Divided Attention in Psychology - Term Paper Example

Divided Attention Lecturer’s Due Thesis According to psychology, divided attention stands as part of human beings’ cognitivepart and it associates itself with people’s daily lives. Divided Attention Divided attention refers to the act of paying attention to two tasks concurrently. Divided attention has a long history. Psychologists believe that consciousness can only get directed on one activity at a time. Historically, conscious awareness between two activities is only perceived to be possible if the two tasks synchronize to form one single higher order activity. Through tests, investigators aimed at exploring the limits of consciousness through multitasking experiments. The review below provides the history of divided attention. Some of the researches include tests on multitasking, the relationship between attention and emotions and the influence of age on divided attention. Both qualitative and quantitative data analysis assist in providing empirical evidence based on the above arguments. Finally, the conclusion section summarizes the literature review. In order to study divided attention, researchers conduct dual job tests. In these experiments, participants perform two tasks simultaneously. After that, investigators measure the accuracy and errors made. From these studies, researchers have found out that divided attention depends on three main factors: task similarity, practice and task difficulty. Based on several experiments, similarity of tasks leads to a decline in accuracy. On the other hand, with two different tasks members provide accurate results. Secondly, it is apparent that the regular practice improves a person’s ability to perform two tasks at the same time. Frequent practice allows the participant to reduce cases of distraction propelling the ability to automatically perform two activities simultaneously. Finally, difficult tasks decrease an individual’s concentration thus making it hard to simultaneously carry out two tasks (Spelke, 1976). An example used to explain the latter is the cell phone experiment. Investigations reveal that talking through the cell phone impairs one’s concentration while driving. The individual is likely to run a red light while talking through the phone. When a driver is using a cell phone while driving, he or she loses concentration on the road by diverting attention to the conversation. It, therefore, leads to accidents. The second experiment aims at explaining the relationship between a regular practice and divided attention. Researchers at Cornell University carried out an experiment, which reveals how regular practice leads to accurate results in divided attention. The experiment involves two subjects who begin by practicing writing unrelated word during dictation. Secondly, the two contestants read stories to each other. Finally, the investigators asked them to categorize words, which forced them to apply semantic information. Throughout the experiment, the instruction emphasized on writing all dictated words, comprehending the stories and quickly reading the stories. At the expiration of each week, the researchers updated the two subjects on their progress. In the data collection session, the results from the two members are as follows: John read 483 words per minute and scored 73% in the comprehension questions. On the other hand, Diane read 351 words per minute and scored 90% in the comprehension questions. In the dictation, John recognized a mean of 87.5% of the dictated words, while Diane recognized an average of 77.5% of the dictated words (Spelke, 1976). Judging from the outcomes above, it is apparent that the dictation task did not affect the comprehension reading task. Both members attained high marks in both comprehension reading and dictation. With frequent sessions, the rate of words per minute increased and so did they improve on dictation (Spelke, 1976). Through the experiment, it is true to say that regular practice leads to increased accuracy in divided attention. Divided attention and emotion Most cognitive psychologists ignore the fact that emotions can affect divided attention. Therefore, most surveys carried out do not include any tests done on whether emotions affect the conscious actions of a person; furthermore, while carrying out two tasks at the same time. However, in the recent past there is an increase in the number of studies that assist in investigating the relationship between emotions and cognitive psychology. The Multi-level theories aim at understanding the complexity of the cognitive system and also to identify the key processes underlying emotion (Chartand et al, 2006). Multiple cognitive processes depend on emotional experience, influenced by associative processes and reasoning. For example, people with spider phobia may react more when they see a spider than when they see a snake (Ohman & Soares, 1994). In this example, there are two things, but due to fear the person only reacts to one. There are several multilevel theories but all theories hold one general point that pre-attentive or automatic processes trigger emotional reactions. In a research to study automatic or pre-attentive processes, the researchers presented snake and spider phobia people with pictures of snakes, spiders and flowers. The investigators presented the images fast to prevent identification. However, at the end of the experiment spider phobic members reacted emotionally to the picture of a spider while the snake phobia members reacted to the picture of the snake. From this multilevel experiment, it is clear that pre-attentive processes affect emotions. Emotional experience with one aspect leads to neglect of another. Linked to emotions, is the mood of a person. Psychologists believe that the mood of a person affects divided attention. For example, when one is in a depressed mood nothing seems positive. People find that depressed moods lead to unhappy memories. Additionally, people tend to think more negatively about the world and themselves. Any mood state either positive or negative directly affects one’s cognitive processes. In an experiment to explain this, the contestants initially study a list in one mood state and recollect the list in the same mood state. Secondly, the members look at two lists each with a different mood state. After studying the two lists, the instructors instruct the subjects to remain in one mood state and remember the list learned first (Schare, Lisman & Spear, 1984). Recall should be higher when the mood of recalling is the same as that of learning. From the experiment, the investigators concluded that participants tried to recall the first learned list through relating some of the words in the second learned list, which represent the same mood state (Bower, Monteiro & Gilligan 1978). Divided attention and age Controversial debates state that older adults cannot divide their attention to two or more simultaneous activities compared to their younger counterparts. Studies indicate that older subjects fail more compared to younger people when it comes to performing two or more tasks simultaneously. Majority of the surveys carried out show that aging greatly affects the ability of a human being to conduct two tasks at the same time. Psychologists believe this is due to short term memory loss exhibited in older people. In a dichotic listening procedure, researchers instruct the members to listen to two audio messages simultaneously. The task is to deduce both messages after listening to the two audios. Most researchers conclude that age affects the rate of interpretation for each member. Adults performed worse compared to young adults. Unlike, short term memory loss theory other scientists believe that the perceptual impairment leads to failure among adults. For people who favour their right side, it is easier for them to capture the message coming in through the right ear than the left and vice versa for people who favour their left side. At the end of the experiment, most perceptual impairments leaned more on the left than on the right for both adults and young people. The left year performed less compared to that of the right. Furthermore, this difference increased with age. Besides concluding that perceptual impairment contributes to the inability to multitask, age also affects multitasking. Another experiment to describe the effect of age and dividing attention, involved the dual task of encoding and retrieval. Participants constituted of both young and old people. The hypothesis of the experiment was that older adults fail to engross effective organization skills compared to young adults leading to errors. In the experiment, the surveyors presented the contestants with a list of 36 words, which included 6 categories of items. The results of the experiments included four categories: number of words recalled, number of categories recalled number of items per category and cluster analysis. In the number of words recalled, young adults scored a mean of 15.5 while the older adults scored 11.68 (Somberg, 1982). Secondly, young adults recalled number of categories more than the adults. Thirdly, young adults also scored higher in identifying the number of items per category than the old adults. Finally, in cluster analysis, adults scored less as compared to the young adults. The findings in the study show that older subjects remembered fewer items than the young adults. Therefore, divided attention decreases as age increases. From a biological angle, aging affects attention and memory. The understanding of the mind also declines as age increases. These factors affect the cognitive functions of a human being. Aging affects cognitive aspects such as word and language processing and also decision making (Somberg, 1982). However, according to scientists the relationship between age and divided attention age experiments hold several limitations. Which include failure to account for age differences in distinct tasks and the failure to measure divided attention independent of individual activities. Divided attention limits perception Is it possible for an individual to perceive two objects at the same time? In perception, divided attention refers to the act of monitoring multiple stimuli simultaneously. For example, while driving a vehicle, one should concentrate on stimuli such as vision and hearing. However, in this study the investigators aim at explaining how divided attention affects the ability to recognize different shapes. An observer can identify the form of an object through the identification of its contours. The goal of this experiment us to determine the effects of dividing attention on the perception of the object outline. The experiment involves a psychophysical exercise that wholesomely depends on object shape perception. Participants study one object and later on study two objects simultaneously. The first task acts as a control experiment for the second task. Divided attention decreases one’s ability to analyse two shapes at the same time. Additionally, age, which affects dividing attention, also limits the insight (Park, Smith, Dudley, Lafronza, 1989). Dividing attention decreases the brain’s ability to make decisions; therefore, affecting visual perception. In conclusion to this study, it is clear that divided attention limits visual perception. Dividing attention features in the daily life of a person. Most activities require a person to do more than one thing in order to achieve desired goals. For example, a student needs to listen to the teacher, read a text book and write at the same time. People need attention in order to understand information received by body receptors. However, the brain limits its capacity of the activities it can handle concurrently. From this concept, the probability of an individual to respond to one task declines as the number of activities increase. From social media news, the divided attention phenomenon limits the number of meaningful interactions people have and it makes it easy to identify whom they dedicate their attention to. Dividing attention has both pros and cons. The act of performing two tasks at a time enables comprehensive completion of a task. For example, a student can write a complete essay through online, audio and visual research. On the other hand, divided attention may lead to accidents and huge errors. For example, one may cause an accident on the road while conversing through the phone or texting. Human beings cannot utterly concentrate on one activity; this would lead to slow achievement of goals. Conclusion From the discussion above, divided attention covers many psychological investigations. The content above describes the definition of divided attention and it summarizes some of the psychological research carried out. Cognitive psychology affects a number of individual activities, but it is also affected by several factors. Apparently, divided attention affects decision making, limits and enhances individual performance. Finally, emotions affect the ability to multitask. An individual tends to act on one thing more than the other depending on how they feel about it. Other studies include the effect of dividing attention on social contagion and implicit memory performance. Despite some of the limitations on the experiments, they clearly explain and show the relationship between dividing attention and other human aspects. References Bower, G.H., Monteiro, K.P., & Gilligan, S.G. (1978). Emotional mood as a context for learning and recall. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour, 17, 573–585. Chartrand, T.L., van Baaren, R.B., & Bargh, J.A. (2006). Linking automatic evaluation to mood and information-processing style: Consequences for experienced affect, impression formation, and stereotyping. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 135, 7–77. Öhman, A., & Soares, J.J.F. (1994). “Unconscious anxiety”: Phobic responses to masked stimuli. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 103, 231–240. Park DC, Smith AD, Dudley WN, Lafronza VN. (1989). Effects of age and a divided attention task presented during encoding and retrieval on memory. J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn, 15(6), 1185-91. Schare, M.L., Lisman, S.A., & Spear, N.F. (1984). The effects of mood variation on state- dependent retention. Cognitive Therapy & Research, 8, 387–408. Somberg, B. L., & Salthouse, T. A. (1982). Divided Attention Abilities in Young and Old Adults. Joumal of ExperimenraPl sychology: Human PereDtion and Perfomane, 8(5), 651-663. Spelke, E., Hirst, W., & Neisser, U. (1976). Skills of divided attention*.Cognition, 4(1), 215- 230. Read More