May I have your attention please?

The behaviour that people exhibit often takes place automatically. This is principally the case with learned behaviours such as walking, driving and swimming. In these situations you can easily do other things in addition to the learned behaviours, for example listening to music while you are driving or talking to your partner while you are walking. However, attention and consciousness can affect human behaviour. For example, if you are driving a car in a new city with lots of cars and traffic lights, driving becomes less automatic. You have to devote all your attention to the more difficult task so you need to turn off the music or stop the conversation with your partner.

In today’s life there is so many information available which makes it impossible to perceive all the information we receive. The brain simply cannot process all the information at the same time. Therefore, our brain needs to filter the information we would like to focus on and ignore the rest.

Please watch the following video before continue reading:

So, did you see the gorilla? If yes, did you also notice the certain changing colour or the player on the black team leaving the game? This video is a very good example of selective attention. Another example of selective attention is the cocktail effect. Imagine, you are talking with somebody in a noisy environment, for instance in a pub. Even though you are in an environment with surrounding noise such as voices of other people, you are able to focus your listening attention to the speech of the one person you are having a conversation with.

As described earlier, not only attention affects human behaviour but also consciousness influences the behaviour of human beings. I will give you a little task concerning this topic: take a sheet of paper and write down those things you are thinking of right now, but do NOT think about a white bear. I am sure you cannot think of anything else than the white bear, am I right?

In conclusion, when additional tasks demand too much attention and people become too conscious, it may affect human behaviour. Next blog I will show you how attention and consciousness can influence the behaviour of children.