Classic Research on Selective Attention (Level 5)

Question 1

What has always been regarded as notoriously difficult, if not impossible?

Answer 1

Providing a comprehensive definition of attention.

Question 2

Whose famous opening passage in his chapter on attention in ‘Principles of Psychology’ is quoted in numerous text-books and states that “everyone knows what attention is”?

Answer 2

James’ (1890).

Question 3

Why has the concept of attention been used in many different contexts of psychological research?

Answer 3

To account for very diverse phenomena in human perception and performance.

Question 4

What is unlikely in relation to all of the different contexts of psychological research in which the concept of attention has been used?

Answer 4

That they refer to common underlying principles and processes.

Question 5

Who defined attention as “the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several possible objects or trains of thought”?

Answer 5

James

Question 6

Who believed that “focalisation and concentration of consciousness are of (attention’s) essence”?

Answer 6

James

Question 7

What is one of the two things to note about James’ definition of attention, the other being that it primarily stresses the consequences of attention within conscious awareness?

Answer 7

That it focuses explicitly on selectivity as the hallmark of attention, both with respect to perception and to memory and thinking.

Question 8

What is still the focus of most modern research on attention?

Answer 8

Selectivity

Question 9

What did James go on to discuss after having defined attention?

Answer 9

The effects of attention on performance.

Question 10

What was typical for the early approaches to attention, and was shared by most researchers who conducted pioneering experimental studies on attentional processing?

Answer 10

Stressing the consequences of attention within conscious awareness.

Question 11

Who were among the first to discuss attention experimentally?

Answer 11

Wilhelm Wundt, the founder of the world’s first experimental psychology laboratory in Leipzig (1879), and his student Titchener, who later articulated the “law of prior entry”.

Question 12

How do stimuli in attended modalities tend to be perceived according to the “law of prior entry”?

Answer 12

They tend to be perceived as occurring earlier than stimuli in unattended modalities.

Question 13

When did Hermann von Helmholtz observe that he could willingly attend to specific locations in space, independent of eye movements, and that this voluntary adjustment of attention strongly affected his ability to identify objects at attended and unattended locations?

Answer 13

Before the first experimental studies of attention had taken place.

Question 14

Which phenomenon was later introduced as ‘attentional orienting’?

Answer 14

Hermann von Helmholtz’s observation that he could willingly attend to specific locations in space, independent of eye movements, and that this voluntary adjustment of attention strongly affected his ability to identify objects at attended and unattended locations.

Question 15

What came to a standstill due to the onset of behaviourism in the 1920s?

Answer 15

Investigation into attention.

Question 16

What are obviously far removed from a behaviourist’s point of view?

Answer 16

The presumed intimate links between attention and consciousness, as well as the idea central to attentional research that there is active selectivity and control with respect to stimulation being sensed and perceived by an organism.

Question 17

When was interest in attention revived after a standstill period in the 1920s?

Answer 17

In the 1950s.

Question 18

From how many main sources was interest in attention revived in the 1950s?

Answer 18

Two

Question 19

What is the first of the two main sources from which interest in attention was revived in the 1950s?

Answer 19

A ‘revisionist’ stream within behaviourism that was ready to accept perceptual selectivity as exemplified by the notion of random stimulus sampling by Estes (1950), as well as Guthrie’s (1959) modified behaviourist learning theory that allowed for active selectivity on the side of the organism.

Question 20

What is the second of the two main sources from which interest in attention was revived in the 1950s?

Answer 20

Post-war “human factors” research on information processing requirements imposed by modern technology that revealed remarkable limits in the abilities of pilots or air traffic controllers to respond adequately to simultaneously presented messages arriving at a high rate.