Attention in Psychology – UGC NET – Notes

Introduction

• Attention is a complex cognitive function which is essential for human behaviour. It is an important mental process. Many of the mental processes, like imagination, learning and thinking are neither possible nor useful without attention. It is difficult to think about anything unless we concentrate our attention on it. Attention is a part of mental activity.
• It was Wilhem Wundt, the father of modern psychology who introduced the study of attention to the field of psychology.
• Attention is the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things.
• Attention has also been referred to as the allocation of processing resources. It is one of the important areas to be studied in the field of education, psychology and neuroscience.
• Attention is a mental effort or striving to control or regulate the conscious mind.
• Attention was originally considered as an inborn mental faculty and due importance was given on the cognitive or intellectual aspect of mind in attention.
• McDougal has described attention as a striving which has its impact on the cognitive aspect of mind. It is an active effort of our conscious mind.

Definitions

• Attention is defined as the Act or state of applying the mind to something. It is the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one thing or event by ignoring other things.
• Attention can be referred as a selection process. To attend to an external event like sound, image, smell… or internal thoughts we have to maintain a certain level of awareness. When we attend to one stimulus, it is seen that we have removed our attention from other stimuli. Our mind concentrates and selects only one stimulus, which is best suited to it, for paying attention.
• It has been noted that we pay more attention to stimuli that are meaningful or emotionally significant. Our motivational states whether we are Hungry or Thirsty- play important roles in attention. Repeated exposure may also increase attention to particular stimuli. Example, Prenatal auditory exposure explains why a four day old infant listens to the mother’s voice by turning their head than to voice of other women. On the other hand exposure to constant stimulus can lead to habituation. When we are living in a home near to forest, first the sounds of birds and animals will be making us to attend to it often, but after a period of time we no longer perceive this voice. Our brain is adapted to this constant stimulus by turning it out.
• Attention is a process that “encodes language input, keeps it active in working and short-term memory, and retrieves it from long-term memory” (Robinson, 2003, p. 631). Attention refers to focusing and processing information from our surroundings. It involves the cognitive resources to focus on the object. Attention varies from one situation to another.

• According to Ross, “Attention is a process of getting an object of thought clearly before the mind.”
• According to McDougal, “Attention is merely conation or striving, considered from the point of view of its effect on cognitive process.”
• Attention According to Sharma, R.N, “Attention can be defined as a process which compels the individual to select some particular stimulus according to his interest and attitude out of the multiplicity of stimuli present in the environment”.
• According to Dumville, “Attention is the concentration of consciousness upon one object rather than upon another.”

History of Attention

• Attention is one of the oldest problems in psychology. Early ideas date back to the Greeks, where Aristotle described attention as a narrowing of the senses. In the 18th century, philosophers like Christian Wolff and Dugald Stewart studied the ability to focus on one sensory object while ignoring others.
• Wilhelm Wundt explored attention through introspection, while Sigmund Freud distinguished between conscious (attended) and unconscious mental processes. A well-known definition was given by William James (1890), who described attention as the mind’s selective focus on one object or thought while ignoring others.
• During the early 20th century, behaviorism became dominant and rejected attention as being too mentalistic, causing research on attention to decline. However, by 1949, advances in biology and physiology renewed interest in attention. Studies showed that the reticular formation in the brainstem is crucial for maintaining alertness, supporting attention as a scientific topic.
• Further research helped identify the neurological basis of attention, including brain areas involved and neurotransmitters like dopamine and norepinephrine (Posner, 1997).
• After World War II, the rise of information-processing models and computer science, influenced by Alan Turing’s computational work, led to renewed interest in cognitive psychology. Attention began to be studied in two main ways: as a selective focusing mechanism and as a limited processing resource.
• Researchers adopted the “mind as machine” analogy, suggesting that attention functions like a system that manages information flow. According to Fernandez-Duque and Johnson (1999), definitions of attention often shape the theories themselves. Early researchers, especially British scientists, used this framework to propose models where attention acts as a mediator between sensory input and limited-capacity processing systems.