Attention is called the ability of a person to select certain objects from a variety of others and respond to them.

Types and differences

There are several types of attention. One of the main divides it into the following types:

• Involuntary - with the occurrence without effort on the part of a person, caused by the properties of the object itself. Involuntary attention (NV) is inherent in both people and animals, and is a natural quality. It is the result of the so-called orienting reflex: a complex reaction of the body to the novelty of the stimulus. Over time, as the stimulus hits the mind over and over again, the response becomes blunted. However, the information received in contact with the stimulus is remembered by itself, without effort on the part of the person. Involuntary attention arises due to the unexpected appearance of the stimulus, its strength, novelty, contrast with the environment, as well as the state of the psyche and emotions of the observer himself.
• Arbitrary - unlike involuntary, it is not inherent in animals and is the prerogative of man. It is always associated with volitional effort and purposeful mental activity of the observer. Voluntary attention (PV) is both a condition and a result of labor and social activity. On the one hand, consistent, purposeful work is impossible without voluntary attention. On the other hand, its development occurs precisely as a result of conscious action requiring mental effort and concentration.
• Post-voluntary - a natural continuation of voluntary attention, if the activity is not only necessary, but also arouses the interest of the performer. In this case, volitional effort to perform certain actions is no longer required: a person is passionate and able to easily concentrate on work.

Presentation: "Attention"

These types of attention constantly replace each other in the process of mental activity. So, a person can start reading a book as a reference for further work, and then get carried away with the topic and continue reading for their own interest and pleasure.

This is a vivid example of how post-voluntary attention is replacing voluntary attention. If a person gets tired and loses concentration, the PV can be replaced by an involuntary one - in relation to foreign objects.

Most often, however, our degree of concentration is not too high, and voluntary and involuntary attention are successfully combined with each other. Thinking about the solution to the problem, we have time to look at a bird flying outside the window, hear a phone call, or almost mechanically answer an extraneous question from a colleague.

How to improve the efficiency of your actions

With the help of voluntary attention, from a variety of objects and phenomena, those related to actual work are consciously distinguished. In essence, PV provides for the following sequence of actions: choosing and formulating a goal, organizing and focusing on it, and, in the end, its implementation.

However, keeping focus on one object or type of work for a long time leads to fatigue and loss of energy. On average, a person's concentrated mental effort begins to lose its effectiveness after 20 minutes.

Presentation: "Properties of Attention"

Continuing to work without interruption causes fatigue and an inability to actively think. Voluntary attention decreases and it is replaced by an involuntary kind of attention.

There are several factors that help improve work efficiency and stay focused:

• Interest in an activity that allows voluntary attention to move into post-voluntary. In this case, fatigue is significantly reduced, a person is able to process more information with better results.
• Habitual working conditions. As practice shows, changes in the interior, lighting or soundproofing (in any direction) are distracting and do not allow you to concentrate. At the same time, maintaining concentration requires more effort than usual, a person gets tired faster, and the work he does loses a lot in quality.
• No strong irritants. These include sharp unexpected noises, flashes of light, an abundance of moving objects around, conversations on extraneous topics. All of these are also distractions and interfere with concentration.

However, it should be noted that weak stimuli - for example, the usual ticking of a clock, quiet music, muffled street sounds - on the contrary, contribute to maintaining attention. They lead to the emergence of weak foci of excitation in the cerebral cortex, which complement the main focus associated with the implementation of the current task; as a result, the concentration of the performer and the efficiency of his work increase. In this way, the NV helps to strengthen the PV.

Presentation: "Human Cognitive Processes"

To maintain an acceptable level of concentration, a regular change of activity is recommended.

Each person has his own characteristics of perception and processing of information, inclination to one or another type of activity, but if we talk about intellectual efforts, on average it is enough for an adult to take breaks about once an hour or an hour and a half, switching to an easier or more interesting task, or physical labor that does not require a serious mental load.

With such a work schedule, on the one hand, we do not allow ourselves to overwork, and on the other hand, we train our ability to concentrate with sufficient stress.

Other properties of attention

In addition to concentration, attention has other properties - for example, volume: the number of objects or activities that we can perceive at one time, as well as distribution of attention - the ability to simultaneously solve several tasks. The volume and distribution of attention are characteristics that are important for performing various actions in real life: after all, most situations involve our ability to multitask.

For example, a person driving a car must simultaneously monitor the movement, road markings and signs, maneuvers of other motorists. The conductor of the orchestra reads the score and immediately gives commands to the orchestra members. The student listens to the lecture, takes notes and memorizes the necessary information. At the same time, our involuntary attention distracts from the performance of the main actions to extraneous phenomena.

Activities with children

Voluntary attention develops in the learning process from early childhood, while involuntary attention is an innate quality. Unlike involuntary, PV in children needs special training, for example, with the help of special exercises in preschool institutions and at home.

Such activities can be concentration exercises: folding pictures from several parts, finding the relationship between objects, playing with words and other tasks that involve intellectual effort.

The higher the child's interest in activities, the more effective training. Thus, one of the main tasks of the educator is to excite children's interest and attract all kinds of attention to help the learning process.

It is important to bear in mind that for children, as for adults, there is a threshold after which concentration inevitably decreases; exercises lose their meaning and effectiveness, and a tired child becomes overly excitable and unreceptive to learning. In this case, it is pointless to insist on continuing classes: switching to other activities or games, physical activity, or a simple walk in the fresh air will help. Like any skill, attention training requires gradualness, regular repetition, and a systematic approach.

involuntary attention- this is attention that arises without any intention of a person, without a pre-set goal, which does not require volitional efforts.

There is a complex set of reasons that cause involuntary attention. These reasons can be divided into various groups.

1. Features of the stimulus itself.

2. The degree of intensity of the stimulus. Any sufficiently strong stimulus - a loud sound, a bright light, a strong smell - involuntarily attracts our attention. Moreover, not only the absolute, but also the relative strength of the stimulus is important (our attention will be attracted by a slight rustle in complete silence, and the light of a match in the dark).

3. Novelty, unusual stimulus. Novelty is one of the most important features of stimuli that cause the awakening of involuntary attention. Any new irritation, as I.P. Pavlov, if it has sufficient intensity, causes orienting reaction. Distinguish between absolute novelty (in this case, the stimulus has never been present in our experience before) and relative novelty - an unusual combination of known stimuli.

4. Weakening of the action of the stimulus and termination of its action: beacons, car direction indicators.

5. Object mobility: moving objects.

6. Compliance of external stimuli with the internal state of the organism or personality, i.e., needs.

7. Interests: one person will pass by and not notice a catchy poster about a football match, while another will pay attention to a modest announcement about an upcoming concert; a hungry person will involuntarily pay attention to everything related to food.

8. Feelings: it is well known that any irritation that causes this or that feeling attracts attention. It's called Emotional Attention.

9. Expectation: often it allows you to perceive even what, under other circumstances, a person does not notice at all.

10. Apperception - the influence of previous experience, knowledge, ideas. Even a weak stimulus will arouse the attention of a person who knows what is being said, while an ignorant person will simply not notice anything.

involuntary attention is the simplest kind of attention. It is often called passive or forced, since it arises and is maintained independently of the person's consciousness. Activity captures a person by itself because of its fascination, entertainment or surprise. Usually, a number of reasons contribute to the emergence of involuntary attention. This complex includes various physical, psychophysiological and mental causes. They are interrelated, but they can be roughly divided into four categories.

Unlike involuntary attention, the main feature voluntary attention is that it is governed by a conscious purpose.

But, unlike truly involuntary attention, post-voluntary attention remains associated with conscious goals and is supported by conscious interests. At the same time, unlike voluntary attention, there is little or no volitional effort here.

If the focus of mental activity on certain objects is not caused by the setting of a conscious goal and is not associated with volitional efforts, then such attention is called or unintentional.

Attention is an information selection system that allows us to perceive only information that is significant to us, helping us to respond only to what is important to us or is of interest to us. What is important to us, what is of interest to us?

Involuntary attention reacts to all significant external circumstances. Arbitrary and post-voluntary attention is directed to what we ourselves have chosen.

Involuntary attention was developed in the process of evolution and takes care of our survival.

Suddenly, in the silence, a twig crunched: attention! Maybe it's a predator? Or maybe this is our prey, which is trying to hide from us?

Involuntary attention usually reacts to three things: to strong stimuli, to everything new, and to movement.

A strong smell, a bright light or color, a loud sound, anything that is bright and loud instantly grabs our attention. However, not only the absolute, but also the relative strength of the stimulus, its relationship with other stimuli, including the contrast between stimuli (in shape, size, color, etc.) is important; a small object is more easily seen among large ones, a number among letters, etc.

Attention is attracted to everything new and moving, everything motionless and familiar leaves attention.

Scout to hide - freezes. Employees of the internal organs undergo special training in order to be able to get lost in the crowd, not standing out in anything: it is curious that for this they usually stoop a little and make expressionless, meaningless eyes ... On the other hand, girls attract the attention of young people with bright jewelry, cheerful loud laughter and lively movements of the shoulders and hips, interesting plasticity and "shooting eyes" ... For centuries, the accumulated technologies are collected in the women's military arsenal, the girls master it and behave in such a way as to attract attention to themselves.

Involuntary attention turns us to those things and events that may be important to us. However, this useful mechanism has its limitations: in this case, we do not control the situation, but the situation controls us.

If a child is sitting in a classroom during a lesson, he needs to solve a problem, and not be distracted by sparrows jumping merrily on the windowsill. Preparing a child for school begins with the fact that children are taught to be attentive, not to be distracted, to turn their attention not to what suddenly interested them, but to the words of the teacher and what is written in the textbook. A good school teaches children to manage their attention - thanks to the school for that!

Attention can be arbitrary, the direction and nature of which can be controlled by the person himself. The ability to control one's attention from birth is not given to anyone: a person is either shaped by those around him (more broadly - life), or he develops it for himself in the process of self-education. Already children can focus on some subject or task for some time, not because they are interested in it, but because they need it. The better we can arbitrarily control the concentration and direction of our attention, the easier it is for us to cope with various life tasks. This is all the more attractive because over time, the usual focus of attention ceases to strain us, and voluntary attention turns into post-voluntary attention that does not require any additional effort.

The ability to manage one's own attention is formed like any other skill, but is used only when a person is used to it, considers it proper or has an interest in it.

Psychology. Tutorial for high school. Teplov B. M.

§23. Involuntary and voluntary attention

When a person watches an interesting movie in the cinema, his attention is directed to the screen without any effort on his part. When, walking down the street, he suddenly hears a policeman's sharp whistle close to him, he "involuntarily" pays attention to it. It is involuntary attention directed to a given object without our conscious intention and without any effort on our part.

With involuntary attention, the appearance of a site with optimal excitability in the cerebral cortex is due to directly acting stimuli.

But when a man has to break away from interesting book and do the necessary, but little exciting work for him at the moment, for example, to teach foreign words, he has to make an effort on himself to direct attention in this direction, and, perhaps, make even more efforts in order not to allow attention to be distracted in order to maintain attention on this work. If I want to read a serious book and there is loud talk and laughter in the room, I must force myself to be attentive to my reading and not to pay attention to the talk. Such attention is called arbitrary. It differs in that a person sets himself a conscious goal to direct attention to a certain object and, when necessary, applies certain efforts and efforts to achieve this goal.

With voluntary attention, the area with optimal excitability is supported by signals coming from the second signaling system. A conscious goal, intention is always expressed in words, most often spoken to oneself (the so-called "inner speech"). Due to the temporary connections formed in the past experience, these speech signals can determine the movement of the area with optimal excitability along the cortex.

The ability to arbitrarily direct and maintain attention has developed in a person in the process of labor, since without this ability it is impossible to carry out a long and systematic labor activity. In any business, no matter how much a person loves it, there are always such aspects, such labor operations, which in themselves have nothing interesting and are not capable of attracting attention to themselves.

It is necessary to be able to voluntarily concentrate one's attention on these operations, one must be able to force oneself to be attentive also to what does not attract oneself at the moment. A good worker is one who can always focus on what is needed in the course of work.

The power of human voluntary attention can be very great. Experienced artists, lecturers, speakers know well how difficult it is to start acting, speaking or lecturing with a severe headache. It seems that with such pain it will be impossible to complete the performance. However, it is only by an effort of will to force yourself to start and focus on the content of the lecture, report or role, as the pain is forgotten and again reminds of itself only at the end of the speech.

What objects are able to attract our involuntary attention? In other words: what are the causes of involuntary attention?

These reasons are very numerous and varied, can be divided into two categories: firstly, the external features of the objects themselves and, secondly, the interest of these objects for this person.

Any very strong irritant usually attracts attention. A strong thunderclap will attract the attention of even a very busy person. In this case, the decisive factor is not so much the absolute strength of the stimulus as its relative strength in comparison with other stimuli. In a noisy factory shop, a person's voice may go unnoticed, while in the midst of the complete stillness of the night, even a faint creak or rustle can attract attention.

A sudden and unusual change also attracts attention. For example, if an old wall newspaper is removed from the wall in the classroom, which has been hanging for a long time and has already ceased to attract attention, then its absence in its usual place at first will attract attention.

The main role in attracting involuntary attention is played by the interest of the object for a given person. What is interesting?

First of all, what is closely connected with the life activity of a person and the tasks facing him, with the work that he is passionate about, with the thoughts and concerns that this work arouses in him. A person, captured by some business or some idea, is interested in everything that is connected with this business or with this idea, and, therefore, pays attention to all this. A scientist working on a problem will immediately pay attention to a seemingly small detail that escapes the attention of another person. One of the major Soviet inventors says about himself: “I am interested in the principles of all machines. I ride a tram and look out the window, how the car goes, how it turns (then I thought about the control for the cultivator). I look at all the machines, for example, the fire escape, and I see that it can be used.”

Of course, people are interested not only in what is directly related to the main business of their lives. We read books, listen to lectures, watch plays and movies that are not directly related to our work. What is required in order for them to be of interest to us?

First, they must be related in some way to the knowledge we already have; their subject should not be completely unknown to us. It is unlikely that a person who has never studied the physics of sound and understands nothing in the technology of metals can be interested in a lecture on the topic "The use of ultrasound in metallurgy."

Secondly, they should give us some new knowledge, contain something still unknown to us. A popular lecture on the topic just named will not be of interest to an ultrasound specialist, since its content is known to him in its entirety.

What is most interesting is that which gives new information about things with which we are already familiar, and especially that which gives answers to questions we already have. What is interesting is what we do not yet know, but what we already want to know. The plots of interesting, fascinating novels are usually built on this principle. The author leads the story in such a way that we are faced with a series of questions (who committed such and such an act? what happened to the hero?), and we constantly expect to receive an answer to them. Therefore, our attention is in constant tension.

Interest is the most important source of involuntary attention. The interesting captivates, captures our attention. But it would be completely wrong to think that voluntary attention has nothing to do with interest. It is also guided by interests, but interests of a different kind.

If a fascinating book captures the reader's attention, then there is a direct interest, an interest in the book itself, in its content. But if a person, having set himself the goal of building a model of some apparatus, performs long and complex calculations for this, what interest is he guided by? He has no direct interest in the actual calculations. He is interested in the model, and calculations are only a means to build it. In this case, a person is guided by indirect, or, what is the same, mediated interest.

This kind of indirect interest, interest in the result, is present in almost every work that we do consciously and voluntarily; otherwise we wouldn't be making it. It's enough to get to work. But since the work itself is uninteresting, does not captivate us, we must make an effort to focus our attention on it. The less the very process of work interests and captivates us, the more necessary is voluntary attention. Otherwise, we will never achieve the desired result.

It happens, however, that work, which we first took up as a result of some indirect interest, and in which we first had to arbitrarily, with great effort to hold our attention, gradually begins to interest us. There is a direct interest in the work, and attention begins to involuntarily focus on it. This is the normal course of attention in the labor process. With the help of voluntary efforts alone, without any direct interest in the activity itself, it is impossible to work successfully for a long time, just as it is impossible to conduct long-term work on the basis of mere direct interest and involuntary attention; from time to time, the intervention of voluntary attention is necessary, because due to fatigue, the boring monotony of individual stages, all kinds of distracting impressions, involuntary attention will be weakened. So, the performance of any work requires participation and voluntary and involuntary attention, a constant alternation of them.

As a result, we can say: the central importance in the organization of attention is the tasks that life sets before us and the activities in which we are engaged. Based on these tasks, we consciously direct our voluntary attention, these same tasks determine our interests - the main engines of involuntary attention.

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Involuntary attention is a lower form of attention that occurs as a result of the impact of a stimulus on any of the analyzers. It is formed according to the law of the orienting reflex and is common to humans and animals.

The emergence of involuntary attention can be caused by the peculiarity of the acting stimulus, and also be determined by the correspondence of these stimuli to past experience or the mental state of a person.

Sometimes involuntary attention can be useful, both at work and at home, it gives us the opportunity to timely identify the appearance of an irritant and take the necessary measures, and facilitates inclusion in habitual activities.

But at the same time, involuntary attention can have negative meaning for the success of the activities performed, distracting us from the main thing in the task being solved, reducing the productivity of the work as a whole. For example, unusual noises, shouts, and flashes of light during work distract our attention and interfere with concentration.

Causes of involuntary attention

Causes of involuntary attention may be:

The unexpectedness of the stimulus.

The relative strength of the stimulus.

The novelty of the stimulus.

moving objects. T. Ribot singled out precisely this factor, believing that as a result of purposeful activation of movements, concentration and increased attention to the subject occur.

The contrast of objects or phenomena.

The inner state of a person.

The French psychologist T. Ribot wrote that the nature of involuntary attention is rooted in the deep recesses of our being. Directing the involuntary attention of a given person reveals his character, or at least his aspirations.

Based on this feature, we can conclude that this person is frivolous, banal, limited, or sincere and deep. A beautiful landscape attracts the artist's attention, acting on his aesthetic sense, while a local resident sees only something ordinary in the same landscape.

Arbitrary attention

If you tell me what you pay attention to, then I can determine whether you are a pragmatist or a highly spiritual person. Here we are talking already about another kind of attention - arbitrary, deliberate, active.

If animals also have involuntary attention, then voluntary attention is possible only in humans, and it arose due to conscious labor activity. To achieve a certain goal, a person has to do not only what is in itself interesting, pleasant, entertaining, to do not only what you want, but also what is necessary.

Arbitrary attention is more complex and peculiar only to a person and is formed in the process of learning: at home, at school, at work. It is characterized by the fact that it is directed to the object under the influence of our intention and goal. Everything is simple here, you need to set a goal: "I need to be attentive, and I will force myself to be attentive, no matter what," and stubbornly go towards this goal.

Physiological mechanism of voluntary attention

The physiological mechanism of voluntary attention is the focus of optimal excitation in the cerebral cortex, supported by signals coming from the second signaling system. Hence, the role of the words of parents or the teacher for the formation of voluntary attention in the child is obvious.

The emergence of voluntary attention in a person is historically associated with the labor process, because. without controlling one's attention, it is impossible to carry out conscious and planned activity.