HUMAN FACTORS - ATTENTION AND MEMORY

Attention Attention is the process of selecting things to concentrate on, at a point in time, from the range of possibilities available. Attention involves our auditory and/or visual senses an example of auditory attention is waiting in the dentist’s waiting room for our name to be called out to know when it is our time to go in. auditory attention is based on pitch, timber and intensity. An example of attention involving the visual senses in scanning the football results in a newspaper to attend to information about how our team has done. Visual attention is based on color and location. Attention allows us to focus on information that is relevant to what we are doing. The extent to which this process is easy or difficult depends on whether we have clear goals and whether the information we need is salient in the environment