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Components of attention

Components of attention
Psychological Review
Format: Journal Article
Publication Year: 1971
Pages: 391-408
Library/Archive: (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved
Sources ID: 22288
Visibility: Private
Abstract: (Show)

Divides the study of human attention into 3 components: alertness, selectivity, and processing capacity. Experimental techniques designed to separate these components and examine their interrelations within comparable tasks are outlined. It is shown that a stimulus may be used to increase alertness for processing all external information, to improve selection of particular stimuli, or to do both simultaneously. Development of alertness and selectivity are separable, but may go on together without interference. Moreover, encoding a stimulus may proceed without producing interference with other signals. Thus, the contact between an external stimulus and its representation in memory does not appear to require processing capacity. Limited capacity results are obtained when mental operations, E.g., response selection or rehearsal, must be performed on the encoded information. (45 ref.)

Subjects: 
Psychology and Contemplation
Science and Contemplation
Contemplation by Applied Subject