Talk:Attention

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[edit] Error

"Divided attention: This is the highest level of attention and it refers to the ability to respond simultaneously to multiple tasks or multiple task demands." The highest on what scale ? Actually focussing on many stimuli decreases the ability on each stimulus, therefore interesting for simple tasks, but certainly not for the most complicated someone can handle! So classifying divided attentention as the highest form of attention is blatently wrong, at the end it's just divided anyway! Sorry don't have the time to correct it myself! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.85.146.172 (talk) 18:19, 16 June 2008 (UTC)


[edit] attention and psychophysics?

Are we missing attention and psychophysics completely between 1960 and 1990.

Yeah, seems like there were such people in the 1950's 60's and 70's such as Ulric Neisser, Michael Posner, Anne Treisman, Howard Egeth, Charles Eriksen, Daniel Kahneman, Richard Shiffrin. Will add some references from that period.Edison 20:52, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cherry and Broadbent?!?

Cherry and Broadbent, among others, performed experiments on dichotic listening. In a typical experiment, subjects would listen to two streams of words in different ears of a set of headphones, and selectively attend to one stream. After the task, the experimenter would ask the subjects questions about the content of the unattended stream.

umm... who are these people and do they have first names?PaulC/T+ 01:20, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Colin Cherry and Donald Broadbent. They are two of the foremost attention theorists of the time, although much of their work has subsequently been superceded by Broadbent's student, Anne_Triesman. I added their first names to the main page. Edhubbard 14:27, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Never really try this, however"

Is this comment really encyclopaedic? Twin Bird 18:40, 4 April 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Attention and Love

I am in the process of creating a new theory of attention. Basically what it says is that attention and love are a bilocality of mind and body respectively; love can flow when attention is paid to her, attention is the existential emptiness needed for love to flow into, while love is the food that is processed by those paying attention to create, to give form. In yet another way it is the whole (parent, earlier in time) communicating with its parts (child, later in time) thru love (the flow of energy as seen from the whole) and attention (the same energy , seen from the parts). Where would i put such thoughts in Wikipedia? Ronald Wopereis 17:06, 10 Juli 2006 (UTC)

Um, Ronald. You wouldn't. That is, unless they have previously been published somewhere. See Wikipedia:No original research which explains why you cannot simply add your new theory of attention to wikipedia. Once it's published in an appropriate forum, you can turn towards a wikipedia article. Edhubbard 14:24, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Final paragraph

I'm not sure the last paragraph in the article should really be there - as far as I can see, the article's mainly focusing on attention as a cognitive concept, whereas that paragraph is really coming at it much more from a social point of view. Personally, I'd tend to try and stick to objective attributes of a stimulus (colour, size, frequency etc), rather than concepts such as cultural salience and novelty, as a means of attracting attention. Admittedly, this may be just me not liking social psychology very much! What do other people think? --ZsigE 01:56, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] This article should be merged with two other related artilces

Selective attention and Neural mechanisms behind shifts of attention are about the same thing as Attention (although they have different content). I would think that "Attention" should remain and the information in the other two folded into this one.--Cooper24 13:09, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

   From a psychology student's point of view, this merge makes sense. In Psychology 'selective attention' and 'neural mechanisms
   behind shifts of attention' are both parts of the Attention category/field. I think Neuroscientists would also agree. --Pet aj28 (talk) 11:41, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I would agree, Neural mechanisms behind shifts of attention is really just a fork of this article. This could be made into a really interesting article if they are merged. --DavidWestlake (talk) 10:01, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cocktail Party Effect?

As I understood this effect, it is in fact not the ability to tune out the surrounding stimuli, but the ability to process it in conjunction to the main focus of ones attention. Thus the analogy of a cocktail party: Talking to one person intently and still being aware of someone saying your name across a crowded room.

Similarly there is no reference to the three main cognitive models of attention (Broadent, Treisman, and Deutsch & Deutsch), and the discussion of early verses late processing of information. Of which the Cocktail Party Effect diputes Broadent's theory of single early filtering of information.

Ryen Schimerman schimschone@gmail.com

(206.124.7.181 20:32, 18 September 2007 (UTC))

[edit] Please don't merge "Neural mechanisms behind shifts of attention" to Attention

Neural mechanisms behind shifts of attention is a very informative article on a very specific topic. I suggest not to merge it with the generic article Attention

It deserves to be independent

DhananSekhar (talk) 09:47, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Current Research?

There doesn't appear to be much in the way of current research referenced here; for example Nilli Lavie's Perceptual Load theory. http://www.psychol.ucl.ac.uk/attention.lab/reprints/Lavie-etal-04.pdf —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.86.146.43 (talk) 19:17, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Location in Brain?

This article fails to point out where in the brain attention and concentration is centralized in. Does this mean it is globalized, or does it only mean that it just isn't in the article? Thanks --65.38.32.129 (talk) 01:52, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Attention has many manifestations and is widely distributed in the brain: control originates in prefrontal cortex (within working memory and executive control) and is implemented via regions of parietal cortex, which modulate sensory activity in occipital, parietal, and temporal cortex (at least). This is something that needs to be fleshed out.--Cooper24 (talk) 15:58, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Long term attention?

Something related to the management of attention (allocation of cognitive resources) over a longer period of time (weeks, months). This concept is linked with the concept of the Attention economy. Nabeth (talk) 21:57, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Is there such a thing as divided attention?

This is somewhat in response to the first comment. It is also interesting to note that so-called divided attention may actually be a rapid serial sampling of the environment (similar to so-called "alternating attention"), as suggested by VanRullen et al., (PNAS December 4, 2007 vol. 104 no. 49 19204-19209). However, more research is needed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.172.131.199 (talk) 12:54, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

What about also the concept of "continuous partial attention" coined by Linda Stone? --Nabeth (talk) 22:43, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
I don't think that works. Partial attention is really a rapid movement between two targets. If two people say one word (a different word) at the same time, you can tell me what both words were. Even in the process of them saying both words, you still rapidly shifted focus. The louder one would get the attention first but because I told you to focus on both, you would be listening for both. In a conversation with two people talking to you at the same time, you will not be able to focus on both conversations. You would be shifting back and forth between the two, recalling certain parts of both audio streams. At least that is what I have been taught. (RyanDanielst@gmail.com) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.205.35.183 (talk) 21:54, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Social attention to be added

We need to find some way to introduce in this article the concept of social attention, at least to situate it in perspective of attention. Note that social attention also represents a cognitive process (see also social cognition), which has to do with how people allocate their cognitive resources interacting with others, in the short term, or in the longer term. --Nabeth (talk) 22:24, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Note: A reference to add, that was removed unapropriatly: - {{cite book - | author=M.R.A. Chance. and R. Larson, editors - | title=The Structure of Social Attention - | publisher=N.Y.: Wiley - | year = 1976 - }} --Nabeth (talk) 22:27, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Another reference related to the limited capacity for people to engage into too many social relationship is the work of Robin Dunbar and the Dunbar's magic number 150. Dunbar, Robin (1992), Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates, Journal of Human Evolution 20 : 469-493.
--Nabeth (talk) 17:39, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Definition needs revision

The current definition: "Attention is the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things". This definition needs revision. It uses vagues words ('things', 'concentrating').

I would suggest to have instead something like: Attention is the cognitive process related to the allocation and focussing of cognitive resources. Any other suggestion, preferably from an expert (proficient both in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience) would be apreciated --Nabeth (talk) 22:38, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Gamma waves

Ask123 (talk · contribs) just added a sentence about gamma waves to the lead, referenced to a New York Times article. I am moving it to the "Neural Correlates" section, because gamma is just one of many brain phenomena associated with attention. Some people think it is the most important, other don't -- the consensus is not yet strong enough to justify putting this in the lead. I am also changing to a different reference -- newspapers, even the NYT, are generally not the best references to use for scientific articles. Looie496 (talk) 15:11, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Fine. No problem. ask123 (talk) 16:46, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
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