Attention: Effect on Perception

Attention is the mechanism that allows us to select relevant information for processing from the vast amount of stimuli we are confronted with, prioritizing some while ignoring others. Attention can affect perception by altering performance—how well we perform on a given task—or by altering appearance—our subjective experience of a stimulus or object. Visual attention is commonly divided into three types: (1) spatial attention, which can be overt, when an observer moves his or her eyes to a relevant location and the focus of attention coincides with the movement of the eyes, or covert, when attention is deployed to relevant locations without accompanying eye movements; (2) feature-based attention, which is deployed to specific features (e.g., color, orientation or motion direction) of objects in the environment, ...

  • Loading...
locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles