CHAPTER Selective Attention Filter Theory Attenuation Theory Late-Selection Theory Attention, Capacity, and Mental Effort Schema Theory Inattentional Blindness Neuroscientific Studies of Attention ‘Networks of Visual Attention: Event-Related Potentials and Selective Attention Automaticity and the Effects of Practice ‘The Stroop Task Automatic Versus Attentional (Controlled) Processing Feature Integration Theory Attentional Capture Divided Attention Dual-Task Performance The Attention Hypothesis of Automatization The Psychological Refractory Period (PRP) Divided Attention Outside the Laboratory: Cell Phone Usage While Driving Paying Attention Gonsider the task of driving a car. Besides involving many physical skills—such as steering, braking, and shifting if you're driving 4 car with a mannal transmission— driving also involves many cognitive processes. Perception is obvicusly one of them: You need to quickly recognize relevant objects, such as stop signs, pedes- trians, or oncoming cars. Driving also requires mental effort or concentration— what cognitive psychologists call attention. ‘The amount of attention required at any given time depends partly on the comples- ity of the situation around you: Driving on wide side streets with no traffic is usually easier than driving during ruch hour on crowded freeways. Your level of concentra- tion also depends on your level of exper- tise at driving (Crundall, Underwood, & Chapman, 2002) Recall your first driving experiences ‘Most people behind the wheel of a car for the first time wear a look of extreme concentration. Gripping the wheel tightly, eyes darting at the street or parking lot ahead, the novice driver has great diffi- culty carrying on a conversation, tuning the car radio to a favorite station, or eating a hamburger. Six months later, given bothChapter 4 m Paying Attontion enough driving experience and normal conditions, the same driver may well be able to converse, fiddle with knobs, eat, and drive, all at the same time. Cognitive psychologists studying attention are concemed primarily with cognitive resources and their limitations. At any given time, they believe, peo- ple have only a certain amount of mental energy to devote to all the possible tasks and all the incoming information confronting them. If they devote some portion of those resources to one task, less is available for others. The more complex and unfamiliar the task, the more mental resources must be allocated to that task to perform it successfully. Consider again the example of driving. The novice driver faces a compli- cated task indeed. She must leam to operate many mechanisms: gas pedal brake, gear shift, clutch, lights, high-beam switch, tum signal, and so on. At the same time, while the car is in motion, the driver must scan ahead to see what is in front of the car (the road, trees, brick walls, and the like) and should also occasionally check the speedometer and the rearview mirrors. That's a lot to master, and, not surprisingly, it presents such a complicated set of demands that few cognitive resources are left for other kinds of cognitive tasks—talking, tuning the radio, fishing out a stick of gum from a purse or backpack, applying makeup However, with practice, the driver knows exactly where all the mecha- nisms are and how to operate them. An experienced driver can “find” the brake pedal with little effort, for example. The practiced driver has leamed how to operate the car, scan the road, and check relevant instruments, all more or less simultaneously: With many more cognitive resources available to devote to other tasks, experienced drivers do all sorts of other things while they drive—listen to the radio, talk on car phones, plan their day, rehearse speeches, and so on. ‘Anyone who has to operate complicated equipment or monitor many in- struments simultaneously faces similar challenges. Air traffic controllers, com mercial pilots, and medical personnel working in hospital intensive-care wards or emergency rooms must all process a great deal of information from different monitors and instruments—much of it arriving simultaneously—and respond quickly and appropriately: Mistakes in any of these jobs can be costly. The fol- lowing example, quoted in a study of the design of auditory warning sounds in airplane cockpits (Patterson, 1990), illustrates how too much incoming infor- mation can lead to a breakdown in task performance. | was flying in a Jetstream at night when my peaceful reverie was shattered by the stall audio warning, the stick shaker, and several warning lights. The effect was exactly what was not intended; I was frightened numb for several seconds and drawn off instruments trying to work out how to cancel the audio/visual assault rather than taking what should be instinctive actions. The combinedassault is so loud and bright that it is impossible to talk to the other exew mem- bers, and action is invariably taken to cancel the cacophony before getting on swith the actual problem. (p. 485) Clearly, people who design equipment and instruments should know how people process large amounts of information and how much information Wwe can process at one time. System designers often consult human factors psychologists, who study just these sorts of issues (Wickens, 1987) My goal in this chapter is to explain what is going on, cognitively speaking, in the preceding examples, More specifically, we will examine the issue of mental resources and how they are assigned to various cognitive tasks. We'll first explore the notion of mental concentration, In particular, I will try to explain what “paying attention’ to someone or something means. You will see that at least part of “paying attention” is concentrating—shutting out other activities or information to devote more mental resources to the object on which you want to focus. ‘We will next take a look at what some recent work in cognitive neuropsy- chology tells us abont brain mechanisms involved when people “pay atten- tion.” We will see that particular areas of the brain seem to become active when we pay attention or refocus our attention, and that information that is ety tenes