In everyday life, an average human being interacts with so many experiences, some of which significantly influence our response. In a college party for instance, several people are having conversations and loud music is playing: and yet each groups of people conversing can still make out what the other person is saying despite the noise. In morning traffic, it is typical to see a corporate employee communicating through a hands free device, taking coffee and driving at the same time. In college rooms, it is typical to find one student reading while the other plays music. How is all this possible? All of these instances revolve around the subject of attention. We are complex organisms with complex brains; however, we have our limitations when it comes to attention. Attention is mental capacity we invest to stimuli. Stimuli are the instance provided in the example: loud music, myriad conversation in one room, driving and so on. Attention can be selective or divided. For instance, being able to study while your room mate plays music defines selective attention: the music stimulus is forgone in order to understand the literature. Divided attention on the other hand can be best described by the individual talking on phone, taking coffee and driving: all at the same time. These experiences and events entail cognitive psychology.
The human brain is considered to be complex. Countless advances have been made to try understanding the fundamentals of how the mind works. Schools of thought have therefore emerged on opposite ends of this notion. Behaviorists believe that human beings can be understood based on how they behave: by this, they mean how human beings react to stimuli. In our everyday environment, we experience stimuli every moment that we are alive. For instance, in a typical Supermarket, there is the overhead music playing, kids probably screaming in delight, other customers conversing and the occasional call on the supermarket’s Public Address system. Behaviorists categorize all of these as stimuli. How we react to them can give insight into how we think as human beings. However, a separate school of thought believes otherwise. With the emergence of the computer in mid toward late 20th century, a new school of thought emerged that modeled the human brain like a computer. Computers receive stimuli through input devices such as keyboard and mouse. The information is processed, stored, manipulated and can be retrieved conveniently. Cognitive psychologists believe that the human brain adheres to the same criteria of reacting to stimuli: this entails cognition. Cognitive Psychologists believe that human mental processes (thinking, language processing, attention, perception, problem solving, and memory) can be studied to interpret how humans think, feel and behave.
Literature Review
Stimuli, is that event or phenomenon that occurs in our environment. It is external and is thus not controlled by human intervention. Cognitive psychology studies the human mental processes. Thinking, processing language when spoke to, paying attention to what someone is saying, remembering or using memory of previous event to solve current event all entail mental processes. According to John Anderson information is selected from the environment and processed in that order. The process of selection can be selective or divided. This constitutes attention. So what is attention? Everyone knows what attention is. In class, for instance, a lecturer might ask the class to pay attention to what is being taught. In order to understand what someone is saying, there is need to pay attention. When one pays attention in class, the implied meaning is to invest all mental capacity. A soldier entering the class at this point, would represent new stimulus, and the attention will be focused on him. He is new in the environment: where he is not known to normally exist. He is therefore a distraction. The implications in this case are that attention is abstract: It cannot be measured with an instrument. Attention also implies focusing all resources. According to Bodenhausen, the concept of attention can be referred tp as a spot light. A spot light can only illuminate the details of a particular point while not highlighting others. As such, the spot light has limitations since it can only focus its resources on a focal area of stimuli. This forms the basis of attention.Take for instance the entry of the soldier during class, the students diverted their attention to the new stimuli. If the teacher continued teaching anyway when the soldier budged in, then the observable shift in attention from the teacher to the soldier would entail selective attention. Selective attention entails paying attention to, say, a single conversation on a cocktail party.
Divided attention implies multitasking. As previously discussed in this paper, attention entails allocation of resources. Listening to two kinds of music genres for instance would entail dividing attention. Chewing gum and walking at the same time are not cognitive functions and hence do not qualify as dividing attention. However, situations that demand thinking and language processing for instance cooking and speaking o the phone at the same time entail divided attention. According to Sean MacLeod, 80% of accidents caused on the roads result from divided attention. This implies that if the drivers were not multitasking, the accident would not occur. If we marry this information with Sternberg’s take on resources, the emergent picture, is that dividing attention translates to division of allocated resources: hence poor attention by a divisible factor of the number of activities engaged in.
According to research, attention is directly influenced by the brain. Elizabeth S. Smith et al used rats to demonstrate this. They hypothesized that the Central Amygdala plays a central role in governing selective attention and sustained attention. They surgically severed the CeA D1 receptors on their test subjects, rats. The rats had been trained on how to procure food by paying attention to five experimental aspects. However, it was shown that the rats whose CeA D1 receptors were not severed were able to keep up unlike those whose central amygdale was severed. This experiment was used to show that cognitive functions are controlled by aspects of the brain which can
Broadbent’s Filter Model was designed to show how information is received and filtered by the brain. He theorized that information goes through three faces before it reaches the brain. At the first stage, all the information is received by sensory organ and transmitted to the next phase. At this stage, the information is filtered based on characteristics perceived by the listener. One stream of the information is selected by the listener. It goes to the next stage, the detector where the information is further processed before being transferred to long term memory.
Treisman’s Attenuation Theory also adds to Broadbent’s Filter Model of sorting information. Treisman believed that information was divided into two categories: attended and unattended. Both would go through three phases (attenuator, dictionary unit and memory) where they would undergo prioritization. All information go through the attenuator where they are sorted into attended and unattended information. Both streams of information would go to the dictionary unit, however, emphasis will be placed on attended information before they are all committed to memory.
Discussion
Cognitive psychology is therefore etched in processes of the brain that mediate between stimuli and behavior. The research on the rats confirms that this phenomenon can be researched and particular organs responsible for some of the brain activities identified. Attention cannot be clearly defined by most literature material available. However, by use of aspects such as the resources available to the brain and the example of the spot light, attention can be understood as a practice of allocating resources to particular stimuli. It is therefore limited in nature. There are two levels of attention: selective and divided attention. Selective attention is best described by reading: one can only read particular phrases at a time. Basically, the more we seek for more details, the more our focal stimuli is pronounced and the more all other stimuli is ignored, divided attention however, entails allocation of resources to two or more activities. The contemporary term for this is multitasking. However, multitasking activities get less attention and suffer consequences: like driving and speaking on the phone. Broadbent’s and Treisman’s breakdown of the mediation process of information in the brain complement each other. They basically show that the brain gives priority to one stream of stimuli while ignoring the rest. This is very important in analyzing witness testimonies by forensic analysts in say, the scene of accidents. Much research is however yet to be done to actually define attention as it is abstract and defined broadly. It is also very important for more progressive research to be conducted on the mediation process to conclusively analyze the processes in the background.
References
Anderson, J. R. (1990). Cognitive psychology and its implications. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
Bodenhausen, G. V., & Hugenberg, K. (2010). Attention, Perception, and Social Cognition. Illinois: Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.
MacLeod, S. (2015). Cognitive Psychology. Retrieved April 28, 2016, from Simply Psychology: http://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive.html
Smith, E. S., Fabian, P., Rosenthal, A., Kaddour-Djebbar, A., & Lee, H. J. (2015). The Roles of Central Amygdala D1 and D2 Receptors on Attentional Performance in a Five-Choice Task. Behavioral Neuroscience , 564 –575.
STERNBERG, R. J., & STERNBERG, K. (2012). Cognitive Psychology. Belmont: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
Wei, F. Y. (2012). Rethinking college students' self-regulation and sustained attention: Does text messaging during class influence cognitive learning? Communication Education , 185-204.
Yiǧit-Elliott, S., Palmer, J., & Moore, C. M. (2011). Distinguishing blocking from attenuation in visual selective attention. Psychological science .
