attention

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For more information on attention, visit Britannica.com.

Act of noticing an advertisement or commercial; a component of information or perceptual processing. Since consumers will usually take note of things relevant to their needs, attitudes, or beliefs, attention is selective. There have been cases in advertising history where attention was drawn to the advertising but, unhappily, not to the product being advertised. See also interpretation.

Act of noticing an advertisement or commercial; a component of information or perceptual processing. Since consumers will usually take note of things relevant to their needs, attitudes, or beliefs, attention is selective. There have been cases in advertising history where attention was drawn to the advertising but, unhappily, not to the product being advertised.

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noun

1. Concentration of the mental powers on something: attentiveness, concentration, consideration, heedfulness, regardfulness. See excite/bore/interest.
2. The act of noting, observing, or taking into account: cognizance, espial, heed, mark, note, notice, observance, observation, regard, remark. See knowledge/ignorance, see/not see.

n

Definition: concentration
Antonyms: disregard, ignorance, neglect, negligence

n

Definition: consideration, care
Antonyms: disregard, neglect, negligence

n. 1. a position assumed by a soldier, standing very straight with the feet together and the arms straight down the sides of the body: the squadron stood to attention when we arrived | midshipmen standing at attention.

2. an order to assume such a position.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

The selection of information so that the mind can concentrate on one out of several simultaneously presented objects or trains of thought. Attention involves withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others. It enables a person to concentrate on the task in hand. Information processing models hypothesize that a selective filter in the brain restricts the amount of information that can be attended to at any one time. Attention can be measured by the extent to which interference occurs between two tasks that a person is performing simultaneously (see structural interference and capacity interference) In the early stages of skill acquisition, more attention is required than when the skill is fully learnt. See attentional style.

The word "attention" comes from the Latin attention, itself derived from attendere, which means "to turn one's mind towards"—to turn one's mind or perhaps one's senses. In any case, the term is currently very ambiguous, and all the more so since it is used in different senses by researchers and clinicians referring to quite varied epistemological horizons.

In France, Didier Houzel has made the most careful study of the concept in recent years, notably in relation to infant observation. According to this author, if the function of attention is only rarely mentioned in the psychoanalytic literature, it is in part due to the ambiguity it evokes and also in part because attention is traditionally linked to consciousness without there ever existing any clear definition of a possible unconscious attention.

Freud mentions attention for the first time in his book On Aphasia (1891b), where he discusses divided attention (geteilte Aufmerksamkeit): "When I read proofs with the intention of paying special attention to the letters and other symbols, the meaning of what I am reading escapes me to such a degree that I require a second perusal for the purpose of correcting the style. If, on the other hand, I read a novel, which holds my interest, I overlook all misprints and it may happen that I retain nothing of the names of the persons figuring in the book except for some meaningless feature or perhaps the recollection that they were long or short, and that they contained an unusual letter such as x or z. Again, when I have to recite, whereby I have to pay special attention to the sound impressions of my words and to the intervals between them, I am in danger of caring too little about the meaning, and as soon as fatigue sets in I am reading in such a way that the listener can still understand, but I myself no longer know what I have been reading. These are phenomena of divided attention which are of particular importance here" (pp. 75-76).

Freud thus attributed to attention an ability to forge links between different components of the sensory data constitutive of the word, distancing himself from localizationist theories of aphasia. In this linking function of attention, one can see the precursor of what would later come to be called "suspended attention" of the analyst and its crucial characteristic of non-selectivity, which is an important component of technique.

It was in the Project for a Scientific Psychology (1950c [1895]) that Freud proposed an actual theory of attention. Having distinguished between Y neurons sensitive to quantities of excitation and x neurons sensitive to qualities of excitation, he defined attention as a hypercathexis of the indications of quality that are perceived by the x neurons but as hypercathected by an energy issuing from the Y neurons. He made attention capable of expectation in that it was responsible for apprehending indications of quality from perception and thus anticipating cathexis by wishes.

Thus Freud distinguished "ordinary thought," directed toward the search for an object of satisfaction, and "observing thought" (1950c [1895], p. 363) which is turned more towards the internal world than the external and is supported by the function of attention. According to him, attention has one valence directed toward the interior, or the intrapsychic world, and it is this centripetal attention that allows neuronal facilitations that would be impossible with only centrifugal attention.

In The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), he assigned attention the task of transmitting psychic material from the preconscious system to the conscious system, thus giving a certain primacy to continuous attention. In 1911, he specified the dynamic character of attention in his article, "Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning": "A special function was instituted which had periodically to search the external world in order that its data might be familiar already if an urgent internal need should arise—the function of attention. Its activity meets the sense-impressions half way, instead of awaiting their appearance" (1911b, p. 220). He was here underscoring the active aspect of the function of attention.

Freud returned to the question of attention yet again in "Recommendations to Physicians Practising Psycho-Analysis" (1912e), where he defined "evenly-suspended attention" as the desirable attitude of the analyst during the session. This attitude, which certainly puts less strain on the analyst, is justified mainly on the grounds that non-selectivity toward clinical material, as the counterpart for the analyst of the rule of free association for the patient, promotes a more direct contact between the ideational worlds of the two participants.

Wilfred Bion extended the concept of attention beyond sensory reality and applied it to psychic reality, a direction that Freud had indicated in An Outline of Psycho-Analysis. This theme is central to Bion's book Attention and Interpretation (1970), in which he described attention as the matrix within which the diverse elements of mental life come to be united and combined. Thus the Bionian perspective is highly dynamic.

Moreover, on the interpersonal level, Bion described the "mother's capacity for reverie" (Bion, 1967, p. 116), referring to the "function" by which, thanks to her processes of attention, capacity, and transformation, the mother helps the child to render his or her environment thinkable so that the child will be progressively able to integrate it into its own "apparatus for dealing with thoughts" (Bion, 1962, p. 83). What is fundamentally involved is a work of detoxification that makes it possible for the child to metabolize (on the digestive model of the psyche) protopsychic materials that are at first unusable by the child alone.

Maternal attention represents a first step towards and an essential precondition for the work of transformation that Bion referred to as equally important to his experimental paradigm, which was that of analytic treatment, and especially the treatment of psychotic adults. He recommended that analysts be without "memory and desire" (1970, p. 31), which is certainly not to be taken literally, but aims to create in the analyst a particular state of attention and perhaps, according to Houzel, an unconscious state of attention.

The most recent work in the field of early childhood analysis, especially that of the post-Kleinians, places more and more emphasis on attention as the cornerstone of the therapeutic process.

Bibliography

Bion, Wilfred R. (1970). Attention and interpretation. London: Tavistock Publications.

——. (1962). Learning from experience. London: Tavistock Publications.

——. (1967). Second thoughts. New York: Aronson.

Freud, Sigmund. (1911b). Formulations on the two principles of mental functioning. SE, 12: 213-226.

——. (1900a). The interpretation of dreams. SE, 4-5.

——. (1891b). On aphasia: A critical study. (E. Stengel, Trans.). New York: International Universities Press, 1953.

——. (1912e). Recommendations to physicians practising psycho-analysis. SE, 12: 109-120.

—BERNARD GOLSE

Because some forms of learning are critically dependent upon attention, it is important for educators to be familiar with modern developments in this field. The most widely known definition of attention extends back to the late 1800s. The psychologist and philosopher William James (1842 - 1910) defined it as "the taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought" (pp. 403 - 404).

This definition conveys intuitive feeling for the subject. However, it is common to break the subject down into two subdivisions: (1) arousal and (2) selection of information. The processes involved in arousal involve achieving and maintaining an alert state sufficient to remain in contact with environmental stimuli. This sense of attention separates the waking state from conditions such as sleep or coma. Selective attention refers to the processes involved in selecting information for consciousness, for immediate response, or for storing information in memory. The conscious content of selective attention is only a small subset of the information that could be available at any given moment. Thus, the ability to switch or orient one's attention is critical to the successful use of attention in any environment.

Attention can also be considered in terms of its underlying anatomy. It is useful for educators to think about attention as an organ system, not unlike the familiar organ systems of respiration and circulation. Attention has a distinct anatomy that carries out basic psychological functions and that can be influenced by specific brain injuries and states. The network involved in achieving an alert state involves midbrain centers that are the source of the chemical norepinepherine. This network appears to be asymmetric at the cortical level, with greatest involvement of the right cerebral hemisphere, particularly in the frontal regions. Two networks are involved in the process of selection of information. One of these relates to orienting to sensory information, and involves areas of the parietal lobe, frontal eye fields, and superior colliculus, which are also part of the eye movement system. A second network is related to attention to internal thoughts. This network involves areas of the frontal midline (anterior cingulate), the left and right lateral prefrontal cortex, and the underlying basal ganglia.

The Study of Attention

The study of attention has greatly expanded as new methods have become available for its study. From the early beginnings of psychology in the late 1880s, studies of attention employed simple experimental tasks that required rapid responses to single targets - or to one of a small number of targets - in an effort to study limitations in people's speed and capacity for attending to input information. A good example of the type of tasks used is the Stroop effect. This effect occurs when subjects are asked to respond to the color of ink in which a conflicting word may be written (e.g., the word blue written in red ink). Performance on this task requires an act of selection to ignore the word and respond to the ink color. Another task used to explore selection is a visual search task. It has been shown that attention can be efficiently summoned to any part of a natural scene in which luminance or motion clearly signal a change, but even radical changes of content that occur outside the focus of attention are not reported. This indicates that the subjective impression of being fully aware of the world around one is largely an illusion. People have very poor knowledge about things they are not currently attending to, but a very good ability to orient toward an area of change.

In the 1950s functional models of information flow in the nervous system were developed in conjunction with an interest in computer simulation of cognitive processes. In the 1970s studies using microelectrodes on alert monkeys showed that the firing rate of cells in particular brain areas were enhanced when the monkey attended to a stimulus within the cells' receptive field. In the 1980s and 1990s human neuroimaging studies allowed examination of the whole brain during tasks involving attention. These newer methods of study also improved the utility of more traditional methods, such as: (1) the kinds of experimental tasks discussed above, (2) the use of patients with lesions of particular brain areas, and (3) the use of recordings of brain waves (EEG) from scalp electrodes. The ability to trace anatomical changes over time has provided methods for validating and improving pharmacological and other forms of therapy.

Attention in Infants

Infants as young as four months old can learn to anticipate the location of an event and demonstrate this by moving their eyes to a location where the event will occur. Thus, caregivers can teach important aspects of where a child should focus, and they can also use orienting to counteract an infant's distress well before the infant begins to speak. Infants also show preferences for novel objects in the first few months of life. In early childhood, more complex forms of attentional control begin to emerge as the frontal areas undergo considerable development. These networks allow children to make selections in the face of conflicting response tendencies. Late in the first year, infants first show the ability to reach away from the line of sight, and later the developing toddler and preschooler begin to develop the ability to choose among conflicting stimuli and courses of action.

Infants come into the world with a definite set of reactions to their environment, and even siblings can be very different in their reactions to various events. These individual differences, which include individual differences in orienting and effortful control of attention, constitute temperament. One infant, for example, is easily frustrated, has only a brief attention span, and becomes upset with even moderate levels of stimulating play. Another may tolerate very rough play and frequently seek out exciting events, focusing on each interest so strongly that it is difficult to get the child's attention. Thus, even early in life, when attention serves mainly orienting functions, children will differ in what captures their interest - and in how this interest is maintained. These functions will continue to serve the child during the school years, where interest accounts for about 10 percent of the variability in children's achievement. However, later-developing attention systems will prove to be even more important in schooling.

Effortful Control

Later in childhood, maturation of the frontal lobe produces more reliance on executive attention, allowing increased scope for methods of socialization. The strength and effectiveness of this later developing effortful control system is also an important source of temperamental differences. Among older children, some will be able to intentionally focus and switch attention easily, to use attention to inhibit actions they have been told not to perform, and to plan for upcoming activities. Other children will be less able to control their own attention and actions. These differences reflect effortful control and have been found to play an important role in the development of higher-level systems of morality and conscience as well as being generally important in the control and programming of action and emotion.

Intelligence

Children's abilities also differ in the cognitive domain, as is shown in tests of intelligence. Differences in cognitive ability rest in part on the frontal structures related to the development of the executive attention systems. Areas of the left and right ventral prefrontal cortex become active in questions that require general intelligence. A likely reason is that these areas are important for holding information in the mind, while other brain areas retrieve related knowledge that might be important in solving problems. The ability to solve problems like those present in intelligence tests requires both specific knowledge and the ability to retrieve information in response to the prompts present on the test. High-level attentional networks involving frontal areas are very important in this process.

The learning of new skills, such as reading and arithmetic, also requires attention so that relevant input can be stored. The storage of such information rests upon structures that lie deep within the temporal lobe. Attention appears to play an important role at several stages of acquisition of reading. It is important for subjects to be able to break visual and auditory words into their constituent letters or phonemes in order to gain knowledge of the alphabetic principle that allows visual letters to be related to word sounds. The role of frontal attentional networks also plays a key role in accessing word meanings.

Teachers are usually aware that maintaining an alert state in the school environment is dependent both upon factors that are intrinsic to the child - such as adequate rest, good nutrition, and high motivation - and those that can be controlled by the teacher, such as the use of novel and involving exercises at an appropriate level to challenge the student. Capturing the child's interest is important in fostering achievement, but effortful control allows the practice of skills that can lead to new interests, and the developing goal structures of children will allow the development of interest in activities or skills that will lead them to their chosen goals.

Teachers thus need to be aware of individual differences in the development of the mechanisms of selective attention important in the storage and retrieval of information relevant to various tasks. Assessment of attentional capacities may be very useful for this purpose. Children can then be encouraged by exercises appropriate to their level to sustain the effort necessary for effective problem solving. Assessment of the school environment may also be useful in considering children's attentional capacities. The application of effortful control can be tiring, and the opportunities for skill learning and for active play may be important in supporting its activity.

Finally, attention is also important in the development of children's social skills. When teachers point out aspects of other children's experiences and focus on the welfare of others, they can train the direction of a child's interest and concern. Again, this activity will be easier with some children than with others, but it can serve the goal of encouraging empathy and discouraging aggression in a child's development.

Bibliography

James, William. 1890. Principles of Psychology. New York: Henry Holt.

Posner, Michael I., and Raichle, Marcus E. 1994. Images of Mind. New York: Scientific American Books.

Posner, Michael I., and Rothbart, Mary K. 2000. "Developing Mechanisms of Self-Regulation." Development and Psychopathology 12:427 - 441.

Ruff, Holly A., and Rothbart, Mary K. 1996. Attention in Early Development: Themes and Variations. New York: Oxford University Press.

— MICHAEL I. POSNER, MARY K. ROTHBART

The nervous systems of living creatures are subjected to far more stimulation than can be used. On the one hand, the sense organs receive stimuli of great variety. On the other, memories, images, and ideas arise internally and must be considered from moment to moment. Yet it is a commonplace that we are consciously aware of only a limited amount of this information at any moment. The operation by which a person selects information in attention, and its study, have twice been seen as central to research on our understanding of how information is processed by humans and animals.

The first great period was around 1900, when James, Titchener, Wundt, and W. B. Pillsbury all wrote on attention at length. William James, on this as on so many other topics, described the main characteristics of attention with precision. Attention was, for him, 'the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one of what seem simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought'. Titchener and his students, in particular, carried out an extensive experimental programme into such topics as 'prior entry' and the conditions of binocular rivalry and fluctuations of attention. The first of these was the observation that, of two simultaneous events, the one to which attention was diverted appeared to occur earlier than the other.

The fundamental property of attention was, for those writers, to make the contents of consciousness appear clearer. It would have made little sense to them to discuss effects of attention of which the observer was not aware. Pillsbury's book Attention, published in 1908, contains many observations which modern work has confirmed, and is a remarkably insightful volume in many respects.

With the rise of behaviourism, attention was relegated to the status of a mental function which could not be admitted as a suitable object for research. Indeed, for some 30 years it disappeared from indexes and reviews. The second golden age of attention research dates from the early 1950s, and received a particular impetus with the publication of Perception and Communication by Donald Broadbent in 1958. A major reason for the renewed interest was the need for the solution of new practical problems, such as the design of control towers and communication networks in the Second World War. A controller might receive several messages at once from different aircraft or ships, and be required to make appropriate responses to each. With an attempt to understand how humans behaved in such situations, modern work on attention began. It was aided by the invention of the tape recorder, which for the first time allowed the ready control and replicability of speech signals, while the phenomenon of stereophony provided an easy way of varying the content and amount of information in competing messages.

Broadbent's filter theory tried to explain how the brain coped with the information overload caused by having many sense organs receiving information simultaneously. Drawing an analogy with electronic communication, he proposed that there is in the brain a single central information channel whose rate of information processing is rather limited. This channel could select only one sensory input channel at a time, and could switch no more than about twice a second between input channels. To accept an input was equivalent to paying attention to that source of information, and information on unattended channels could be held in a short-term memory for a few seconds. Broadbent called the selection mechanism 'the Filter'. While he drew on many fields of research, the most direct line of evidence was the 'split span' experiment. If three digits are read, at a rate of two per second, to the left ear of a listener, and another three to the right ear, so that the listener receives three synchronous pairs, he will recall them ear by ear, not pair by pair. Broadbent interpreted this to mean that the listener attended to one ear first and then switched to the memory trace of material in the other ear. By finding the fastest rate at which the listener could repeat the message as pairs, he believed he had measured the rate of switching of auditory attention. This concept of a single-channel, limited-capacity information-processing system was central to much research in the next 25 years.

From about 1953 to 1963 'speech shadowing' was widely used by Broadbent, Neville Moray, Anne Treisman, and others. This technique had been introduced by Colin Cherry, and required a listener to repeat aloud a prose message in the presence of one or more distracting messages. It was found that major factors which aided selective attention included separation in space of the speakers, difference in voice timbre, and the statistical structure of the messages. In a series of elegant experiments Anne Treisman greatly extended our knowledge. Certain features of a distracting message proved to be potent sources of distraction, including emotional words (such as a listener's own name), contextually probable words, and — for bilingual listeners — the presence of a translation of the message to which they were listening.

However, these experiments also showed that some material, such as emotionally important words and contextually probable words, was perceived even when in the 'rejected' message. This led to a series of modifications to Broadbent's filter theory, notably by Treisman, Anthony Deutsch, and Don Norman. Although differing considerably in detail, they all attempted to account for the fact that the filter apparently did not block all information from the rejected channels, and that selection could be not only of sensory inputs, but of such features as language, class of word, colour (in the case of visual stimuli), and even classes of responses. Attention came to be seen as acting in a variety of ways, at a variety of levels, and on a variety of operations in the nervous system.

By the mid-1960s interest had grown greatly, and a wide variety of experimental techniques was developed. In addition to speech shadowing, simultaneous auditory messages were used, requiring much simpler responses than speech. In a series of studies Moray showed that, contrary to what the early shadowing experiments seemed to indicate, attention acted in the same way on non-linguistic as on linguistic material. Robert Sorkin and his co-workers in America explored attention to non-linguistic auditory material. Others, like Alan Allport and Peter McLeod in Britain, and Richard Shiffrin and Walter Schneider in America, found conditions where little or no interference between two messages occurred. These arose especially when messages were presented in different sensory modalities, where long practice had made performance almost automatic rather than conscious and voluntary, and when no competition between responses was required.

Visual attention was investigated by means of eye movements in such tasks as reading, by Paul Kolers, and in car driving and piloting aircraft, by John Senders. Very spectacular results were found using the 'Stroop test', in which attentional and perceptual conflict is induced by the nature of the stimulus. If the word 'red' is written in green ink, the word 'blue' in yellow ink, and so on, it is possible to read the word rapidly without the colour of the ink causing interference, but almost impossible to name the colour of the ink. Analogues of this effect provide a way of discovering which 'analysers' in the brain can be selectively biased by voluntary attention. (The word 'analyser' originated in a theory of learning and perception due to Deutsch, but its use in attention theory is largely due to Treisman.)

Some attempts were made to investigate the physiological mechanisms underlying attention. For example, the 'Expectancy wave', or CNV, was discovered in electroencephalographic records, a change in electrical brain activity which appears when the observer is concentrating on the imminent arrival of a signal he knows is probable. In the late 1970s Emmanuel Donchin and his colleagues began work on the 'P-300' component of the brain-evoked potential, and this seems very likely to be intimately connected with attention in the sense of decision making. But to date our understanding of the physiological basis of attention lags a long way behind behavioural research.

More than a dozen theories of attention have been proposed since 1958, most of them strongly influenced by communication theory and computer technology. Their variety to some extent is due to the variety of phenomena which may be subsumed under the heading 'attention'. In addition to our ability to listen selectively to one message and ignore another, or to look at a picture in one colour in the presence of other colours, one may cite vigilance (or watch keeping), in which an observer looks for very rare events, such as detecting the presence of a sonar or radar target. Some studies have been made of mental concentration on cognitive problems. The interference between internal images and incoming stimuli has been investigated, as has the ability of the brain of a sleeping person to respond selectively to the sleeper's name, even though the sleeper is not aware of the response.

Although no single theory has emerged as completely dominant, the influence of Broadbent's filter theory remains strong, and what follows is a conflation of theories based on his suggestions. He assumed that an observer can block or weaken the strength of incoming messages to the brain, and there is ample evidence that this can happen. It is not known whether this is done by reducing the intensity of the messages or by switching them on and off rapidly. But some such blocking definitely occurs. In vision it can be done by closing the eyes or averting the gaze. In hearing the mechanism is not so clear. It seems probable that all information which impinges on the receptors of the sense organs reaches the pattern-analysing mechanisms of the brain. The filter perhaps acts to prevent the output of these analysers from reaching consciousness, although behaviour may still be produced, as when we become aware that we have driven for some time 'without being aware of it' (see time-gap experience). It seems likely that information from different sense modalities, or from different dimensions within a modality (such as colour and shape), can be attended to simultaneously, at least after practice, while tasks which are very similar (such as judging the loudness of two tones) cannot. One should note that in making these assertions we are far from James's definition. Very often the observer is conscious of only one message, but it can be shown that the second is producing behaviour simultaneously with that produced consciously. (See also subliminal perception.)

A second way in which attention can operate is by biasing the interpretation of information proceeding from pattern analysis to consciousness. Thus a person expecting to see a bull in mist will see one, while a person expecting to see a rock will see a rock. This kind of bias is set by the probability of events, their subjectively perceived value, and contextual information derived from recent inputs and from memories. In earlier days this kind of bias was called 'mental set'.

The contents of consciousness as filtered by attention are very limited: attention is frequently modelled as a 'limited-capacity information channel'. But with practice, quite dramatic increases in performance are seen, and some writers, among whom Daniel Kahneman is particularly influential, have proposed a 'parallel processing' model of attention, in which the main limit is on the total effort available, rather than on competition between separate analysers. Such models make extensive use of the concept of arousal.

Recently, renewed interest in applications of attention has become apparent. Most of the laboratory research has been directed to understanding the internal mechanisms of attention in the brain. But as large and complex man-machine systems appear, and more and more automation is introduced, there is a tremendous need for a good understanding of man as a monitor of complex systems. How should they be designed so as to optimize the use of attention? (It is fairly clear that in real-life tasks attention is never switched more than about twice a second.) How should a man be trained so as to combine to best effect his limited conscious attention with his unconscious control of skilled behaviour? The solution of such questions is necessary if accidents in power stations, aircraft, and industry are to be avoided. Attention theory has advanced to a point where it can give a real insight into the solution of practical problems, and there is likely to be a third age in which the precise experimental work of the 1950s to the 1970s is extended in more complex ways to solve the problems of man-machine system design. We have come to see attention not merely as a single process concerned with enhancing the clarity of perception. Rather, it is a complex of skills. These include selecting one from several messages, selecting one from several interpretations of information, selecting one from several plans of action, and selecting one from several actions. But in our interactions with the rich dynamics of the world in which we live and to which we adapt, attention also models that world, and provides us with strategies and high-level control of our tactics of information sampling, optimizing our information processing in the face of our limited processing capacities.

(Published 1987)

— Neville Moray

Bibliography
• Broadbent, D. (1958). Perception and Communication.
• James, W. (1890). Principles of Psychology.
• Kahneman, D. (1973). Attention and Effort.
• Kanwisher, N., and Wojciulik, E. (2000). 'Visual attention: insights from neuroimaging'. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 1.
• Moray, N. (1969). Listening and Attention.
• Titchener, E. B. (1908). Lectures on the Elementary Psychology of Feeling and Attention.
• Underwood, G. (1978). Strategies of Information Processing.

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IN BRIEF: n.- A courteous act indicating affection; A motionless erect stance with arms at the sides and feet together; The faculty or power of mental concentration.

For this reason poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history. — Aristotle

LearnThatWord.com is a free vocabulary and spelling program where you only pay for results!

sign description: Both open flat hands begin by the eyes and make a movement directly forward.

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n

The element of cognitive functioning in which the mental focus is maintained on a specific issue, object, or activity. The length of time of such focus is called attention span.

For a list of words related to attention, see:

• Soldiers and Military Life - attention: erect soldier’s posture with heels together, arms at sides, eyes to front

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See words rhyming with "attentional."

  See crossword solutions for the clue Attention.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Dansk (Danish)
n. - opmærksomhed
int. - må jeg bede om Deres opmærksomhed

idioms:

• attention line    markering af passende afstand i kassekø
• attention span    opmærksomhedsperiode, opmærksomhedsspændvidde
• pay attention to    lægge mærke til, være opmærksom på

Nederlands (Dutch)
aandacht, zorg, belangstelling, (mv) hofmakerij, Geef acht!

Français (French)
n. - attention, soin, attentions (npl), soins (npl), prévenances (npl), (Mil) garde-à-vous
int. - (Mil) garde-à-vous!

idioms:

• attention line    mention d'en-tête de lettre
• attention span    laps de temps de concentration
• pay attention to    être attentif à, prêter attention à

Deutsch (German)
n. - Aufmerksamkeit, Beachtung
int. - Achtung!

idioms:

• attention line    Betreff-Zeile
• attention span    Aufmerksamkeitsspanne
• pay attention to    Aufmerksamkeit verwenden auf, sein Augenmerk lenken auf

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - προσοχή, προσήλωση, φροντίδα, μέριμνα, φιλοφρόνηση, περιποίηση

idioms:

• attention line    γραμμή με αποδέκτη επιστολής (απευθυνόμενης σε εταιρεία ή οργανισμό)
• attention span    δυνατότητα συγκέντρωσης/προσήλωσης
• pay attention to    προσέχω, δίνω προσοχή σε

Italiano (Italian)
attenzione, premura

idioms:

• attention line    indirizzo
• attention span    coefficiente dell'attenzione
• pay attention to    prestare attenzione a
• stand to attention    stare sull'attenti

Português (Portuguese)
n. - atenção (f), cuidado (m)

idioms:

• attention line    linha (f) de atenção
• attention span    período (m) de tempo no qual uma pessoa pode se concentrar ou manter interesse
• pay attention to    prestar atenção em
• stand to attention    ficar em posição de sentido (Mil.)

Русский (Russian)
внимание, внимательность

idioms:

• attention line    строка в деловом письме с указанием кому лично пишут
• attention span    период времени, в течение кот. человек способен удерживать внимание
• pay attention to    обращать внимание на
• stand to attention    стоять смирно, слушаться

Español (Spanish)
n. - atención, cuidado, servicio
int. - atención, cuidado

idioms:

• attention line    encabezamiento de una carta comercial
• attention span    duración del tiempo de concentración
• pay attention to    prestar atención a

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - uppmärksamhet, omtanke

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
注意, 关注, 关心, 立正!, 注意!

idioms:

• attention line    注意线, 商业信上指明的经办人或部门名称下面所划的一条线
• attention span    注意广度, 指注意力耐久集中的时间长度
• pay attention to    关心, 注意

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 注意, 關注, 關心
int. - 立正!, 注意!

idioms:

• attention line    注意線, 商業信上指明的經辦人或部門名稱下面所劃的一條線
• attention span    注意廣度, 指注意力耐久集中的時間長度
• pay attention to    關心, 注意

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 주의 , 돌봄, 친절, 차려
int. - 차려!

idioms:

• pay attention to    ~에 주의하다

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 注意, 注目, 世話, 気を付けの姿勢, 親切

idioms:

• attention line    アテンションライン
• attention span    注意持続時間

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) انتباه, اهتمام‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮תשומת-לב, הקשבה, מצב הקשב (במסדר), התחשבות, חיזור‬
int. - ‮הקשב! (פקודה צבאית)‬

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