Q.Define attention. Explain its properties.
Attention can be defined as the process through which certain stimuli are selected from a large group of stimuli that reach our sense organs simultaneously, since our perceptual system cannot process every incoming stimulus at once. This selective quality is the defining core of attention, but psychologists identify several further properties that go beyond simple selection.
Alertness describes an individual's readiness to deal with stimuli that are about to appear -- for example, athletes waiting at the starting line for a race, poised and ready for the starting signal, illustrate a state of high alertness. Concentration describes the focusing of awareness on certain specific objects or events while excluding others for that period of time -- a student concentrating on a teacher's explanation while ignoring background classroom noise is concentrating. Search describes the activity of looking for some specified subset of objects among a larger set -- for example, scanning a crowd of children to spot one's own younger sibling. Because each of these activities demands mental effort from the person performing it, attention can also be understood, in this practical sense, as a form of 'effort allocation.'
Attention also has spatial structure of its own: it has a focus, meaning the object or event on which the field of awareness is centred, and a fringe, meaning objects or events that lie away from this centre and of which the person remains only vaguely aware. Everyday attention is rarely an all-or-nothing state focused on just one thing -- rather, it is organised as a sharply defined focal core surrounded by a much less distinct fringe of partial awareness, and this structure is part of what allows attention to shift relatively fluidly from one stimulus to another as circumstances change.
Attention = the process of selecting certain stimuli from among many competing ones. Its key properties are: selection (the core process), alertness (readiness to respond), concentration (focused awareness excluding other stimuli), search (looking for a specific subset among many objects), and a focus-fringe structure (a sharply attended centre surrounded by a vaguely-aware periphery) -- together these make attention an effortful, structured process rather than a simple on/off switch.
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