You may have noticed that you can read the same paragraph for 10 minutes in a busy room, full of talking people, music and ringing phones. However, someone may call your name and you will instantly hear it. We often miss out on some of the best information in our environment. Whilst humans can have multiple things in our perception, we can only be truly aware of a limited number of things at any one time.

Attention allows us to prioritise certain information whilst lessening the processing of other information. This is done through selective attention. However, what does this prioritisation depend on? Sometimes we have a deliberate goal. Why do we pay attention to certain sounds and not others? How does our brain know what to pay attention to?

Can Humans Process All Information?

Selective attention is the ability to focus on specific pieces of information whilst ignoring or suppressing other information. This means that you’re only paying attention to one, or less, pieces of sensory information (Bater & Jordan, 2019). Without selective attention we would be overwhelmed with information.

Early research aimed to find out where this selective attention occurred. Two different messages were played to participants at the same time. Participants were asked to follow one message whilst responding to certain target words. This showed that we can only process a limited amount of information at one time. It’s helpful to think of this like binoculars. You can choose what to look at thanks to attention. Everything else will fade out of your vision. This is why you may not be fully present during a discussion.

It is also useful to know the difference between selective attention, divided attention and task switching. Selective attention is when you focus on one source of information, whilst ignoring the rest. Divided attention is when you try to pay attention to two or more sources of information. Task switching is when you switch your attention from task to task. This section was regarding selective attention, however divided attention and task switching will be mentioned later in this article.

Do We Choose What To Pay Attention To?

A big factor for attention is our goals. For example, if you’re trying to find a friend in a train station with hundreds of people around. You’ll be looking for someone with a specific appearance or movement. This is known as top-down attention. Top-down attention is controlled by internal factors such as goals, prior knowledge, expectations and intentions. It uses your prior knowledge, planning and current goals (Katsuki & Constantinidis, 2014).

This is the same when studying. If you’re looking for information about selective attention in your textbook, you’ll be paying more attention to words relating to attention. Your brain is not just taking in information, it is going into the page with intention. This is why you feel like you’re paying attention differently when you have a question in mind when reading. However, goals aren’t the only thing affecting attention.

Sometimes We Don’t Plan To Pay Attention To Something

Sometimes our attention isn’t planned. Imagine you’re sat in the park and suddenly there is a loud noise. Your attention will automatically go to the noise. This is known as bottom-up attention. Unlike top-down attention, it isn’t goal driven. It is driven by the stimulus. This could be something moving, an unusual sound or an eye catching image.

Bottom-up attention is attention driven by an external stimulus which stands out more than the surrounding information (Katsuki & Constantinidis, 2014). This can often happen in real life. If there is a flashing notification on your phone you’ll lose your concentration even though you didn’t plan to look at it. This is because it stands out so much your brain automatically processes it. This interrupts your current goal.

Salience is how prominent something is compared to its surroundings. Attention and salience are distinct but closely related processes helping to determine what information is prioritised (Parr & Friston, 2019).

Is New Information Automatically Prioritised?

Whilst it seems as though our brain would naturally pay attention to new information, as it shows that something has changed in our environment. New information can grab our attention. However, research has shown that it isn’t the only factor.

Research into attention and relative novelty in perceptual learning has shown that participants sometimes pay more attention to previously seen features than completely new features (Wang & Mitchell, 2011). This shows that attention isn’t always just about noticing new things.

Experience can also play a role. Something we are familiar with can become important as we’ve learnt to recognise it. For example, if you’re a student you might notice a certain word in your textbook quickly as you’ve seen it several times. Drivers may notice a certain road sign as they’ve learnt what it means. This can affect how much our brain pays attention to something.

Why It Gets Harder To Pay Attention When Our Brain Is Busy

Attention can be very interesting when there is more information. Lavie (2010) looked into how distraction relates to levels and types of information load. This suggests that our ability to ignore irrelevant information relies partially on how demanding a task is and what cognitive resources are being used.

For example, if you’re studying easy information you may be easily distracted by notifications or someone talking nearby. However, if you’re struggling with a difficult problem you may have to put more effort into ignoring the distractions, or even ignore them completely. However, if our cognitive control systems are too overloaded we may struggle to pay attention. There is now a constant battle between what we want to pay attention to and what is going on.

Trying To Do Everything

Imagine you’re a student trying to take notes whilst listening to an online lecture, replying to messages and looking on social media. This feels like you’re doing everything at once. This is known as divided attention. This is when you’re trying to process more than one source of information. Research using brain scans has shown that both visual and auditory attention tasks activate frontoparietal attention networks (Salo et al., 2017). Distractors can interrupt the task.

However, often what we feel like we’re doing two things at once we’re actually task switching. Research into task switching has shown that there is a ‘switch cost’. This is when responses are slower and more error prone immediately after switching tasks (Monsell, 2003). Preparation can reduce this cost but not eliminate it. Every time you switch from the lecture to a message you’re losing a little time and accuracy.

When someone says they can study whilst constantly looking at their phone it isn’t about whether they can physically do it. It’s to do with how much they can divide their attention and how much they lose every time they switch. This matters in everyday life. For example, when driving, you need to focus on the road while also noticing sounds, traffic signs, other vehicles, and pedestrians. When you talk to someone, you need to focus on their words, facial expressions, and your own thoughts. When revising you need to stay focused on what you are learning.

Can We Control Our Attention?

Research shows that we can improve our attentional control through attention training, even though our attention remains limited. Participants who underwent 5 days of short integrative training improved on an attention measure compared to a control group who underwent relaxation training (Tang et al., 2007).

However, we can’t train our brains to pay attention to everything. The whole point of attention is so we don’t have to process everything. Effective attention is when you direct your limited mental resources to relevant information. Our brain asks questions such as ‘what am I trying to find out?’, ‘what has changed?’, ‘what is important to me right now?’ and ‘can I ignore these things?’.

There are a number of factors that can affect attention, such as goals, expectations, experience, emotionally meaningful factors, novelty and demands from the environment. Sometimes we can control our attention but sometimes something will capture it. Perhaps this is why attention is so interesting. We are surrounded by lots of information but our conscious mind is always selective. What we pay attention to depends on what our brain thinks is important at that time.

Conclusion

Attention is how our brain decides what to pay attention to. Selective attention helps our brain filter information and prevent sensory overload (Bater & Jordan, 2019). Classic research has shown that we can only process a limited amount of information at one time (Treisman & Geffen, 1967).

Attention can be top-down or bottom-up. Top-down is goal driven, knowledge driven and expectation driven. Bottom-up is when something catches your attention because it stands out (Katsuki & Constantinidis, 2014). Whilst novel information can capture attention, it isn’t always the case as experience plays a role (Mather, 2013; Wang & Mitchell, 2011). How easily we are distracted depends on how demanding a task is (Lavie, 2010). Often when we feel like we’re multi-tasking we’re either dividing our attention or switching between tasks quickly. Switching tasks has a cost (Monsell, 2003; Salo et al., 2017). However our attention can improve with practise (Tang et al., 2007).

A key takeaway is to focus on one task at a time and have a clear question in mind when studying. We are surrounded by more information than our brains can process. What we pay attention to will depend on what our brain thinks is important at that time.

References +

Bater, L. R., & Jordan, S. S. (2019). Selective attention. In Encyclopedia of personality and individual differences (pp. 1–4). Springer.
Katsuki, F., & Constantinidis, C. (2014). Bottom-up and top-down attention: Different processes and overlapping neural systems. The Neuroscientist, 20(5), 509–521. https://doi.org/10.1177/1073858413514136
Lavie, N. (2010). Attention, distraction, and cognitive control under load. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(3), 143–148. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721410370295
Mather, E. (2013). Novelty, attention, and challenges for developmental psychology. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, Article 491. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00491
Monsell, S. (2003). Task switching. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(3), 134–140. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00028-7
Parr, T., & Friston, K. J. (2019). Attention or salience? Current Opinion in Psychology, 29, 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2018.10.006
Salo, E., Salmela, V., Salmi, J., Numminen, J., & Alho, K. (2017). Brain activity associated with selective attention, divided attention and distraction. Brain Research, 1664, 25–36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2017.03.021
Tang, Y.-Y., Ma, Y., Wang, J., Fan, Y., Feng, S., Lu, Q., Yu, Q., Sui, D., Rothbart, M. K., Fan, M., & Posner, M. I. (2007). Short-term meditation training improves attention and self-regulation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(43), 17152–17156. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0707678104
Treisman, A., & Geffen, G. (1967). Selective attention: Perception or response? Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 19(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/14640746708400062
Wang, T., & Mitchell, C. J. (2011). Attention and relative novelty in human perceptual learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 37(4), 436–445. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023104

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