First, a Test

In one of my lectures here at Penn State, a professor of mine gave the entire class a task that you can also try out for yourself!

• • Take out your stopwatch app on your phone
  • Time how long it takes you to count down from 10-1 and then immediately go up from a-j (10, 9, 8…h, i, j)
  • Now alternate between each descending number and each sequential letter and time it (10, a, 9, b, 8, c…)
  • Compare your two times

Well… How well did you do?

Just like most of my class and me, there’s a good chance you didn’t do as well as you did with the first sequence. As humans, it is almost impossible to multitask as shown here in this little experiment. Our minds work much better focused on one task rather than trying to divide our cognitive attention between two things simultaneously. While this may feel like just a drawback, psychophysics tells us that there are also several benefits from selective attention.

Attention and Psychophysics

Psychophysics focuses around how our minds psychologically experience different stimuli in our environment such as the brightness of a light or the volume of a sound. There is so much going on in our environment at every given moment that it is literally impossible to process it all. For example, think of everything your body is physically touching right now. It’s impossible to consciously focus on the chair you’re sitting in, every light shining around you, the shoes on your feet and so on. Our minds are adapted to put mental effort into important things while ignoring the things that are not. This is why you stop feeling your shoes after you initially put them on. Sensory adaptation ignores the stimuli that has been constantly there. However, this mental and natural ability to focus on the important stimuli showcases our selective attention.

Attention has several benefits and drawbacks in our every day life. As Dr. Harry Haladjian puts it, “we need not be conscious of this attentive processing for it to influence behavior — that’s why we can navigate effortlessly around our home” (Haladjian). This emphasizes that not all pieces of information need to be consciously focused on for our minds to be able to process them.

The Drawbacks of Selective Attention

Unfortunately, our attention isn’t always the most reliable it can be. Whenever our selective attention is extremely focused, we can experience what is called “change blindness”. In other words, when we are preoccupied with something and our attention is fully invested in one thing, we can fail to observe other huge changes in our environment.  This is why it is much more dangerous for a new driver to talk and drive than it is for people who have had their licenses for longer. They are so focused on driving that trying to multitask and pay attention to both the road and their friend is almost impossible. For the experienced driver, while it is still dangerous, driving comes more natural and second-nature to them; thus, they can better hold a conversation and be alert for changes on the road.While being taught of this very topic, my psychology professor at Penn State presented to the class this video:

The whole lecture hall laughed at how average people could be so blind to such a drastic change in their environment. Little did we know, while we were so preoccupied focusing on the video, our professor went into the hallway and proceeded to change his dress shirt from white to black. Even though we have been watching him lecture for over 45 minutes, hardly anyone in the lecture hall of 300 noticed his shirt had completely changed once he resumed lecturing.

Our brains are wired to work smarter and not harder in order to get you the information you need every day. It’s up to you to consciously observe life and the little things around you.

 

Works Cited

777Skeptic. YouTube, 26 Aug. 2007, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBPG_OBgTWg.

Haladjian, Harry Haroutioun, and Carlos Montemayor. “The Evolution of Conscious Attention.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 23 Feb. 2016, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-consciousness/201602/the-evolution-conscious-attention.