Attention
Research suggests a close link between the working memory capacities of a person and their ability to control the information from the environment that they can selectively enhance or ignore. Such attention allows for example for the voluntarily shifting in regard to goals of a person's information processing to spatial locations or objects rather than ones that capture their attention due to their sensory saliency (such as an ambulance siren). The goal directing of attention is driven by "top-down" signals from the PFC that bias processing in posterior cortical areas and saliency capture by "bottom-up" control from subcortical structures and the primary sensory cortices. The ability to override sensory capture of attention differs greatly between individuals and this difference closely links to their working memory capacity. The greater a person's working memory capacity, the greater their ability to resist sensory capture. The limited ability to override attentional capture is likely to result in the unnecessary storage of information in working memory, suggesting not only that having a poor working memory affects attention but that it can also limit the capacity of working memory even further. (low attention <=> low working memory).
Read more about this topic: Working Memory
Famous quotes containing the word attention:
“Pregnant women! They had that weird frisson, an aura of magic that combined awkwardly with an earthy sense of duty. Mundane, because they were nothing unique on the suburban streets; ethereal because their attention was ever somewhere else. Whatever you said was trivial. And they had that preciousness which they imposed wherever they went, compelling attention, constantly reminding you that they carried the future inside, its contours already drawn, but veiled, private, an inner secret.”
—Ruth Morgan (1920–1978)
“It has lately been drawn to your correspondent’s attention that, at social gatherings, she is not the human magnet she would be. Indeed, it turns out that as a source of entertainment, conviviality, and good fun, she ranks somewhere between a sprig of parsley and a single ice- skate. It would appear, from the actions of the assembled guests, that she is about as hot company as a night nurse.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)
“Now here this, now here this. Reveille. I repeat, reveille. Attention all hands. Because another cigarette butt has been found in the container of the Captain’s palm tree, there will be no movies again tonight. That is all.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)