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Do you know how attention bottleneck affects our visual perception?
In today's fast-paced life, our attention has become a scarce resource. According to the definition of psychology, attention is the concentrated awareness of a certain phenomenon to the exclusion of other stimuli. In various sensory perceptions, the bottleneck effect of attention can have a profound impact on our visual perception. Such an impact not only attracts attention in academia, but also continues to challenge our cognitive abilities in daily life.
“Attention is an active process of the mind that selects in clear awareness an object or thought train that appears to be simultaneously possible.”
The narrow nature of attention is particularly evident, especially in the visual system. The visual system receives a large amount of information every day, but we can clearly recognize less than 1%. This brings about a phenomenon called "attention bottleneck." In this process, a large amount of information is filtered before entering our consciousness. This means that some key visual information may be missed without being noticed, resulting in so-called "inattentional blindness". Experimental studies of this phenomenon continue to reveal how attention shapes our visual experience.
Research shows that attentional bottlenecks not only affect our perception, but may also affect our memory. When people focus on a specific visual object, their ability to process other objects is significantly reduced. Based on this, psychologists have conducted a large number of studies to explore how selective attention works and to try to reveal the connection between attention and memory.
“The function of attention is to selectively focus on a specific piece of information, which promotes better retention of information.”
In exploring attention, scientists have proposed a variety of models to explain the workings of visual attention. One of the well-known models is the "spotlight model", which likens attention to a beam of light that is focused on a specific visual object, while the surrounding area is at a lower resolution. The other is the “zoom lens model,” which assumes that the scope and clarity of attention will vary based on needs.
With the advancement of science and technology, the development of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and other neuroimaging techniques has provided us with a deeper understanding. These techniques allow us to observe the processes of attention at work in the brain, thereby revealing the neural basis of attention. For example, some studies have found that there is a frontotemporal area in the brain that is responsible for the control of attention. This discovery paves the way for subsequent research.
“The intersection of psychology and neuroscience is rediscovering the multiple facets of attention.”
Besides basic visual attention, another area of interest is multitasking. Although today's society emphasizes multitasking, research shows that people's performance actually declines when their attention is divided. The impact of engaging in other activities is particularly evident in environments that require a high level of concentration, such as driving, and many studies have shown that speaking on the phone while driving increases the risk of accidents.
Based on these studies, curriculum design regarding attention may also need to be reconsidered to accommodate how to effectively focus and allocate this resource. In education, the design of clear teaching strategies can effectively improve students' learning efficiency. The educational community is gradually realizing how to cultivate students' attention skills in the teaching process.
The problem we are facing now is that in today's society, the advancement of technology has made our attention more and more scattered, so how to regain our attention in such an environment?
