Attention: From Theory to Practice
Arthur F. Kramer, Douglas A. Wiegmann, and Alex Kirlik
Abstract
The study of attention in the laboratory has been crucial to understanding the mechanisms that support several different facets of attentional processing: Our ability both to divide attention among multiple tasks and stimuli, and focus it selectively on task-relevant information, while ignoring distracting task-irrelevant information, as well as how top-down and bottom-up factors influence the way that attention is directed within and across modalities. Equally important, however, is research that has attempted to scale up to the real world this empirical work on attention that has traditional ... More
The study of attention in the laboratory has been crucial to understanding the mechanisms that support several different facets of attentional processing: Our ability both to divide attention among multiple tasks and stimuli, and focus it selectively on task-relevant information, while ignoring distracting task-irrelevant information, as well as how top-down and bottom-up factors influence the way that attention is directed within and across modalities. Equally important, however, is research that has attempted to scale up to the real world this empirical work on attention that has traditionally been well controlled by limited laboratory paradigms and phenomena. These types of basic and theoretically guided applied research on attention have benefited immeasurably from the work of Christopher Wickens. This book honors Wickens' many important contributions to the study of attention by bringing together researchers who examine real-world attentional problems and questions in light of attentional theory. The research fostered by Wickens' contributions enrich not only our understanding of human performance in complex real-world systems, but also reveal the gaps on our knowledge of basic attentional processes.
Keywords:
attention,
attentional processing,
multiple tasks,
task-relevant information,
task-irrelevant information,
Christopher Wickens
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2006 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780195305722 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2012 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195305722.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Arthur F. Kramer, author
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Douglas A. Wiegmann, author
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Alex Kirlik, author
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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