Our limited attentional capacity affects our behavior in competitive or performance environments, work environments, and everyday life. This capacity is influenced by our current arousal state, the task, and our current level of skill. Several theoretical models describe attentional-related problems and errors. Which of these models best describes how an individual could mitigate these problems and errors given our human limitation?
Our limited attentional capacity affects our behavior in competitive or performance environments, work environments, and everyday life. This capacity is influenced by our current arousal state, the task, and our current level of skill. Several theoretical models describe attentional-related problems and errors. Which of these models best describes how an individual could mitigate these problems and errors given our human limitation?
“Our limited attentional capacity affects our behavior in competitive or performance environments, work environments, and everyday life."
It seems as if we live in a day and age where we have an exorbitant amount of smart phones, and at the same time an abundance of stupid people. Removing all political correctness from what I just said, I believe there is a sad truth to the preceding comments. As technology has evolved, so has the way human beings interact with each other, themselves, and any task at hand. We are constantly being marketed to, and cannot even check our own email without a 'singles' ad popping up in the corner of our screen. Whether we are at the mall, with our friends and family, or simply browsing through our cell phones, we are constantly being asked for our attention. With the abundance of various options, there is always something to appease the lust of the eyes.
“As technology has evolved, so has the way human beings interact with each other, themselves, and any task at hand."
Among the several theoretical models to describe attentional-related problems and errors, the most well-rounded arguably is the resource model theory posed by Kahneman (1973). Mainly speaking of proverbial pools of effort, Kahneman posed that the ability to concentrate using one's attentional resources is directly related to the difficulty of the task, and the level of automaticity coupled with arousal states. These will ultimately determine the quality of performance (Kahneman, 1973). This definition expressly summarizes the
reality of attentional related problems any type of performance whether athletic, musical, or any other type of high-stakes output. The antithesis of performance, are undoubtedly errors and  attentional deficit. Moreover, Langner and Eickhoff (2012) imply that the ability to mitigate errors and maintain attention requires challenging and interesting activities, in which case it is easier to keep the said participant engaged. Â
References:
Kahneman, D. (1973). Attention and effort. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall
Langner, R., & Eickhoff, S. B. (2012). Sustaining attention to simple tasks: A
meta-analytic review of the neural mechanisms of vigilant attention.
Psychological Bulletin. doi:10.1037/a0030694
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