Attention and Memory
It seems to be a tenet of ordinary common sense that people remember what they attend to and forget what they do not. Not surprisingly, researchers have noted the very close relationship between attention and memory for a very long time, and some empirical evidence for the linkage was offered as far back as the late nineteenth century (Smith, 1895). However, it was only during the twentieth century, with the advent of cognitive psychology and its relatively rich array of methods for studying human information processing over fine time scales, that it became possible to begin to analyze this connection in more detail. To do so, researchers have used taxonomies of memorial and attentional processes that emerge from laboratory studies in each of these areas.
Forms of Attention
The term attention as used in everyday language is a diffuse and global term that alludes to both selectivity and capacity limitations. The potential for selectivity is evident in the fact that of the great multitude of stimuli impinging on the sense organs at any one instant, human beings are usually vividly aware of only a fairly small subset. Capacity limitations are evident whenever people try to attend to more than one stream of inputs, particularly if comprehension or response is required: for example, trying to listen to the radio at the same time as one reads a newspaper.
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