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Attention can be defined as the concentrated direction of the mind. We can also improve and develop it in our struggle to grasp the best possible understanding of the world around us so as to exploit it to our best interest. Without the aptitude of attention the amount of information available in the environment would be infinite. For example when someone is faced with a life-threatening situation one needs to be economical in dealing with the information arriving at his/her senses. Even in normal circumstances our environment is a buzz of chaos, and we need to select from many different events those to which we should attend in any given moment. Selective attention provides the means by which we reduce the workload on our mental systems. The restriction of mental processing to one event at a time is called “selective attention”. Our ability to attend the one main event whilst being remotely conscious of the others provides the psychologist with the paradox of how attention can be both a selective and a divided process simultaneously. Cherry in 1953 (sited in Eysenk, 2000), gave subjects a dichotic listening task to perform. This involved wearing a stereo headphone, which enabled the experimenter to present one message to one ear and a second message to the other ear.
Approximate Word count = 847
Approximate Pages = 3.4
(250 words per page double spaced)
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