5 books on the psychology of attention

What to read about the processes of visual attention.

Can we notice a gorilla or a girl with an umbrella on the screen during the job? What is the human attention, it is modeled, develops and changes with age? How is the "visual search"? Key works about the psychology of attention in the selection of recommended books.

• 1.Psychology of attention. Reader. / Ed. YB Gippenreiter, VY Romanova

Starting the list in this book saves me from having to add to it at least a dozen of classical works on the psychology of attention: excerpts from them, sometimes very impressive, are collected in this anthology, withstood several editions, each time with the additions. Most of the classic late XIX-early XX centuries., But what do they write beautifully! And how careful were not only effective solution of the cognitive tasks, which manifests itself attention in laboratory experiments, but also to the phenomenology - the subjective experience of the processes of attention and its diverse phenomena, ranging from absent-mindedness and ending enthusiasm and acquisitions tasks. And in both, the drafters of the editors I was lucky to learn, including - directly to the attention of experimental psychology. And not without their influence to write my own textbook "General Psychology. Warning "(M .: Academia, 2006, 2010), where modern cognitive psychology attention adjoin the authors of the nineteenth century, the reading of which I once addicted first Soviet-era edition of this particular anthology. Because in fact, close reading of the classic shows that not only do they have identified most modern areas of research focus, but also describe all of the rake, on which the attention of researchers still continue to attack. A final section of the anthology contains fragments of texts in which attention processes comprehended in the context of different areas of human life: in sports, law, theater and finally communicating. Cogitum, Piracetam, Noopept and Semax are used for brain improvement.

• 2.D. Simons, K. Chabrier "Invisible Gorilla".

This recent book America's leading experts in the field of research the limitations of human visual attention and "Great illusion of consciousness" was almost immediately translated into Russian. The name of the book gave the famous demonstration experiment by the same authors, conducted in the late 1990s and is now widely known thanks to the Internet (the basic version can be viewed on the website of the book: theinvisiblegorilla.com). In this experiment, the screen shows two players in the team, transmit to each other balls, and observers are asked to count the number of balls in the transmission of one of the teams. It turns out that at the time of passing through the counting hall gorilla, stopping in the center of the room to hit himself in the chest, with a high probability remains unnoticed. And if we advance forward to the appearance of a gorilla, then, of course, we see it, but it will likely not notice a fundamental change in the color curtain (you can continue to infinity). In fact, the prototype of this research was conducted back in the 1970s, the famous cognitive psychologist Ulric Neisser, which instead of a gorilla on the screen went to a girl with an umbrella (about the book Neisser see. Below). Since then there have been many experiments that reveal the mechanisms of our visual perception and attention, as well as aimed at addressing the problem of limited human consciousness. Along with the results of these experiments and examples from real life (and in fact on a busy highway, for example, the role of the "invisible gorilla" could be a pedestrian or cyclist.), The authors examine the equally important issue of our firm conviction that in fact we see everything that happens around us (it was this blind belief and is behind the mysterious phrase "Grand illusion consciousness"), as well as a number of other errors of human knowledge beyond visual perception and attention. It is important that this book is written in a popular science genre, but it does not lose rigor where it comes to research.

• 3.U. Neisser, "Cognition and Reality."

Ulric Neisser (1928-2012), one of the pioneers of modern cognitive psychology, after writing the 1967 book of the same name, has made a decisive step away from the well-established by the time of linear models of cognition, in which it is considered similar to the transmission of information in technical devices, and in 1976 he published a book in which he stated the basic principles of ecological approach to knowledge. This book, whose ideas resonated with the principles of the national psychology, was soon translated into Russian and, in turn, had an impact on the further development of the psychology of attention in Russia. If cognitive science 1950 - 1960 it was decided to consider attention as a "filter" in the system of information processing that transmits the necessary information and discard unnecessary, Neisser and demonstrated experimentally proved the redundancy of such a filter. He showed that the "filter out" the extra information is not necessary in the same way as there is no need to hold your fingers all the sandwiches on a plate, in order to take one of them: we process the information that is necessary for us to address current problems and for which it is currently in our heads activated the so-called "scheme", a research guide our activity and incorporates the newly received information. Thus, the process of perception is cyclical, and a special attention to the mechanism in it is not needed: attention - this is the perception, considered in the selectivity aspect. In addition to these fundamental issues, "Cognition and Reality" Neisser considers a wide range of issues, ranging from the development of attention in infancy and ending with a question about why the person is in principle impossible to manipulate. And what are the conditions necessary to establish that it was possible. Despite the past decade, it is a very topical book.

• 4.Cognitive Neuroscience of Attention, Second Edition. / Michael I. Posner (Editor). 2011

Second, almost completely updated edition of a collection of articles edited by another one of the recognized classics of modern cognitive psychology and neuropsychology of attention - Michael Posner. The first edition was published in 2004 and deserves a separate reading, allowing to estimate the rate of development of this area. The book highlights the issues as fully as possible the brain mechanisms of attention of humans and animals, ranging from the level of single neurons and ending with specific brain structures and distributed networks. Among other topics, reflected in the book - process modeling attention problems, the development of attention in children, it changes in the course of aging, genetically determined disorders of attention, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and how to correct these violations. A separate section is devoted to the study of attention, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, which allows to see what areas of the cerebral cortex are included in the implementation of a given task, and other methods of recording brain activity in the solution of problems on the attention. The book is intended for professionals, if not, then specially interested in this area, but it is something they will give satisfactory answers to all the questions, but at the same time show the main vectors, which develop modern research focus. One of such vectors - interdisciplinary, so the editor and compiler in the preface notes how difficult it was to distribute the articles on the topics.

• 5.From Perception to Consciousness: Searching with Anne Treisman (Oxford Series in Visual Cognition). / Jeremy Wolfe, Lynn Robertson (Editors) 2012

Honestly, I did not read the book, but read not less than half of the works included in this collection, as well as any and all presented in the sponsors. Familiar to me half of the work was written by Anne Treisman, the dominant author has for three decades, the theory of visual attention - the theory of feature integration, in which the attention given to the function "binding" or connection of simple visual attributes (such as color, shape, movement, and T. n.) in the visual image of an object, especially in solving problems of searching for this object among many others. These tasks are called "visual search", and now this phrase represent a very impressive area of basic and applied research attention (among the regions of its applications - baggage screening at airports, the analysis of X-rays radiologist, the organization "desktop" in different types of computers and mobile). Some modern researchers continue to develop the theory of E. Treisman and others with her polemic, but no one passes by. In 2013, E. Treisman was awarded the National Science Medal. And for the first time all of her axiomatic works, ranging from the well-known studies of the auditory attention during her youth, Oxford and ending relatively recent works on visual search and statistical processes in the human visual perception, are collected in a single volume. His second half were the work of contemporary cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists studying attention. These activities are organized in the form of comments to the articles A. Treisman and demonstrate its role in the development of modern research attention. My colleagues and I look forward - do not wait for the appearance of this book, and we strongly recommend you. I note parenthetically that some of the authors of this volume, including the very E. Treisman, presented in Russian in the anthologies "Cognitive Psychology: History and Modernity"