What is competing?
Objects, thoughts, goals, actions?
Selection can occur across perception, memory and response planning.
Side 83
Attention
A study of selective processing under limited capacity. Attention determines which signals are amplified, which goals guide behavior, which distractions win, and which parts of experience reach conscious report.
competition→selection→amplification→control→limitation
06attention lenses
05selection mechanisms
05failure modes
83Side
Attention is selection under competition.
More information is available than can be processed equally, so cognition prioritizes some signals, actions and memories over others.
What biases selection?
Goal or stimulus?
Attention can be directed intentionally or captured automatically.
What is selected?
Location, feature, object?
Different tasks require different units of attentional selection.
What improves after selection?
Sensitivity, speed, memory?
Selected information often gains processing priority.
What gets neglected?
Selection has opportunity cost.
Prioritizing one stream often reduces processing elsewhere.
Some things seize attention before deliberate choice.
Novelty, contrast, motion, threat relevance and learned significance can increase attentional priority.
Stimulus-driven capture.
Sudden or distinctive events can interrupt ongoing goals.
Goal-driven selection.
Expectations and task rules bias processing toward relevant features.
Unexpected input gains priority.
New information may signal a need to update the current model of the environment.
Learned value captures attention.
Previously rewarded stimuli can remain salient even when no longer task-relevant.
Affective significance alters priority.
Emotionally meaningful stimuli can compete strongly for processing.
Practice changes what becomes automatic.
Repeated task structures can make selection faster and less effortful.
Attention is also an executive control problem.
Goals must be maintained long enough to suppress irrelevant responses and reorient when conditions change.
Goal maintenance
Keep task rules active.
Weak goal representation leaves behavior vulnerable to distraction.
Inhibition
Suppress competing responses.
Control often means preventing a strong but currently inappropriate action.
Switching
Move between task sets.
Switching usually imposes measurable time or error costs.
Conflict
Resolve incompatible signals.
Control systems detect and manage competition among candidate responses.
Reorienting
Update priority when context changes.
Flexible attention requires disengaging from an old target and selecting a new one.
Multitasking is often rapid task switching rather than true parallelism.
Performance depends on whether tasks compete for shared resources, representations or response systems.
| Situation | Likely effect | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Two simple automated tasks | Modest interference | Low shared control demand |
| Two novel rule-based tasks | Large cost | Executive bottleneck |
| Same sensory channel | More interference | Shared representational resources |
| Frequent switching | Time + error cost | Task-set reconfiguration |
| Interruptions | Lost context | Need to reconstruct suspended goals |
Sustained attention is the ability to keep selection aligned with a goal over time.
Performance often degrades when targets are rare, tasks are monotonous or feedback is weak.
Watch for infrequent events.
Rare targets create long periods with little reinforcement for staying alert.
Attention decouples from the task.
Internally generated thought can replace processing of external input.
Control becomes harder to sustain.
Time-on-task can increase lapses and variability.
Too little or too much can impair performance.
Optimal attentional state depends on task demands and individual differences.
External signals help recalibrate.
Timely performance feedback can restore task alignment.
Design changes attentional burden.
Notifications, clutter and interruptions create avoidable competition.
Attention is easiest to understand when it fails.
Failures reveal that subjective vividness does not imply complete processing.
Inattentional blindness
Fail to notice visible events when attention is committed elsewhere.
Change blindness
Miss large scene changes when transients fail to capture comparison.
Attentional blink
Briefly miss a second target after detecting a first.
Capture
Irrelevant salient events override current goals.
Selection bias
What receives attention becomes disproportionately available for judgment and memory.
Attentionselection and control foundations
Feature Integration TheoryTreisman · binding and attention
Biased Competitionselection through competing representations
Executive Attentioncontrol, conflict and task goals