Cognition: Exploring the Science of the Mind. (Chapter 3: Paying Attention)

Cognition: Exploring the Science of the Mind
(Chapter 3: Paying Attention)
Daniel Reisberg
(c)1997 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
ISBN: 0-393-96925-8

You choose that, to which you pay attention, and choose to be virtually oblivious to other things.
It is difficult to pay attention to everything at once.
Internal contemplation is as much a distraction as the environment.
You can choose to divide your attention between two inputs at once.
Ignoring is an active process, not a passive process.
- You create custom designed filters that block out certain information such as a particular person's words. You will remember the tone of the voice because it is the active trigger that starts your custom blocking filter.
- This triggering mechanism works in two levels because you hear the sounds but you simply chose not to commit them to immediate memory processes.
The content of the ignored message is ignored, but the conditions of the ingored source can be remembered.
Something outside your focused attention can catch your attention if you are sufficiently primed for it
- such as repeated exposures to a brand.
- the name of a movie you saw.
- something personal and prevalent like your own name being mentioned by someone in a crowd.
Some people require more practice to tune out the other conversations at a cocktail party.
- People who are shy or isolated from large groups, or people who just don't like large crowds.
Having just ignored a stimulus, it is now a bit harder to pay attention to that stimulus.
Our attention can be pre-programmed to be sensitive to certain stimuli. Called "Selective Priming"

Huge chunks of time disappear from memory as your daily routine becomes well, routine.