Attention

You say to your mother "of course I'm paying attention."  But what does that really mean?  In the last few decades, neuroscientists have begun to tackle some of the more difficult behaviors to explain.  And just like the advances in emotion have come a long way from freudian suppositions, our understanding of attention has begun to grow as well.  At least, depending on your definition of attention of which there are many.

Go ahead.  Take a moment to formulate in your mind what the correct definition for attention should be.  Remember you don't want to be too vague but nor can you make it too specific.

Perhaps some of your definitions went like this:
1. Prolonged dedication of neural processes to an external stimuli
2. Information stored in the short term/working memory to be used in current actions
3. Sensory information of which you are consciously aware
4. Using neural processes to monitor the environment for an unexpected outcome
5. The focal center of awareness

All of these definitions have elements we want to intuitively agree with.  However, they also have pieces which don't work in all life situations.  And we're still left with issues such as "is attention a physical or mental process?"

"Can you attend to more than one thing at once and still call it attention?"

"What does it mean to shift your attention?"

My personal favorite definition is that of William James.  He described attention as a spotlight which focuses on that which we are attending to.  Sometimes you can see on the periphery of that spotlight but most of the time you deal with what is in the center of the light.

Famous American psychologist William James.

But basically, I wanted to share today how difficult it can be to define something which we all find intuitive in our daily lives.  Please comment and let us know- What's your definition of attention?