The last three articles were all about perception, now we will switch to another cognitive ability named attention.
First of all, we will have a look at selective attention, also called focused attention– this is called so because we bundle all our senses into one point. But the question is: What does happen to the stimuli we do not direct our attention on?
Attention can be directed voluntary or involuntary on one stimulus. Then our brain tries to make a selection out of the information we perceive. This selection can be made based on two criteria. First of all, information can be selected locally, which means our brain makes segregation of relevant and irrelevant information based on the source of the channel. The second criteria is a selection of information based on its meaning (content). Furthermore, there is a hierarchical order in processing verbal information:
- Analysis of physical stimuli characteristics
- Analysis of syllabus
- Analysis of words
- Analysis of grammatical structures
- Analysis of meaning
The less attention we spend on the presented information, the less processing steps there are.
In the next videos, you can make some exercises to train your selective attention:
Next, I will put in some interactive fun games to train your selective attention:
If you want to play some science-based interactive games to train your attention, I want to invite you to make yourself a profile on brainapps.io. They have also a free version, but you can upgrade also to the premium version to make your brain fit like a sneaker!
Looking forward to reading your feedback in the comment section!