The

concentration of mental effort on sensory or mental events (Solso) A condition of readiness for such attention involving especially a selective narrowing or focusing of consciousness and receptivity. (Merriam-webster) A focusing of the mind on something (Thesaurus)

 Processing

capacity and selective attention Level of arousal Control of attention Consciousness Cognitive neuroscience

 Selectively

attend to only a portion of all cues available Attributed to inadequate channel capacity Inability to process all sensory cues simultaneously Somewhere in the processing of information a bottleneck exists, part of which is due to neurological limitations. We can attend to some, but not all, cues in our external world.

Replying a SMS while having a conversation

All information must be processed and respond to resources of attention system Measuring and responding to multiple events

Measuring and responding to 1 event at the exclusion of others.

Eg : Playing video games

Some information must be processed and respond to and some must be ignored.

 Arouse

: to rouse or stimulate to action or to physiological readiness for activity. (Merriam Webster) Phasic physiological responses to input. Control circuits center on the amygdala (an almond shaped mass of nuclei located deep within the temporal lobe of the brain.)

 We

have some control over the stimuli we attend to. Ultimate individual power Leads to self-control, the ability to formulate strategies in order to resist impulses. (Malcom Gladwell, Outliers)

 Definition

: the upper level of mental life of which the person is aware as contrasted with unconscious processes. (Merriam Webster) Attention brings events into concsiousness. Automatic processing : many routine processes are so familiar they require little concsious attention and are done automatically.

NEUROCOGNITION OF ATTENTION Spread to nearly every region of cognitive psychology Our brain and CNS are the anatomical support for attention, as well as all cognition.
ATTENTION AND THE HUMAN BRAIN Attention was partly tied to a specific cortical region. Anatomically separate systems of the brain that deal with attention and other systems, such as data processing systems, that perform operations on specific inputs even when attention is directed elsewhere. (Posner, 1992)

 Directed

Attention can fatigue even faster than usual when we have to work especially hard to decipher the world, to interact the right way, or when we have to refrain from very compelling or automatic actions. Some things interfere with mental processing so much that they almost always cause Attention Fatigue.

Such as : Rate of speech slow or fast Loud and unpredictable noise Too much chaos Too much uncertainty Things requiring unusual degree of focus or an unusual amount of restrain

 In

such environment, degree of attention vary depends on situation. Theres a huge connection between cognitive process and degree of attention as it varies individually. The Central Nervous System plays important roles in attention.