PSYCH 1F03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Shibuya Station, Dazed, Operational Definition
28 Mar 2020
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Document Summary
Attention allows you to navigate through a crowded world brimming with information and distractions. Nowhere is this more evident than when crossing the street at shibuya. Station in downtown tokyo, reportedly the world"s busiest street crossing. Of course, you need the ability to focus your attention on more than just crossing a busy street intersection. Without the ability to focus your limited processing resources, you wouldn"t be able to carry on a meaningful conversation, enjoy a piece of music, understand a joke, or learn new things. Operational definitions are necessary for testing cognitive models. William james - defining attention is a challenging task. The study of attention covers a seemingly wide range of topics, and psychologists have found it challenging to put forth a single all-encompassing operational definition. One which suits our purposes comes from the 19th-century psychologist william james. James wrote about the topic of attention and defined it as follows:
