PSYC 3466 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Mind-Wandering, Dazed, Change Blindness
21 May 2019
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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 . Everyone has an idea of what attention is. Attention is not indefinite or unlimited, we have a "span: adults probably have around 15-30 minutes. Sometimes attention is under our conscious control, sometimes it"s not: we"re not always in control of our mind wandering. The chapter suggests that attention is best understood in terms of "an achievement" One theory is that we block processing of inputs that we are not interested in, a so called bottleneck theory .
