There are so many things going on in our body without us even noticing it: we're constantly hearing and seeing things that we aren't really perceiving. So despite the fact that they're there, and their messages are going into our bodies, we aren't really perceiving them or paying attention to them.
There are different aspects to our 'auto-pilot' mode: when we do perceive things, we often focus on one thing at a time. We focus our attention on that one thing while not perceiving all the other things going on around us. This is selective attention.
When learning selective attention I immediately thought about texting and driving. People always brush off the argument "you can't multi-task or pay attention to two things at once" as silly and false. However, if they ever learned the concept of selective attention.. they'd realize it isn't so silly.
With the idea of selective attention, psychology is showing us that we can't really focus all over our attention/perceive more than one thing at a time. Although many of us (including myself) love to say we're excellent multi-taskers... how true is this? how true can it be? If we can only perceive and focus on one thing at a time, when we're splitting our attention between 2 things how well are we performing these tasks?
These are both pretty scary thoughts (or at least I think).
1) Our body is constantly doing things that we're totally unaware of. Even if we tried to focus in on these things -- we wouldn't notice they were going on.
2) We can only perceive and focus on one thing at a time.
3) When splitting our attention/focus between 2 or more things, we aren't performing the tasks as best as we could...
Here's a fun video about selective inattention:
Jamie,
ReplyDeleteBefore now, I never considered that selective attention is human autopilot. How cool! I personally try to multitask a lot; there's just so much to do! Anyways, in terms of bodily functions and information processing, yes, our bodies are doing things that we are not consciously aware of. I find it amazing that human beings were made in a way that allows for such complex functioning without that functioning being part of our conscious awareness. You said that you thought this was scary. I find this fascinating and would definitely like to know more.
Haha that video was great. It just showed me how stupid are brains really are. JK i know its just because we are focusing on one thing so we don't even notice the other things. It kind of when people ask me how I used to live in a house with so many other siblings doing so many things and making so much noise at the same time. (kind of like the dorm to). The reason is selective attention. My sibling can be screaming and doing jumping jacks and I clearly see it but wont perceive it because I am focusing one reading or homework or anything else besides for my sibling. Its a good thing that we have selective attention otherwise we wouldn't be able to do anything. We would get to distracted and I would have moved out a lot sooner then I did.
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