Synonyms
Definition
Attention is a fundamental cognitive process by which some inputs are selected for preferential processing. Divided attention specifically refers to situations in which two or more channels are attended simultaneously. The attended channels may be within the same or different sensory modalities. For example, a foraging bird might attend to a pile of seeds while simultaneously listening for the sound of approaching predators. While divided attention can be useful and can support a range of complex behaviors, it is often accompanied by a decrement in performance relative to selective attention, or focus on a single input.
Introduction
Divided and selective attentions have been extensively studied by cognitive psychologists. For example, in dichotic listening tasks (e.g., Cherry 1953), participants are simultaneously played two auditory messages and asked to monitor one or both. Participants can usually report the contents of one message, though...
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References
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Herbranson, W. (2017). Divided Attention. In: Vonk, J., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_1568-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_1568-1
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