term as
referring primarily to that state of the individual, which represents the shifting, selective
focus of consciousness. This is the state through which learning takes place and one that makes
heavy demands upon the brain's processing capacity. Individuals recognize it subjectively in
themselves, but it is becoming increasingly recognizable in others through neurophysiological
activity as well as by individual behaviour. It is a state of awareness that subserves the more
flexible and directable aspects of human transactions with the environment.

SOME DEFINITIONS

Even a cursory perusal of the above theories shows how difficult it is to define attention. It has
many aspects, and different psychologists have focused on different aspects in their attempt to
define it.
1. William James (1890): Attention is “the taking possession by the mind, in clear and
vivid form, of one of what seem simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought”. Thus
according to James, the primary purpose of attention is to make the content of consciousness
clearer.
2. Titchener (1908): Attention is “a patterning of conscious activity”. Thus attention is
only one ingredient of consciousness, an ingredient that helps to organize and hence clarify
consciousness.
3. Encyclopedia Britannica Online (2001): “The concentration of awareness on some
phenomenon to the exclusion of other stimuli is attention. Attention is awareness of the here
and now in a focal and perceptive way.”
BA II, SEM 4 UNIT – ATTENTION AND PERCEPTION 2

THEORIES OF ATTENTION

One of the most influential of the psychological models of selective attention was that put
forward by Broadbent in 1958. He postulated that the many signals entering the central
nervous system in parallel with one another are held for a very short time in a temporary buffer.
The buffer has three components: a selective filter, a limited capacity channel, and a detection
device. The sensory signals are analyzed for features such as their location in space, their tonal
quality, their size, their colour, or other basic physical properties. The selective filter allows
only the signals with the appropriate, selected properties, to proceed along a single channel for
further analysis. Since only serial processing is possible along the limited capacity channel, the
lower priority information held in the buffer will fail to pass this stage before the time limit on
the buffer expires. Items lost in this way through decay have no further effect on behaviour.
The detection device further analyzes the signals for meaning, relationships with other material,
etc.

Broadbent’s filter model of attention was based on research with the ‘cocktail party
phenomena’ or to give a more scientific name, experiments in ‘dichotic listening’. The
cocktail party phenomenon refers to the fact that in spite of over-stimulation at a party, we are
able to pick and understand the conversation we want to follow. However, it is almost
impossible to follow two or more conversations at the same time. The scientific evidence for
this phenomenon was provided by Cherry (1953). In his experiments on dichotic listening, he
presented one message to the left ear, and simultaneously, a different message to the right ear.
The subject is asked to pay attention to the left ear and ignore the message to the right ear. He
is asked to repeat the message as he or she hears it in the left ear, a technique Cherry called
‘shadowing’. He found that people could easily shadow the attended message and ignore the
other one. In fact they were unaware of even drastic changes in the unattended message such
as changes to another language, backward speech and so on.

For example, Moray (1959) demonstrated that the unattended message did come to the
subject’s attention about 30% of the time if it was prefaced by the subjects’ name. Treisman
(1964) demonstrated that the subjects did come to know that the two messages were identical.
BA II, SEM 4 UNIT – ATTENTION AND PERCEPTION 3

This was possible only if the subject was attending to the so-called “unattended” message. Thus
the original theory was modified to suggest that the filter does not completely block, but
simply attenuates, the non-attended signals. The unattended signal simply receives less
processing than the attended signal.

With the notion of attenuation, rather than exclusion, of non-attended signals came the
idea of the establishment of thresholds. Treisman (1964) postulated that each sensory signal
activates a ‘dictionary unit’ (a neural representation) in memory, and that a threshold associated
with the unit must be exceeded before the signal is actively perceived. This threshold might be
set quite low for certain priority classes of stimuli, which, even when basically unattended and
hence attenuated, may nevertheless be capable of activating the perceptual systems. Examples
would be the sensitivity displayed to hearing one’s own name spoken or the mother’s sensitivity
to the cry of her child in the night. This latter example demonstrates how processing at some
level occurs even in sleep.
Treisman (1988) also proposed a two-process theory of attention while attempting to link
attention and perception in her feature integration approach. Her model consists of two stages.
The first stage, called preattentive processing involves the automatic registration of features
and uses parallel processing. The second stage is called focused attentive processing and has
to do with the more complex operation of determining whether some combination of stimuli is
present.

As early as 1887 the French philosopher Frédéric Paulhan reported the ability to write one
poem while reciting another. More recently it has been shown that some music students can
sight-read and play piano music while at the same time repeating aloud a prose passage.
BA II, SEM 4 UNIT – ATTENTION AND PERCEPTION 4

Of course it can still be held that when two such tasks are being performed together one of
them is being done automatically and essentially without direct attention. An alternative
explanation might be that attention alternates between them in a rapid, and frequently
imperceptible, way. An analogy would be “time-sharing” on a large modern computer, where
many users may be in simultaneous contact with the machine, although it is in practice
servicing their demands in very rapid alternation.

Objecting to the serial processing assumption regarding the buffer, some theorists feel that
there is no real need to postulate an early filter at all. They suggest that all signals reach
central brain structures, which are, according to current circumstances, weighted to take
account of particular properties. Some have a high weighting, for example, in response to one’s
own name; others are weighted according to the immediate task or interest. Among the
concurrently active structures, that with the highest weighting gains awareness and is most
directly responded to. Kahneman (1973), Martindale (1991) and Ashcraft (1994) suggest
that a better way to think about the selective nature of attention is to suppose that cognitive
systems have only a limited amount of cognitive resources or energy for activating stored
knowledge and cognitive skills. Processing two different messages for their meaning is difficult
because we lack the resources to activate the processes required for attending to two messages.
Also some cognitive operations use up more resources. Processing meaning, for example, uses
more cognitive resources than processing for gross physical characteristics. So subjects can
recognize their name because the tiny proportion of cognitive resources not being used for the
shadowed message is enough for the processing of the name. An important postulate of this
model is that people possess several independent pools of resources for separate domains of
information such as visual, verbal, motor etc. this is why people can carry out several types of
information processing simultaneously (such as reading and listening to music) as long as the
type of information processing required is not similar.

A major problem with the filter theories as well as the limited resource model is that they deal
only with the passive aspects of attention. But there is more to attention than mere selection.
There is also the question of the degree or intensity with which attention is applied to a
particular task or situation. The level of arousal can be determined by the demands of the task
or activity in which the individual is engaged or by internal states; these are sometimes
manifested as instinctive drives and frequently accompanied by high emotions, ranging from
keen excitement to unpleasant stress. In the case of some drive states the high arousal may be
directed to the satisfaction of a particular need. The consequences for attention can be the
allocation of a high priority, or weighting, to all stimuli that relate to satisfaction of the need.
By contrast, the level of arousal associated with a particular task varies from moment to
moment as the task demands change; in other words, it is very much dependent upon overall
stimulus load.. At full load, virtually all attention must be concentrated on the main task,
leaving little attention available for perceptual monitoring of the surrounding.

Attempts to accommodate the selective and intensive aspects of attention and its links with
both awareness and more automatic processes have led to the formulation of a number of “two-
process” theories of attention. One of the most influential was that advanced by the American
BA II, SEM 4 UNIT – ATTENTION AND PERCEPTION 5

psychologists Richard M. Shiffrin and Walter Schneider in 1977 on the basis of experiments
involving visual search. In their theory of detection, search, and attention, they distinguish
between two modes of processing information: controlled search and automatic detection.
Controlled search is highly demanding of attentional capacity and is usually serial in nature. It
is easily established and is largely under the individual’s control in that it can be readily altered
or even reversed, It has been suggested that it uses short-term brain storage. By contrast,
automatic detection, or automatic processing, operates in long-term memory and is dependent
upon extensive learning. It comes into operation without active control or attention by the
individual, it is difficult to alter or suppress, and it is virtually unaffected by load. An example
of controlled search would be having to identify, say, the letters k, t, and v in an array of many
different letters. Automatic detection, by contrast, is exemplified by having to identify
instances of, say, the number 4 in an array of letters, all of which are c.

Broadly speaking the two types of attention can be characterized as focal and automatic.
Someone who is focally attentive is highly aware, consciously in control, and selective in
handling sensory phenomena. A person in such a state is also employing his brain for short-
term storage. (Indeed, some focal attention is almost certainly necessary for storing information
in the memory at all.) Automatic attention makes fewer demands but is relatively inflexible.
Although it deploys well-learned skills swiftly and smoothly—even when they are quite
complex—is largely uncontrolled, The focal and automatic modes may be illustrated by a
driving example: a new driver has to attend to gear-shifting in a focal way—actively thinking
about it; an experienced driver, on the other hand, changes gears automatically—not having to
think about it.

CHARACTERISTICS OF ATTENTION

Two properties of attention have been the major focus of psychologists: selectivity and
intensity. All other characteristics of attention may be studied and understood as they relate to
these primary properties.

Selectivity of attention

Selectivity of attention implies selective perception. Attention has to do with the immediate
experience of the individual; it is a state of current awareness. There are, of course, myriad
events taking place in the world all of the time, impinging upon people’s senses in great
profusion. There are events taking place within the body affecting attention, and there are
representations of past events stored away in memory but accessible to awareness under
appropriate circumstances. At first sight it might be expected that current awareness is the
totality of all those events at any given moment, but clearly this is not the case. Within this vast
field of potential experiences an individual focuses upon—or attends to—some limited subset,
which constitutes the subjective field of awareness. It is possible to determine the reason for
this limitation. Control and coordination of the many inputs and stored experiences and the
organization of appropriate patterns of response are the province of the brain. The brain has
impressive processing capabilities, but it has a limited capacity. A person simply cannot
BA II, SEM 4 UNIT – ATTENTION AND PERCEPTION 6

consciously experience all of the events and information available to him at any one time; nor
is it possible to initiate at the same time an unlimited number of different actions. The perennial
question arises as to whether an individual can attend to more than one thing at a time. Everyday
experience leads to the conclusion that people are able to do several things at the same time.
When driving an automobile they can apparently watch the road, turn the steering wheel,
change gears, and apply the brakes simultaneously if necessary. This is not to say, however,
that people attend to all of these activities simultaneously. It may be that only one of them,
such as the road or its traffic, is at the forefront of awareness, while the others are dealt with
relatively automatically. Another kind of evidence indicates that, when two stimuli are
presented at the same time, quite frequently only one is perceived, while the other is completely
ignored. In those instances when both are perceived, the responses made to them tend to be in
succession, not together.

Attention, then, may be conceived as a condition of selective awareness, governing the extent
and quality of man’s transactions with his environment, although it is not necessarily held under
voluntary control. At any given moment we are aware of a large number of objects around us
but we attend to only a few of them. We select only the object, which needs immediate
attention while ignoring the other objects. Some stimuli stand out more prominently than
others in order to facilitate their sensible clearness. E.g., When a person is reading a paragraph,
he is oblivious of all that is around the paragraph.
Some related characteristics are:

1. Attention has a very narrow range: It is because an individual cannot attend to too
many objects at one time, as the span of attention is limited. The average span of
attention is 5-7 dots at a given time. Limited processing capacity entails that there is
invariably competition for attention. On many such occasions, internal preoccupations
(thoughts) have become the object of current attention at the expense of sensory
information from the external world. Alternatively, an internal stimulus, such as a pain
or hunger, may have captured attention. On other occasions, irrelevant sensory
information from the external world may distract individuals from their current focus
of attention. When this happens it is either because the intrusive stimulus has high
priority, for example, the ringing of a telephone, or perhaps because the task engaged
in is simply uninteresting.

2. Attention is exploratory in nature: When an individual attends to an object, he tries to

explore the new qualities of the object and if he fails to find any new qualities, he
changes the object of attention. One of the conditions for becoming aware, or
selectively engaged, is when current expectations are violated. Just as people learn
skills to the point where they become subject to automatic programs of input and ouput
processing, they also encode current experience into patterns of expectation that, as
long as they continue to be fulfilled, need not engage focal processing resources. On
entering a room a person may be aware of the regular one-second tick of a grandfather
clock, but soon it fades from awareness as other things command attention. One is likely
to remain unaware of it unless it stops and established expectations are violated, or
BA II, SEM 4 UNIT – ATTENTION AND PERCEPTION 7

unless other demands upon attention drop to the point where the person has sufficient
spare focal capacity to monitor the environment more directly and again becomes at
least partially aware of the sound.

The basic mechanism whereby response to novelty wanes with repeated and regular
presentation of the same signal is usually referred to as habituation. For example, if, to
check its accuracy, a person counts the ticks of the clock, habituation to the tick will
not take place. In other circumstances where stimuli have special signal properties,
habituation may take place, but only very slowly.

Among the factors that can affect the magnitude of response to a signal and the rate at
which habituation takes place is the intensity of the signal; for example, its loudness or
brightness

Intensity of attention

These “intensive” aspects of attention may be regarded as a subset of the broader dimension of
arousal; that is to say, they relate to the continuum of awareness that extends from sleep, or
even coma, at one end to alert wakefulness at the other.

In recent years the direction of attention in response to task demands has often been spoken of
in terms of the deployment of mental effort. The implication is that the intensive aspects of
attention correspond to effort rather than just wakefulness. Effort, like arousal, is subject to
task demands and available capacity. It is regarded as being mobilized in response to such
demands, although the degree of voluntary control of effort is limited. Effort is not simply to
be equated with the amount of work required by a task. Much mental activity takes place
without the investment of a large amount of conscious effort.

Accompanying the external manifestations of attention are physiological changes taking place
within the body, particularly within the brain and nervous system. A useful starting point for
examining such changes is through the orienting response to novel stimuli. Both in the former
Soviet Union and in the West, the orienting response has come to be characterized less by its
behavioral signs than by a broad complex of physiological changes. These embrace changes in
heart rate, in the electrical conductivity of the skin, in the size of the pupils of the eyes, in the
pattern of respiration, and in the level of tension in the muscles. If the novel signal is an
interesting one, the heart transiently slows down; if it is startling, the heart transiently speeds
up. Most of the other types of change reflect similar reactions. Thus, the startling signal
increases the level of skin conductance and the size of the pupils of the eyes, causes respiration
to pause or briefly become irregular, and increases tension in certain muscles. Closer inspection
reveals many more changes: for example, in the size of blood vessels and consequently in blood
circulation, in digestive processes, and in other bodily functions. The majority of these changes
are regulated by the autonomic nervous system. They prepare the individual to respond to new
and potentially threatening situations.
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One of the crucial factors in this process is the evaluation of the signal and the assessment of
its significance. Physiologically this entails shifting the level of arousal and focusing available
resources (attention) on the demands the signal makes. Sensory inputs travel to the brain via
primary sensory pathways that converge on a central relay structure, the thalamus, from which
they are sent to relatively specific and localized receiving areas in the higher (cortical) levels
of the brain. On their way from the sensory receptors to the thalamus, the signals pass an area
of the brain stem and midbrain to which the sensory pathways have lateral connections. This
area, called the reticular formation, is important in changing the overall level of arousal. When
it is damaged, the individual may be unarousable. It has interconnections with the higher brain
centres, and it projects pathways to the cerebral cortex. When this ascending reticular activating
system is operating, the individual is alert, aroused, and attentive. Reduction of its activity
results in somnolence or inattentiveness; extreme reduction (for example, by anesthesia or
concussion) may lead to confusion or unconsciousness, even though the senses still pass
messages to the brain over the direct pathways.

In human beings, other brain structures, particularly the hypothalamus, are involved in
regulating states of sleep and wakefulness, and limbic structures, such as the hippocampus,
take part in arousal when rewards, punishments, or other emotional factors are involved. The
associated electrical changes that take place within the brain can be recorded from electrodes
attached to the scalp. Such recording, known as electroencephalography, involves
amplification of the very weak neuroelectric signals, often followed by computer analysis and
display. Electroencephalography enables observation of the minute patterns of voltage
fluctuation that take place as the brain cells process information and relay messages. Absence
of rhythmic features in the electroencephalogram (EEG) is generally regarded as evidence of
arousal as long as there are signs of less rhythmic (asynchronous) activity; total lack of electric
discharge is a serious sign of brain morbidity. Often the patterns of these intrinsic brain rhythms
are modified by attention to external events and by thinking and other internal activity.

Buried within the fluctuating pattern of voltage changes are more consistent patterns that
accompany the registration and evaluation of each discrete piece of sensory information.
These changes are referred to as evoked potentials or, more precisely, as event-related
potentials (ERP). They extend over the period of half a second or so immediately following the
onset of the signal concerned. In situations where the individual must pay particular attention
to a signal, the electrically negative components become larger. Conversely, if the individual
is not paying attention—but is, perhaps, reading a book when the sound occurs—the
component is smaller. This physiological sign of selective attention can be shown to be larger
to all stimuli in an attended channel than in a nonattended channel. For example, if an individual
who is hearing different voices speaking simultaneously in each ear is told to listen for a
particular word spoken by one voice only, all words spoken by the “attended” voice elicit a
larger 100-millisecond component than those spoken by the other voice. Only the designated
word, however, elicits a later prominent, electrically positive component, occurring about 300
milliseconds after it is spoken. These responses appear to offer physiological support for the
behavioral view that there is an early filtering for broad characteristics, followed by a later one
of the more complex task-relevant properties. Nevertheless, the indications are also that
BA II, SEM 4 UNIT – ATTENTION AND PERCEPTION 9

selection is not a simple serial process, taking place at two discrete stages. When the task is
relatively simple, looked-for properties can be distinguished substantially earlier than 100
milliseconds. There is also evidence of a more sustained, electrically negative change that can
begin before 100 milliseconds and continue for perhaps several hundred milliseconds. This
overlaps several components, supporting the idea that much processing must take place in
parallel. Another component with attentional properties occurs just after 200 milliseconds
when the incoming signal and current expectations are mismatched.

All these electrical changes are actually electrochemical. The passage of electrical signals from
nerve cell to nerve cell is dependent upon a range of neurotransmitters. One transmitter,
noradrenaline, is particularly prominent in alerting processes, along with its close relative
dopamine. The total amount of another transmitter substance, acetylcholine, in the brain is
found to be inversely related to the level of central nervous system activity at any given time.
For example, if an individual is anesthetized, the electrical activity of the brain is reduced, and
the content of acetylcholine is found to be increased. Direct electrical stimulation of the brain,
or the convulsant action of certain drugs, tends to decrease brain levels of acetylcholine. This
transmitter seems to be involved in a wide range of behaviour and functions. Among those
related to attentional and arousal states are stress, awakening from sleep, and exploring
behaviour. Certain amino acids, such as gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and glycine,
appear to play an inhibitory role in the brain and nervous system.

Some behavioral characteristics related to the intensive aspect of attention are:

1. Attention is mobile: Attention fluctuates from one object to another. It is not possible for
us to focus our attention for more than a few seconds. We attend to tasks not continuously
but in parts.
2. Attention is a vivid experience: The object to which we attend becomes clearer in our
consciousness and the objects to which we do not attend are not very clear.
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3. Attention is a state of readiness: The individual adopts an attitude of readiness to attend to

and perhaps react to a particular object. Thus readiness in an individual is an essential
response in attention.
4. Attention involves motor adjustment: Whenever you have to pay attention to an idea or an
object, various parts of the body have to be mobilized. In order to attend to an idea or an
object we have to be ready to perceive or attend physically. Attention can easily be defined
as a process of adjustment of the whole body with muscles and sense organs.
5. Attention implies presence of volition: Attention is a conative, cognitive, and affective act.
Thus both physical and mental energy is required and consumed in attention. The moment
we feel fatigued, our volitional power decreases and we begin to leave the task. Our focus
on or attention towards the task decreases.

Attention is linked to other psychological processes, such as emotions and motivation, thinking
and memory, sensation and perception, etc. Every act of attention implies motivation. The
motivation of getting a high first division compels an individual to pay attention to his studies.
Stronger the motivation, the more intense is attention. Attention plays a role in organizing
material in ways that can influence memory. One example, known as the Von Restorff effect,
is that, in any given number of items to be learned, an item that is notably different from the
rest in size, colour, or other basic characteristics will be more readily recalled than the others.
Unfortunately there is a price to be paid for this improvement; other “standard” items will be
less well recalled than they otherwise would have been. In the area of perception, it is important
to realize that what is actually perceived is not a neutral, objective representation of what exists
in the external world. It is colored by past experiences stored in memory and by current
expectations, to the extent that substantial distortions can occur to make a perceived item fit
those experiences and expectations. Perceptions are frequently formed on the basis of quite
limited cues; the art of camouflage utilizes this characteristic to the benefit of both humans and
other animals in certain situations. Our perceptions are determined by the cues that we attend
to.

Thus, attention enters all three aspects of behavior. It is cognitive, conative and affective.
While attending to an object the mind knows what it feels about something and tends to do
something about it. For example: One sees a flower and one knows it is a rose, one likes it,
and one plucks it. Thus attention involves cognition, affection, and conation.

FACTORS IN ATTENTION

The various factors of attention may be classified as:

1. Objective Factors
2. Subjective Factors
3. Social Factors
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Objective Factors

They are the attributes of the stimuli, which act on the sense organs. Found in the stimulus
object itself, they force a person to attend to a particular object. Some of them are:
1. Intensity: Intensity is the strength of the stimulus. The more strong or intense the stimulus,
more likely it is to arouse our attention. E.g., Our attention is easily directed to a loud
sound, bright light, or a strong smell.
2. Size: A large object in the environment is likely to attract our attention. E.g., A full moon
easily attracts our attention.
3. Duration: The longer the time the stimulus is present in the environment, the more is the
attention given to it. E.g., A light or a sound that appears only for a moment is likely to
escape our attention, but a light or sound that persists for a long time catches our attention.
4. Movement: A moving object catches your attention more quickly than an immovable one.
Advertisement by means of moving electric lights easily attracts our attention.
5. A definite form: A definite form has an advantage over vague and indefinite form. A
sharply defined object that stands out from the background attracts our attention quickly.
6. Change: If there is a change in the stimulus or the environment it is likely to attract our
attention. One may be not attentive to the ticking of the clock. But if it stops and the familiar
sound of “tik-tik-tik” is gone, one’s attention is diverted to the change.
7. Contrast: It is a condition of attention. E.g., A tall man by the side of a short man is sure
to attract our attention.
8. Repetition: If a stimulus is repeated it is likely to draw our attention. If you call a man
once or twice, it may escape his notice, but if you call out to him several times he is sure to
attend to the call.
9. Colour: Bright colours attract more attention than dull ones. For example: Red colour
because of its brightness, attracts more attention than pink.

Subjective Factors

These are present in the individual. Also called internal factors, they may be subdivided into
those related to the motives of the individual, and those that relate to learning/experience.
1. Interest: It is the main determinant of attention. We attend to only those things, which
interest us. Thus it is true when McDougall (1908) observes, “Interest is latent attention
and attention is interest in action”. E.g. Doctors, musicians, artists etc. all attend to the
objects of their interest. Artist pays attention to a painting, musicians to music, and so on.
2. Desire, need, and drive: The basic needs of the individual are important in drawing his
attention towards a particular object. E.g. When a person is hungry, he will pay attention
only to food. We generally see or hear what we desire to see or hear or what is in harmony
with our intention.
3. Temperament and disposition: They determine interest, which in turn, is a factor of
attention. An individual selects a stimulus to focus his attention upon, on the basis of his
temperament. E.g. A person of religious temperament and disposition takes a keen interest
in and is attentive towards religion and religious activities.
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4. Emotions: Attention is determined by emotions. A person in joy attends to the bright

aspects of the situation and a person in sorrow attends to the dark and dull aspects of the
situations. E.g. A lover attends to only the good qualities of the beloved.
5. Aim: Every individual has some immediate and ultimate aims. E.g. The immediate aim
of a student is to pass the exam and the ultimate aim is to get a job. Both affect attention.
Aim is a factor of advantage in attention.
6. Mental set: Mental set means a state of mental readiness. When mind is ready to
attend to a particular object, it means it is mentally set to pay attention to that
stimulus. E.g. In the exam days the mental set of a student is generally towards
examinations. So even the smallest things concerning examinations attracts his attention
7. Past experience: Previous experiences affect attention. E.g. From past experience we
know that a person is sincere to us and we pay attention to his advice.
8. Education: As one comes to know more of a subject, one is more interested in it. E.g. A
chemist attends to peculiar chemicals or a zoologist attends to peculiar animals.
9. Rehearsal: Rehearsal implies the mental repetition of incoming information. One
consequence of rehearsal is that input items spend an extended period of time in the buffer,
and are more likely to be processed further.

The distinction between objective and subjective factors is not sharp and rigid. McDougall
(1908) holds that subjective factors are more important that the objective factors. What is
actually perceived is colored by past experiences stored in memory and by current expectations,
to the extent that substantial distortions can occur to make a perceived item fit those
experiences and expectations. In reality, attention is affected by the interaction of
subjective and objective factors.

Social Factors

Besides objective and subjective factors, attention is often determined by the influence of
society. A child pays attention to the action of parents and other persons and repeats the same
actions. Man is a social animal. He cannot live without society. He needs security, affection
and a sense of belongingness. To secure all these, he acts by the rules and regulations laid by
the society. His actions are affected by the society. The culture within which a person lives
determines the way he perceives the world. The implicit and explicit norms of the society affect
the action of the objective and subjective factors affecting attention. For example, an individual
who has been brought up to be prejudiced against blacks does not attend to the cues or
stimuli that yield a positive attitude towards blacks. Consequently he never unlearns his
prejudice. Indeed so pervasive are the socio-cultural influences that the Whorfian hypothesis
(Whorf, 1930) contends that the certain cultures lack the linguistic codes for certain
cues/stimuli, and thus people from such cultures are unlikely to attend to these
cues/stimuli. Objective conditions in themselves are not enough to determine attention. They
are controlled by the subjective conditions, which in turn are controlled by the social
conditions.
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PHENOMENA RELATED TO ATTENTION

Vigilance

Sustained attention, or vigilance, as it is more often called, refers to the state in which
attention must be maintained over time. Often this is to be found in some form of "watch-
keeping" activity when an observer, or listener, has continuously to monitor a situation in which
significant, but usually infrequent and unpredictable, events may occur. An example would be
watching a radar screen in order to make the earliest possible detection of a blip that might
signify the approach of an aircraft or ship. Vigilance is difficult to sustain, however. Over
any given time individuals become increasingly poor at detecting infrequent signals, and
measurement of this forms the basis for studying vigilance. No single theory explains
vigilance satisfactorily, probably because of its complexity.
An important factor is the allocation of neural resources to deal with the task. These resources
are to some extent fixed by virtue of the limits on processing capacity already mentioned. When
the task is complex, detection difficult, time limited, and a series of decisions in using variable
data is required, the brain may not succeed in coping. Long, boring, and for the most part
uneventful tasks result in lowered performance with regard to both speed and accuracy in
detecting looked-for events. If the task is interesting or is taking place in a stimulating
environment, it is easier to sustain attention and maintain performance.

Among the factors that influence vigilance, the frequency with which task-relevant events
occur is among the most important. Generally speaking, the more frequent the events are the
better is the performance; long periods of inactivity constitute the worst case for
performance. Surprisingly, the ratio of signals to nonsignal stimuli makes little difference to
performance. The magnitude of the signal, however, is significant. During the course of a
watch, expectancies develop about the frequency with which signals appear. If a signal occurs
after an atypical interval, it is less likely to be detected. Performance is also enhanced when
feedback is provided to give the individual knowledge of the results. A noisy environment
can be detrimental to a vigilance task, particularly if the noise is high-pitched and loud and the
task is difficult. If the task is simple and the noise is low in pitch, the effect is likely to be small.
Less surprisingly, lack of sleep impairs performance. Conversely, vigilance can be improved-
-or at least lapses prevented--by short periods of rest or by conversation or other mild forms of
diversion.

Inattention and distractibility

While awake, humans are essentially always attending to something. The term inattention
usually implies that, at a given moment, the thing being attended to is either not what it was
intended to be or not what adaptively it ought to be. People will often report, “I was attending,
but found that I was not taking in what was happening”. Some individuals are more easily
distracted than others, but in everyone distractibility varies with circumstances. When
motivation and the level of involvement are high, an individual may totally disregard intense
BA II, SEM 4 UNIT – ATTENTION AND PERCEPTION 14

and persistent "outside" signals. Such inputs are either heavily filtered or dealt with only at an
automatic level. Even when the competing stimulus is pain from an injury sustained, say, by a
player in the early stages of a team sport, it is often scarcely noticed until the game ends and
attention is no longer absorbed by the game. Nevertheless, because people's ability to focus
attention varies, some report "difficulties of concentration" and may find themselves so easily
distracted that they can scarcely read a book. There are indications that persons who are
chronically anxious may be among those whose attention can readily be distracted by quite
modest and irrelevant levels of stimuli. This feature has been noted in a number of
psychological disorders. One cause of these disorders may be a fault in the mechanisms of
attention.