How Psychologists Define Attention

Attention is a concept studied in认知心理学万博maxbetx官网登陆that refers to how we actively process specific information in our environment. As you are reading this, there are numerous sights, sounds, and sensations going on around you—the pressure of your feet against the floor, the sight of the street out of a nearby window, the soft warmth of your shirt, the memory of a conversation you had earlier with a friend.

所有这些景象、声音和感觉都在争夺我们的注意力，但事实证明，我们的注意力资源并不是无限的。我们怎样才能体验到所有这些感觉，并且只关注环境中的一个元素？我们如何有效地管理我们现有的资源，以便了解我们周围的世界？

根据著名心理学家和哲学家威廉·詹姆斯关注”是占有的思想,in clear and vivid form, of one out of what may seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. …It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others."—"The Principles of Psychology," 1890

Understanding Attention

把注意力想象成一个荧光笔。当你阅读一本书中的一段文字时，突出显示的部分会突出显示出来，使你将兴趣集中在该领域。但是注意力不只是集中在一件特定的事情上，它还包括忽略大量的信息和刺激的竞争。

Attention allows you to "tune out" information, sensations, and perceptions that are not relevant at the moment and instead focus your energy on the information that's important. Not only does our attentional system allow us to focus on something specific in our environment while tuning out irrelevant details, but it also affects our perception of the stimuli surrounding us.

在某些情况下，我们的注意力可能会集中在某个特定的事情上，导致我们忽略其他事情。在某些情况下，将注意力集中在一个主要目标上可能会导致根本看不到第二个目标。

In other words, by focusing our attention on something in the environment, we sometimes miss other things that are right in front of us. You can probably immediately think of a situation where you were so focused on a task that you neglected to notice someone walking in the room or talking to you. Since your attentional resources were so focused on one thing, you neglected something else.

重点About Attention

为了理解注意力是如何工作的以及它是如何影响你对世界的感知和体验的，记住关于注意力是如何工作的几个要点是很重要的。以下是注意的三个方面。

有限

There has been a tremendous amount of research looking at exactly how many things we can attend to and for how long. Key variables that impact our ability to stay on task include how interested we are in the stimulus and how many distractors we experience and attention is limited in terms of both capacity and duration.

注意力是无限的幻觉使许多人开始练习multitasking. Research published in 2018 has pointed out how multitasking seldom works well because our attention is, in reality, limited.

Selective

Since attention is a limited resource, we have to be selective about what we decide to focus on. Not only must we focus our attention on a specific item in our environment, but we must also filter out an enormous number of other items. We must be选择性in what we attend to, a process that often occurs so quickly that we don't even notice that we have ignored certain stimuli in favor of others.

Part of the Cognitive System

Attention is a basic component of our biology, present even at birth. Our orienting reflexes help us determine which events in our environment need to be attended to, a process that aids in our ability to survive.

Newborns attend to environmental stimuli such as loud noises. A touch against the cheek triggers the rooting reflex, causing the infant to turn his or her head to nurse and receive nourishment.

这些定向反射继续有益于我们的一生。喇叭的喇叭声可能会提醒我们一辆迎面而来的汽车。烟雾报警器的刺耳声音可能会警告你放在烤箱里的砂锅正在燃烧。所有这些刺激都会吸引我们的注意力，激发我们对环境做出反应。

注意力研究

For the most part, our ability to focus our attention on one thing while blocking out competing distractors seems automatic. Yet the ability of people to selectively focus their attention on a specific subject while dismissing others is very complex.

Looking at attentionin this way isn't just academic. Research published in 2017 says that neural circuitry (pathways in the brain) related to attention are intricately related to conditions such asattention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder（多动症）对这一过程有了更深入的了解，就有希望为那些应对这种情况的人提供更好的治疗。