Explain thatypes of attention
Answers
Attention is a topic that has been studied often by cognitive psychologists. It refers to focusing and processing information from our surroundings. ... There are four main types of attention that we use in our daily lives: selective attention, divided attention, sustained attention, and executive attention.
Explanation:
Types of AttentionSelective attention
Have you ever been at a loud concert or a busy restaurant, and you are trying to listen to the person you are with? While it can be hard to hear every word, you can usually pick up most of the conversation if you're trying hard enough. This is because you are choosing to focus on this one person's voice, as opposed to say, the people speaking around you. Selective attention takes place when we block out certain features of our environment and focus on one particular feature, like the conversation you are having with your friend.
Divided attention
Do you ever do two things at once? If you're like most people, you do that a lot. Maybe you talk to a friend on the phone while you're straightening up the house. Nowadays, there are people everywhere texting on their phones while they're spending time with someone. When we are paying attention to two things at once, we are using divided attention.
Some instances of divided attention are easier to manage than others. For example, straightening up the home while talking on the phone may not be hard if there's not much of a mess to focus on. Texting while you are trying to talk to someone in front of you, however, is much more difficult. Both age and the degree to which you are accustomed to dividing your attention make a difference in how adept at it you are.
Sustained attention
Are you someone who can work at one task for a long time? If you are, you are good at using sustained attention. This happens when we can concentrate on a task, event, or feature in our environment for a prolonged period of time. Think about people you have watched who spend a lot of time working on a project, like painting or even listening intently to another share their story.
Sustained attention is also commonly referred to as one's attention span. It takes place when we can continually focus on one thing happening, rather than losing focus and having to keep bringing it back. People can get better at sustained attention as they practice it.
Executive attention
Do you feel able to focus intently enough to create goals and monitor your progress? If you are inclined to do these things, you are displaying executive attention. Executive attention is particularly good at blocking out unimportant features of the environment and attending to what really matters. It is the attention we use when we are making steps toward a particular end.
For example, maybe you need to finish a research project by the end of the day. You might start by making a plan, or you might jump into it and attack different parts of it as they come. You keep track of what you've done, what more you have to do, and how you are progressing. You are focusing on these things in order to reach the goal of a finished research paper. That is using your executive attention.