PSY270H1 Chapter : Attention
9
PSY270H1 Full Course Notes
Verified Note
9 documents
Document Summary
Is the process of concentrating on specific features of the environment, thought, or activities. This leads to exclusion of other features of the environment and affects what we are aware of. It involves engagement of the mind, which in turn affects our experience. Thus it affects perception, memory, language, and problem solving. Attention facilitates reactions to events and situations, which can be influenced by various factors (simon effect). There are three types of attention: sustained (vigilance, selective (auditory and visual, divided. Is the process of continuously monitoring an environment in order to detect target signals (change). Examples of this would be life guards on duty and air-traffic control. Is the ability to focus on one message and ignore all others. Early experiments showed that it is difficult to take in 2 messages at the same time. This type of research was done on dichotic listening; where a message is presented to left ear and another into the right.
