Attention And Change Detection Psychology Essay

Attention And Change Detection Psychology Essay In recent years psychological literature has focused on attention and change detection. This paper examines the several key phenomena that comprise this process. Essentially the premise asserts that we do not see or detect everything that takes place in front of our eyes. Change Detection is based upon two key phenomenon: (1) Inattentional blindness and (2) Change blindness. Attention has become more intensively studied in recent years because of its links to cognitive psychology and neuroscience. The paper demonstrates the practical application of attention and change detection from the lens of psychology. Research has indicated that in order to see change you must pay attention to it. (Rensink, R.A. 2002). CONCEPT OF ATTENTION Attention may be defined as a subject area within the field of cognitive psychology. As such it refers to a process about targeted information within our environment. It is the concept of awareness of those things that are taking place around you via our sen ses of sight, sound and sensation. It was the philosopher and Psychologist William James who placed this into better perspective by stating attention is to take control of our mind; the ability to assimilate several objects at the same time and the ability to filter out certain elements to focus on those that matter. (Anderson, J.R. 2004) Attention is therefore a cognitive process that facilitates concentration whilst being enabled to filter out non-relevant subject matter. In recent years this has received intense research interest within the fields of cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Specific attention being focused on sources of the signals i.e. sensory neurons and relationships between other cognitive functions like memory and vigilance. It has also been linked to the two key phenomena of inattentional blindness and change blindness. Attention has been widely studied in school and educational settings looking at the behavioural patterns of children. (Chavajay, P. 1999) ina ttentional blindness we are overloaded with lots of different stimuli working simultaneously and as such we cannot be aware of all of them. (Pashler, H.E. 1999) inattentional blindness One of the most famous tests for inattentional blindness was the invisible gorilla test. This was carried out by two researchers from the University of Illinois and Harvard University. The participants were asked to study a video clip of a basketball game and to focus on the number of times the ball was passed i.e. Ground and aerial passes. The two groups of people wore black and white T shirts to differentiate themselves. During the clip a woman passes through the scene wearing a gorilla costume . After viewing the partiicipants were asked if they noticed anything out of the ordinary and in most groups 50% of the subjects claimed not to have seen the gorilla. The participant’s attention was focused upon counting the complex number of passes and screening out those stimuli considered distracti ng to the focused effort. (Choi, C.Q. 2013)