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Understanding Attention: Types & Tests

This presentation discusses attention and its types. Attention was once not considered a legitimate area of scientific study but is now. There are two main types of attention - selective attention, which focuses on one task among many, and divided attention, which tries to pay attention to multiple tasks simultaneously. Examples are given, like the dichotic listening task and Stroop test for selective attention, and bouncing a ball while playing a hand game for divided attention. The conclusion is that humans do not have an innate ability to divide their attention across multiple tasks.

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Parminder Kaur
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54 views11 pages

Understanding Attention: Types & Tests

This presentation discusses attention and its types. Attention was once not considered a legitimate area of scientific study but is now. There are two main types of attention - selective attention, which focuses on one task among many, and divided attention, which tries to pay attention to multiple tasks simultaneously. Examples are given, like the dichotic listening task and Stroop test for selective attention, and bouncing a ball while playing a hand game for divided attention. The conclusion is that humans do not have an innate ability to divide their attention across multiple tasks.

Uploaded by

Parminder Kaur
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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WELCOME

TO
MY PRESENTATION
ON
ATTENTION
ITS BRIEF BACKGROUND

 Attention was regarded as a hidden


process that it was not a legitimate
area for scientific study(Hirst,1986).
A major text book on experimental
psychology did not even mention
attention.
WHAT DO YOU
MEAN BY
ATTENTION?
 Setof processes through which we
focus on incoming information and
ignore the irrelevant ones.

 Kind of concentration on a mental


task in which people try to exclude
other interfering stimuli.
TYPES OF ATTENTION
1. Selective attention
2. Divided attention

Selective attention
Focus our attention on one or few task rather than
many. E.g. Noisy party.
• Dichotic listening task

• A set of head phones

• One tape with different messages


• Played simultaneously
• To “shadow” one of them( messages)

 To concentrate on the message to be shadowed

 Demonstrated few errors

 Material in the ‘ignored’ ear was evident

(speech or noise; voice was that of a man or


woman)
 Switch was not noticed.
THE STROOP TEST
 To name the color of stimulus when used
in printing an incongruent word than
when it appears as a solid color square.
E.g. when blue is used in printing the
word ‘red’.
 Therefore we take much longer time to
name the color of stimulus ( variations in
time taken to name the color).
Divided attention
• To pay equal attention to several task. For
e.g. A busy executive driving.
• Bouncing a ball and a hand game.
• To follow both game simultaneously.
• Error rate for both following two games
was eight times as high as the error rate
for following a single game.
• Structured flow of information(single
game)
• Unrelated flow of information(two games)
 “Practice makes perfect”
 Two college students were experimented

 Trained to read stories silently and copy


down irrelevant words dictated.
 Initially speed handwriting

 Six
weeks of practice reading
handwriting however not competent
enough to attend to dictated words.
CONCLUSION

 Thus,humans do not have a built-in


capacity to attend to a number of tasks
simultaneously.
THANK YOU

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