Thinking in Psychological Research

Psychologist Dr. Doping talks about method of reasoning aloud, insight and representation tasks. What is the difference approach to the study of thought in psychology from the methods of other disciplines? What are the methods of analysis of problem-solving process? What does the term "insight"?

Unlike other disciplines in the study of psychology thinking of a particular person or group of people. Psychologists interested in thinking, which takes place in real-time, real-world conditions with real objectives and motivation, with limited experience and the knowledge that a person has.

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One of the methods in psychology is task method. Tasks unimaginable in quantity and variety. If, before the start of the study, we understand how to construct the task, giving them a person in a certain order, of different types, with different tips, we can create a situation of difficulty and see how thinking reacts to them. Task method also allows you to get an impression of representation. This is the most interesting and important in research.

Example: you have previous experience in a similar solution. But psychologists slightly changed the conditions of the following problem, and you do not see that they are the same. Once again you decide the second task, as the first, with all the tension calculations, with a long and sometimes misunderstanding with insight, when you finally see the central link.

The phenomenon and the concept of Insight

Psychologist Dr. Doping talks about the stages of solving the problem, error experiences and psychological experiments.What are the steps for solving the problem? What does the term "insight"? What in psychology there are alternative points of view on the understanding of insight?

The third stage of solving the problem - it's insight ("enlightenment" is probably the most successful translation). At this point you something becomes clear. Insight - this is the moment when you understand how the problem is solved. If you understand, you move on to the fourth stage of the solution, check that out. There is an important point: insight is very beautiful, recognizable thing, but it is not necessarily correct. That is the wrong decision can also be accompanied by insight.

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These discussions began with the bloody 80-ies of the XX century, when a group of psychologists who hold the view that there is no insight led direct experimental refutation of the existence of insight. The situation is paradoxical. On the one hand, it recognized people insight into their experiences. How this can be questioned? On the other hand, psychologists repeatedly came idea to check how true this is, as far as this is not a bug in any sense of the word. An alternative view is based on the most popular theory is now a task space Newell and Simon, who claims that insight - this is a mistake. That is, it is a mistake of your experience, and insight, there is no objective content.

Discussions around insight allows us to do two important things. First, they make us understand the question, whether any complex and different problems to solve without insight. That is, moving step by step, step by step. A huge number of people in psychology, and in, say, mathematics tell us that the majority of all problem situations solved serial reasoning, and if that is not addressed in a coherent argument, you just something I do not know. An alternative view says that there are in the process of solving sharp fractures, changes in the representation of the problem. This is the insight.

Challenges in thinking

Psychologist Dr. Doping speaks about tasking environment studies in the psychology of thinking and problem-solving methods.How in the psychology of thinking is determined by the task? What are the main tasks of structural differences from the problems? What methods are exploring the process of solving problems?

The origin of the word "challenge" - this is what you someone puts, specifies that there is some difficulty with which you have to cope. Most often, psychologists say that the problem - it is a goal that must be achieved in some conditions, the conditions are not simple, and that you limit. If the target can be achieved at once, it is not the problem. Go to the kitchen and pour a glass of water - it's not the problem. If there are some formidable obstacles, such as social between you and the kitchen: the parents were sitting there, who do not want to let you go, or tap water was over some time ago - start things similar to those interested in psychology. Thus, the aim in any conditions - this task. It often turns out to be local, that is well defined, with more or less clear objective. And in the decision you need to find some ways, the means to get to that goal. In human culture has a lot of fairly thin areas that are cultivated as a special problem of the formation of experience.

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In psychology in the last 100 years, we believe that the problem - it is "cool" in every sense of the word. Firstly, it is the material on which you can study thinking. Second, it allows us to study the problem is not at all thinking, and that of his piece that interests you. The objectives are extremely diverse in material, structure, according to the thinking strategies that are needed to address, and so on. Therefore, selecting the task in a special way, you can very differently to target the human mind, put it in a different problem situations and to study its different sides. Moreover, the problem is extremely useful in another respect: they are very good as a training material.

There is a very important structural element that distinguishes the problem of problems. How successfully he wrote a famous researcher of problem solving, a German D¸rner names: Imagine that you are playing a game of chess, but when you make a move, because all the pieces are connected, you drag all the pieces at once. This is a problem when every move changes the whole situation on the board, and it's not a metaphor, it literally. This he calls the principle of a spring mattress: when you click on a spring mattress in one place, all the moves down from all sides. This is a problem which is different from the task in all respects. First, the characteristics of: the problem is much more complicated due to the fact that they are less certain - neither the means nor the goals.

Types of Imagination

Psychologist Dr. Doping speaks about the function of the creative imagination, methods of problem solving and motivation problem.

Imagination - the last of the three through mental processes, forming the axis of our psychological time. And if memory connects us with the past, attention - to the present, the imagination, in fact - with the future or possible. Therefore, to define it is possible after local researchers imagination Valery Viktorovich Petukhov, on which I will continue to rely heavily, roughly as follows: the imagination - is the construction of new, not previously existing images of objective reality that we need to organize future behavior and future activities in uncertain situations. And the range of phenomena of the imagination is really too wide enough.

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Conventionally, all these phenomena can be divided into two groups: the imagination and recreates the creative imagination. As for the re-creative imagination, the most studied example - the so-called perceptual imagination, the most studied material on mental rotation. In the 1980s, Roger Shepard and his colleagues conducted now famous experiments in which people were shown two-dimensional shape, rotated relative to each other, and the man had to determine: it is the same figure or figures is mirrored? It was found that while solutions of this problem is directly proportional to the rotation angle shape. The impression that one is actually mentally rotate pieces in order to respond to the problem, ie, converts the image in his mind. More complex forms of reproductive imagination - is, for example, the construction of the image from its projections or build an image from the description, as when we read a work of art, or get acquainted with the instructions on how to go somewhere.

But creative imagination is fundamentally characterized by the absence of this kind of support, that is, the creation of new images in the special features. What is important here, that actually functions in the image may be a few. Take a simple example: Suppose I draw a circle. What it is? I can say that it is the sun or a plate. In this case, the image appears in its most simple function - Picture function. Or I can say that it means "the movement is forbidden", "no movement" - we often see a circle on the roads. Here, this value has no connection with the specific content of the image. It might be a square, could be a triangle, but agreed that it is a circle. This is the sign function. Or, finally, I can say this unity, or is it perfect, or that the integrity of, or is this equality that the terms meant for the Knights of the Round Table. And you either understand or not understand, and I'll have to explain to you. What is the function? This image of the character. And the creative imagination in fact has no bearing on any image of the image or the image of the mark, but only the image of the character. And we can determine, in essence, as the construction of characters as a way to represent reality. So when we start talking about the development of creative imagination of the stimulation of creativity, we can see that all of the methods that have been developed in modern psychology, and not only in psychology - are methods unmeanings, departure from the values on which people have agreed before, those values that we learn in the course of the entire training, attempt to see the unresolved problem situation with some other, unexpected side.

Among the creativity stimulation methods are best known, perhaps, are two: on the one hand, it is the domestic theory of inventive problem solving, which is offered at the time Genrich Altshuller, on the other hand - a method called synectics, American researcher William Gordon. What are the similarities between them? Just the fact that they are trying to get away from the values and approach to the main features of the creative imagination - to symbolize. How this is done in the theory of inventive problem solving, or TRIZ, as it is abbreviated as? For example, there is a very popular method of little people. Inventors, decisive, seemingly unsolvable problem, it is proposed to imagine that the solution to this problem involved a lot of small, little people that are out there running around and doing what is necessary: can hold hands, can release the hand, may line up in any way. And it turns out that it allows us to understand the mechanism that is necessary, in fact, invent. This is a very good impetus to solving the problem.

Or inventors may be invited to provide that the problem has been solved thanks to the gold fish or because they rubbed a magic lamp of Aladdin. What to do next? Expanding the solution implemented on a piece and a piece of magic. For example, we can catch fish, but to ask her to the task decided - it is a magical piece. Magic piece we can continue to spread: the fish can take up, we can talk to her; Does she understand us, and if our desire to fulfill - a magical piece. Then we begin to lay out this magical piece is also implemented in the next and magic. And so long as the problem is not solved magically. Or, in the theory of inventive problem solving are very fond of playing with such an operator, as a "size - time - cost" - PBC, as they call it. How? And, for example, reducing to a minimum or to the maximum inflating either of these operators. For example, we need to figure out how to lower the beam, and we imagine that the beam size of the globe. Or do we need to figure out how to do some manufacturing operations - we imagine that it is carried out in a split second, and because of this decision can also be found.

In the method of William Gordon, called synectics, ie combining external to each other, combining heterogeneous, with the same purpose used the analogy that vary widely. For example, a direct analogy (the most common method): we compare what we need to find something, for example, from the field of nature or of art. So at one time it was invented by way of packing chips Pringles, which had to be folded as tightly as possible. This was associated with cleaning wet foliage after rain - wet foliage are packed much tighter than dry. Or presumably because Harvey discovered the principle of the heart, comparing it to the pump.

We can compare what we need to find, with ourselves, using the so-called personal analogy. For example, we need to understand how to optimize the work of the organization. Introducing: the organization - it's me, such a part of the organization - it's such a part of my body. Next we will try to shake down, negotiate and so on. Or we can use the analogy of a symbolic or poetic. Usually it is paradoxical, internally contradictory metaphors like the one that the book - it's a silent narrator. And because of this incompatibility, we will continue to pull out some features we need.

Finally, the last kind of similar, very similar to the goldfish from the theory of inventive problem solving - this analogy is fantastic. We imagine that the problem is already solved. For example, we need to attract customers into the store, so they went there. We imagine that the shop itself comes to customers, and begin to develop this idea, think out, for example, to e-commerce or even to something such.

But the most important thing that we, first of all, rely on the sphere shaped, and secondly, try to make maximum use of the ability to build new images. As they are built? This question is believed to be fully answered all at the end of the nineteenth century, the famous French psychologist Théodule-Armand Ribot. Subsequent development anyway repeated it. He singled in the imagination of two main factors. Factor first - the mental, or intellectual. What you need to build a fundamentally new way? On the one hand, the need to work with the images that we have, to allocate them in a variety of side issues. Ribot calls this mechanism dissociation. Psychology of thinking such operations relates to the field of analysis. We can distinguish the image of one aspect, two, three ... What's next? And then relate them to each other. This mechanism Ribot calls the association. For example, we looked at a cloud, to say that it looks like an elephant. This will just compound never before connecting parts, that is an act of creative imagination. But, according to Ribot, the mental factor to its dissociation and association operations worth nothing without the second factor - emotional. In fact, emotions, beginning with the inspiration, is still not really learned, and ending feelings, maybe somewhere alarm somewhere joy - it is, on the one hand, the necessary condition for the imagination, on the other - an enzyme for generating new creative images. And indeed the will to creativity or motivation - an important condition for the creative act took place. And in modern psychology is really the main problem, the main field of study of the creative imagination - this study is motivation of creativity. What moves an artist? What moves a filmmaker? What moves the writer who creates your imagination? Because everything else, as practice shows, in general, is a matter of technique. And the very desire for creativity, desire to build characters who decide maybe not yet existing, future problems - this is the most interesting question.

Visual Attention

Psychologist Dr. Doping speaks about the selection function spotlight of attention and feature integration theory.What are the main functions of the attention? How different directions in psychology approach to the study of attention? And it explains the mechanism of attention theory of feature integration?

Attention is the most elusive of all human cognitive processes for two reasons, which are noticed by many, but the best designed classic Russian psychology Peter Y. Galperin. On the one hand, attention to ever exist as a separate process, but it is always linked either to the process of perception, when we have something to look at, for something to follow, into something we listen; or in the process of thinking when we are working on something thinks.

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On the other hand, the focus does not have its own product. There is the image of the perception that we have built, we managed to see all that is needed; There is a solution of intellectual problems, which we have decided not distracted; perhaps there are traces in the memory system, when we for something implies that something is read and remembered. Attention is dissolved in other cognitive processes.

The leading theory of visual attention, which appeared in the 80s and celebrations on this day, though it repeatedly denied, suggested Anne Treisman - the theory of feature integration - is that the function of attention as the spotlight, is to link symptoms of visual objects that are in a particular location. In those areas of the cerebral cortex that processes attributes such as color, tilt, and so on, the information is organized as well as on the retina, that is the spatial principle.

Formation of the Meaning of Words

Linguist Dr. Doping speaks about misuse of words, poly-coded hypertext and household lexicography. How children perceive the word? How context influences the formation of values of unknown words? Do all meanings of the word should be recorded in the dictionary?

When we someone makes a remark: "You are wrong to have used a particular word," - and what is the wrong use of words? How a principle, we can talk about? The first thing that comes to mind - let's look at the dictionary. But do we always help in this dictionary?

My students, unfortunately, very often provided me absolutely fantastic examples. One student wrote in the book, looked like the door to the dance studio, where she once worked: "The door to the studio was located just above the facade of the building, so the threshold was done in three steps." Naturally, I asked her venomous question: "where there was a door on the roof, or maybe in the sky? How could all this happen "And the young lady gives me absolutely wonderful answer?" Well, this is called the bottom rim of the building, I forgot, "That is, she meant the foundation. Moreover, let's think about it: for her foundation - it is not load-bearing structure on which the house stands, and "rim at the bottom of the building." In the native language of the girl, adult girl, confuses words with the letter "f", because they are both parts of the architectural structure. It is a strange situation. How could all turn out?

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To answer this question, it is useful to think about how all forms of the word in our minds. Let's look first at a small child. When he still did not really know how to say it, as we were told in our beloved children's book, "Mary Poppins", speaks its own language. If you remember, in childhood twins speak their language. Not just twins, any child speaks its own language.

My son, when he was about two years old, called the horse "chop-chop-chop" and dog "wawa". And here we go with him in the yard and see a huge dog. He says, "Mom, chop-chop-chop!" "No, - I say. - This is not a horse, it's a dog - wawa ". "Nah," - indignantly said my son. How can this happen? Means for him cat, dog, horse differed only one sign - in size. Suddenly he is faced with the fact that big as a horse, as it seems (he saw the pony), the dog. It does not happen. And I told him: "Look, please, on the feet, it does not have hooves, claws her, she knocks on the asphalt claws, rather than hooves." And he looked with doubt on this "horse".

Why is this happening? It turns out that the child initially from something imitating us perceives that the object or class of objects that - with time he understands it - is so called something. But he attributes to this class of objects has not yet been assigned, rather, they are assigned, but some of his. Gradually, communicating with adults, a child understands what attributes have this or that object. And this is quite a remarkable property, which appears much earlier than any formed whatsoever Dictionary.

Remarkably Alexander Zalevskaya famous psycholinguist and psychologist, said that the word that we learn in childhood, is a living poly-coded hypertext. That is, we take the word with its sound, associations, which it calls us. For example, the tree may be associated in our minds with the smell of tangerines on a holiday, with broken toys, a punishment for the broken toys - you never know what else, everyone has their own association.

And if we learn the word as a living poly-coded hypertext, then no difficulty will arise.

Gradually, we adjust all the necessary signs and come to the fact that there is in the language.

Another thing, if we learn the word in some other way. How? We are with you in our modern world is surrounded by a huge number of words, the values of which we do not even know that we can not guess what the word means. On television, we hear a huge number of unfamiliar words, sometimes not even accurately perceive them by ear, play properly. And when these students start to write unfamiliar words, they are doing absolutely fantastic error. Where does the value of this word here?

Absolutely wonderful logician, mathematician Vladimir Uspensky in the article, I think, 1978 or the 1980 - it is an old article - considered rem association of the word "authority". Abstract, but the most common associations: hard, hard, warm. Where did they come from? He absolutely wonderful mathematical model that we hear the words in different contexts and these contexts calculate that could mean we unfamiliar word. But there are two conditions are necessary. The first condition - that we have a lot of different contexts. The second condition is that the right word, we met often enough, then we will gradually derive its.

But what would happen if, say, the word will meet often enough or in enough variety of contexts as often happens, when we hear the word on television. Any word "impeachment", say: "Communist faction to impeach the president or initiated impeachment proceedings", "President Barack Obama threatened impeachment if the Democrats lose the election next year." How do we need to learn that the impeachment - a special legal procedure? The most that we can hear from these contexts, it is something like resignation, some censure the president can be, but the exact meaning of the word, we do not know.

Here we need to look in the dictionary. Look in the dictionary to guess, unfortunately, we do not always know how we laziness. Although we now have opportunities to do much more than before. Internet replaces the huge number of dictionaries, just look at Gramota.ru portal, which presents many serious dictionaries, any word will be revealed to you. Unfortunately, we do not always.

The result is that we have an approximate value of words. My lady, of course, have heard the word "threshold", but she could hear: "We say good-bye to you at the threshold", "She met him on the threshold of the house," maybe "He stumbled over the high threshold." She did not come to mind that the threshold - it strap down in the doorway. High threshold was placed in the old huts, so as not to muzzle, to evil spirits did not pass, could not sweep over the threshold of some things. She just did not know. It is not built with his father or grandfather of some house. And the student unconsciously formed such a strange system, it has a huge bag of words that indicate the details of the house, she does not know the difference between the facade of the foundation. And this often happens with all of us.

The word "facade", by the way, at one time meant only the front part of the house. How is it that now the facade and indicates the side of the house, and even the back of the house? In fact, he acted the same mechanism: someone first used the word "facade", knowing that it means in French - it is associated with the word face ( "face"). Then people thought, there is a beautiful name "facade" to the front of the house, and how to name the side? Let there be side facade, let it be the rear facade. And it turned what is now recorded in the major dictionaries. Exactly the way we use the word "façade": we have the side facade and rear facade, that sounds strange for a man who studied French.

Here we find the root of a word change. But whether every dictionary should always make these changes in the text? Lexicographers know that it is carried out not always. Some meaning might be, then will go to the language, and some will disappear without a trace.

Cognitive Linguistics

Linguist Dr. Doping speaks about theory of metaphor, cognitive commitment and autonomous language concepts. What is studying cognitive linguistics? What are the main areas of research? And how cognitive linguistics inscribed in the cognitive science?

Cognitive linguistics is this area of linguistic theory that links linguistic phenomena with a wide range of different phenomena related to human mental activity, such as memory, attention, categorization, and others. The fact that human language - is something twofold, it is also the way to store a variety of knowledge and way of sharing such knowledge between two or more people.

Cognitive Linguistics deals with two groups of events: online and offline. Off-line phenomenon more studied in the framework of cognitive linguistics. This direction examines first language semantics, that is, the values of various words, phrases stored in the human memory.

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Speaking of the scientific program of cognitive linguistics, I would like to mention the cognitive engagement. This concept was introduced by George Lakoff. According to cognitive commitment that assumes a linguist who considers himself a cognitive linguist, it is necessary to discuss, study and seek to understand the language phenomena in connection with the whole complex of knowledge that exist in humans.

FAQ: Nondiscreteness in language

6 facts about the violation of common linguistic boundaries

Scientific concepts discreteness represents clear boundaries, clear division between different events or categories. In linguistics, as in other human sciences, there is a traditional view that human nature is committed to building discrete structures. For example, when we talk about language, we say, "This language has five vowels" or "There are parts of speech, as a noun, verb, adjective, adverb," and so on.

• 1.You can give an example from the field of grammar. For example, the division into parts of speech. We are accustomed to the fact that there are clearly distinguishable categories such as verbs and adjectives. For example, the verb "stand" or the adjective "good". But, as we all know, even from a school in the Russian language program, there is a group of words as a sacrament. For example, the "standing". On the one hand, it seems to be a verb. We feel that this word is very closely connected with the verb "stand". And many of its properties, and grammatical and semantic, this communion is included in the scope of the verb. But we can use it as an adjective. For example, we can say "the man standing", and can say "good man." And we feel (and rightly feeling) that the sacrament has a lot of features of the adjective. Thus, this hybrid category. Simultaneously it refers to a category verb, adjective, and the category for some properties.
• 2.This general nondiscreteness, that is a violation of, or erase the common borders, permeates the language completely. This occurs at every step. There are examples, not related to the individual sounds or words, but, for example, with separate languages. For example, we use the Russian language. It would seem that it is clearly defined language. But there is such a thing as the contacts between languages. And one of the other language may take some individual elements - words, even grammatical constructions. And, speaking in Russian, in the modern era, we use a lot of words and events, borrowed from the English language. It is, first of all, the words are very well entrenched. These are words like "computer" or "site". They entered in Russian language. Improve your memory and to study foreign language - will help buying nootropics: Phenylpiracetam, Cogitum, Picamilon, Cortexin, Noopept, Semax, Vitamin B12.
• 3.At the same time, there are words that seem to have not been put in a Russian dictionary, but the people they know and widely consumed. For example, the word "background is." It is hardly possible to consider him for the Russian word, but it is interspersed in the Russian language. And intersperses different grammatical phenomena. For example, the whole combination, such as "rock music", borrowed from one language to another and become accustomed to the language in which such borrowing falls. Moreover, we can produce a so-called code switching. If I talk to someone who knows English, I can occasionally use English words, phrases, or even whole sentences. Are we clear to say that the Russian language ends here, and after that starts another language? It seems that we do not keep in his speech practice. These linguistic hybrids are extremely characteristic. The same applies to the history of language.
• 4.We know that there are modern East Slavic languages. It is believed that they descended from one language, which existed as a Slavic usually write about from the XI to XV century, judging from the written monuments, which to us from these periods came. Thus was the Old Russian language. And now there is the modern Russian language. But it could not be sure that people in one day went to the ancient language of the modern. This process took place gradually. And when we say that there are two different language - Old Russian and modern Russian - this is obviously a simplification. We have some forcibly try to imagine a process that occurs gradually as a discrete - that there are two separate languages. The same applies to the borders between the Russian and Ukrainian language. In the southern part of Russia - the part that is adjacent to the Ukraine, and on the part of Ukraine, which is adjacent to Russia - there are various transitional or mixed dialects, about which it is possible only with a high degree of conditionality to claim that they belong to or Russian, or to the Ukrainian language. That is, the boundaries between languages are very permeable. One gets the general impression that the linguistic structure is not quite discrete. And then you can resort to some metaphors.
• 5.We know what's inside, for example, the human brain. It is composed of neuronal cells. Each cell seems to exist by itself. But neurons are contacted with each other. They form a connection. Each neuron takes a large number of such connections. It is possible that the metaphor of the neural network can be applied to linguistic phenomena. Each neuron has its central part - a kind of core. But there is also a zone of contact between adjacent neurons in contact with one another. It is possible that this general principle of organized human language. And so, when we are trying to present it as a completely digital, with clearly different from each other units, such as phonemes, part of speech, the whole language, it is a very strong simplification. Apparently, the consciousness of our species homo sapiens has a very strong tendency for it to simplify manufacture. And we can remember thinking here of the famous philosopher Immanuel Kant, who said that our consciousness in our attempts to understand the nature sometimes imposes on us certain schemes and plays with us a few tricks. And it's so deeply buried or sewn into our consciousness the thing that it is difficult to get rid of it. That is, our consciousness would have us see language and other human phenomena as a discrete. But nevertheless we can not completely shut down by the fact that there are a huge number of non-discrete. And you need to move gradually to ensure that this nondiscreteness learn to understand and model. And probably this requires development including new mathematical models.
• 6.It so happened that during the last century the natural sciences - physics, biology and others - made decisive steps in connection with the construction of new mathematical models. Well, even though I am very far from theoretical physics, as I hear from people who are well versed in this, now in theoretical physics from mathematics poorly separable, it is actually a single entity. But mathematics, which we have today, is sufficiently developed to simulate natural phenomena. All what concerns the physical processes and to some extent probably also the biological processes. And when we deal with language and other cognitive phenomena that produces the human brain, we are faced with a new level of complexity. And, probably, it is necessary to think about some cooperation and rapprochement with mathematics, which would allow to understand, to simulate, to describe these non-discrete phenomena characteristic of human language and mental activity.

Metaphors and Models of Attention in Cognitive Psychology

Psychologist Dr. Doping speaks about the limitations of attention, the filter model and the factors distribution of attentional resources.

Research focus and attention as the focus of our mental activity in cognitive psychology began, like all other studies in the context of technical metaphors of human knowledge, in the context of the metaphor of information processing computer or radio transmission of information. And what can we say about any technical device? It is limited, it has some limitations on the central processing of information. And researchers have suggested that it was because of these restrictions, and there are errors in our knowledge, which we blamed on a lack of care. And the first question for cognitive psychologists attention was the question of how, and that it is generally for the restrictions and whether they. If we answer this question in the affirmative, we say that our knowledge is the central limit, just as they are in any technical device. We have two tracks on which we can build further research. First, we can assume that this limits our knowledge of structural or has limited bandwidth. That is somewhere in the processing of information a person has a "bottleneck", through which all incoming information simply crawls. What to do? Trying somehow is a "bottleneck" to protect, advance discarding or blocking of the information. What could perform such a function? For example, a filter, similar to those used in radio engineering. And the first metaphor of attention in cognitive psychology has become a metaphor of attention as a filter. Naturally, it resulted in a number of research questions, "Where is this filter", "How the filter works?", And the logic of these questions were based on the study.

On the other hand, we can say that the restrictions have the character of energy. As to the urban grid, we can not connect more appliances than it allows, and to our knowledge we can not carry out more operations than can run simultaneously without disturbing, with no errors in their implementation. If we say that the restrictions have the character of energy, we can say that there must be attention and there is a mental effort or limited activation, which we distributed to the various processes of refining, supply, of course, the distribution mechanism. Then, of course, we will study some attention as the distribution of resources among the concurrently executing tasks.

And we can say that in fact no one has proven that the brain is limited, no one has proven that the brain is like a technical device. Maybe there are no restrictions, all the selectivity of our attention - it's really just selective perception, which is based on a schematic representation of reality. It is in this scheme, we absorb new information, it sends a further activity, and the ability to combine several objectives - it is only the coordination of the schemes and the corresponding data collection and processing cycles with each other.

This position was taken by Ulric Neisser. However, his work was in some ways marginalized, and the two main lines of research is still consistent with the study of a structural or energy constraints in human cognition. And, in fact, the largest series of studies is concerned the study of attention as a selection that directs filter model.

The answer to the question of where the filter was not so obvious, because if we put too early and throw too much information at the early stages of analysis, we can lose something important. On the other hand, if we put the filter is too late, as we were well treated with a large amount of information, then why do we need it? We have already spent enough resources and processing time.

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How to do research? The basic model proposed American acoustics engineer Colin Cherry, who in 1950 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology puzzled question, but as a man shared several superimposed on each other's posts? About the same when we are sitting at a party where a lot of people at the same time says, we may well hear a conversation. This phenomenon is described in the late XIX century by William James, American psychologist. And in fact, it has several other aspects. For example, we can hear our interlocutor, but we as well hear our name pronounced across the room. But Cherry was interested in the ability to choose one channel - a task with which the machine is not coping very well, and the man, as studies have shown, quite effectively. Cherry worked with the subjects-people, asking them to listen to one of the two posts at the same time supplied to the headphones. It could be just two superposed messages, or one message at the right ear and the other to the left. And the man is usually asked to answer some questions about the one message, retell its content or repeat it aloud, ignoring the second. But in fact, Cherry tried to understand and from the second a man that sees? It turned out that almost nothing. Notices change male voice to a female, notes that the message is cut off, says, when, instead of voting begins noise or hear a dial tone, but it does not see any sense messages, no matter what language it was, or when the language is changed, not even the fact that the message scrolls backwards. On the basis of this Cherry concluded that, apparently, our attention as a filter - a mechanism located very early, in the early stages of information processing on the physical attributes processing level. And if we have something to throw away, the content is not exactly handle. Although it has been found that when snapped filing messages, then the person may report, and on the same channel, and on the other. However, it says only that appear somewhere before the filter has a buffer, wherein information is retained for a very short time. Actually, it is a model with a touch buffer channel with limited bandwidth and a filter between the Englishman Donald Broadbent proposed in the 1950s, and it was the first model of attention as an early selection.

But immediately began to accumulate facts that appear to be the selection is not as early or arranged in some other way. For example, the very fact that a person can find his name on the second channel, for which he does not pay attention, says that this name should be handled somehow. And if you say, "Bob, switch to another channel," a person easily does. Also detected and emotive stimuli may even establish links between the messages, if they are somehow related to each other in meaning. And if so, we need to either move the filter in the later stages of information processing, as did, for example, Diane and Anthony Deutsch and Donald Norman, or change the principle of operation of the filter, which offered the British at that time researcher Anne Treisman. She suggested that the filter does not work on the principle of a complete cut-off of information, and on the basis of its attenuation. The weakening is carried out at the entrance to our "mental dictionary", or the mental lexicon. If there comes unmitigated message, it activates the appropriate units, they come to our minds, we have to be accountable. If the units of our "mental dictionary" reaches a weakened signal, it is not activated. But if this unit a low threshold for activation, such as, for example, in our own name or any emotionally meaningful words, or if the unit is activated some messages that have been filtered before, when we establish a connection between what we say in the right ear, and what they say in the left ear, it can also be activated and it is to break into the consciousness.

But Deutsch and Norman decided that the filter inlet in principle is not necessary. We can put a filter at the output of the information processing system after a complete semantic processing, then "mental dictionary", or our long-term memory system. But for this we besides the input signal must still prevent the existence of an additional unit, which determines the relevance or importance of the objects of those stimuli which act to us. This may be due either to our intentions, or with the structure of the language, but we are able to explain not only the attention of the sensor associated with external influences, but also mental. Can, for example, to explain some paradoxical effects in our knowledge. For example, why do we think of the yellow monkey, when we are asked not to think about it? And the thing is that we are constantly checking ourselves that we do not think about the yellow monkey, activate it via the unit "relevance", because it makes its way through late filter at the output of the memory system.

However, the data accumulated on both sides - to support early selection and a late support. Finally, the researchers decided that, apparently, a lot of filters. The model will be flexible and multiple selection - assumed that the selection depends on the task set before man. If the semantic information is required, we'll get it. If not, you can throw in advance, not wasting resources.

In fact, the same fate befell the attention model as a distribution of mental effort as the distribution of resources. The first was a model of common resources of attention, proposed by American psychologist Daniel Kahneman Israeli origin - the one who later studied the human mind and its mistakes. Kahneman suggested that the focus of our resources - this is actually available for cognitive operations, the level of activation of our body, our brain. Not everyone goes to knowledge, but part of the resources spent on cognitive operations, and this part is limited.

Accordingly, Kahneman as units of its model postulates a very limited activation policy of its distribution and processing of those processes or activities for which it is distributed. This hierarchy of his model. And then he describes the factors that affect the distribution of resources: our current intentions - what we need now, we have a permanent disposition (name called - turn around, falling bricks - otprygni, drop everything you're doing), and finally, evaluation request from the tasks carried out by us. If they are just above the resources available, it is possible to raise a modicum of their level. But if you exceed all possible limits, we have to throw one of the activities that we are starting to make a lot of mistakes in one of the parallel tasks. Kahneman is testing his model in experiments with double tasks, one of which is through the payment of fines and makes it more important, less than a second, and shows that increasing the number of errors in the second when changing the difficulty level of the first problem. When the level of difficulty is reduced, errors in the second problem becomes smaller. Interestingly, also behaves pupil diameter that actually suggests that activation, apparently has not only psychological but also physiological nature.

But then the researchers began to discover problems that are combined with each other for better or worse. It turned out that even a very similar problem when slightly varying the method of presenting information (visual or hearing), with slightly varying the method of response (speech or motor) are combined with each other for better or worse. We started to talk about the fact that, apparently, we do not have a box with resources and more. Eventually we came to models or multiple resource components. But the problem is that as soon as we find new combined with each other problems, we have to add some kind of n plus the first resource of attention, that multiplies the number of resources in our models to infinity. That is why modern psychology, on the one hand, the greater was the approach to the treatment of attention as a mechanism that is linked directly to the task and is built under it, and with another - all gone from the metaphor of the filter and reservoir of resources or power. Most current research is actually conducted in the logic of the third metaphor that combines features of the other two - a metaphor for a searchlight that is, on the one hand, selects a piece of information from the outside world, and on the other - increases the processing of this information. It is in the logic of the spotlight metaphor are built all the modern study of visual attention, visual search study, the redirection of attention, and so on, which is probably dominate in modern cognitive psychology.

Types and properties of Attention

Psychologist Dr. Doping speaks about approaches to the determination of the attention, a state of flux and the measurement of psychological attention.

Why the focus - one of the most elusive of cognitive processes? What kind of attention can be distinguished by the degree of human activity? What distinguished the properties of attention as a process and as a state?

Attention (Focus) is one of the most elusive of human cognitive processes. Why is that? Because the focus, firstly, never exists as a separate process - it is built or in the process of perception, when we are better than anything manage to see or something to notice, but something did not notice, it is built into the process of thinking when we concentrate on a specific task, being distracted from everything that prevents us to solve it, and it therefore does not have its own product.

The product of focus is a more effective solution to the problem or a clear and accurate image of the perception of the object, which we looked at. Therefore, when the psychology of trying to determine the focus, its attempt to determine, firstly, through the effects that it has on other cognitive processes, and, secondly, to allocate some criteria that somehow allow it to distinguish.

The first thing we see - is what allows us to always focus on something to focus, and of something to distract. Attention is always selective, it always selects something from the set of surrounding influences or from a variety of our own thoughts. Therefore, we can define some attention as the selection information, but not only. Because, as soon as the information has been selected, chosen for further processing, we need to continue to keep it, we need to somehow concentrate on it. Therefore, we can define the note as a set of functions and selection processes of concentration, or as defined domestic researcher Nikolai Dobrynin, "the direction and focus of our mental activity."

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But apart from the fact that the attention of elusive, it is also quite diverse. That is the circle of the phenomena that we call the phenomena of attention, starting from the turn of the head towards the fallen chairs and ending with a focus on solving the problem of thinking is very wide, although any person both way or another treat attention.

What to do? Apparently, just there are different kinds of attention. On the one hand, for example, we can distinguish the attention by the material from which it is directed. We can talk about the sensual attention when it is sent to the outside world: visual, auditory, tactile. On the other hand, we can speak of intellectual attention, when it is directed at our own thoughts, inner images, feelings, and so on.

This is one option allocation kinds of attention. Still we can try to distinguish them according to the degree of human activity, which is something directs attention or draw. Our attention can be directed or in accordance with our own objectives, or in accordance with the properties of effects, or according to some combination of both. Accordingly, if the target note we do not, we'll talk about the involuntary attention, and if this goal is, then we'll talk about voluntary attention.

If we look at the involuntary attention, we will see that it is not uniform. The same Dobrynin allocated as many as three species. The simplest - the forced attention is directed to the bright, loud, different from each other, the environment objects.

One of the classics of psychology Edward Titchener called three stimulus, attracting the attention of a forced default: loud, yellow, the smell of musk.

Why so - I do not know, but they have since wander from one tutorial to another.

A little more to the person we see in the attention that is called involuntary. Involuntarily, we draw attention to something that meets our needs. We would like to now there is - unwittingly notice grocery stall where in either case, it would not have noticed.

And finally, still involuntary, but relying even more on what's going on in our heads, - the usual attention. For example, a physician familiar notices symptoms of human diseases where other people do not notice them, nerd usual notices in the forest flowers, lumberjack - tree trunks.

But all this is, in fact, without a goal to pay attention. Once we have this goal, we are talking about an arbitrary attention. It can actually be arbitrary, for example, when we are do not want to be distracted from the book, carefully read the text, remember. It can be strong-willed, when this area of attention is something interferes - for example, my friends have to walk in the street name, but we continue to hold the attention of the direction, to resolve this conflict. It can be expectant when the attention is not an object at all - for example, a scout sitting and waiting for someone to appear, and may not appear.

Interestingly, the release is still a third kind of attention, in addition to voluntary and involuntary, which is called after-voluntary attention. It is interesting because we pay it on what we need, but the effort associated with any attention to the need for something to keep in focus, no longer experience. For example, we read, read boring philosophical treatise and suddenly drawn into and it becomes not so boring for us and forget about everything.

Such mechanisms for involvement perceive computer games. Man falls as if in a state of flux. The task is still not too simple, but the funds already disbursed, to hold the attention of arbitrary, and it turns out that the man is in the stream of activity, but is active in this thread. Accordingly, we find an involuntary, arbitrary and posleproizvolnoe attention.

And what can we say about the properties of attention? The first thing we can say - this is what we can discern the properties of attention at any given time - the properties of attention as a state, as well as derivatives of these properties of attention as a process unfolding over time.

If we look at the attention of both the state, then we can see that it has the property of direction, that is, it is always something directed, it has a certain amount, ie the amount of an element of experience that we can hold in focus at the same time . For example, how much information we can grab, if she appeared too briefly? Or how many objects we can monitor, if we need to watch for multiple? For example, with a few children on the playground, among many other children.

And finally, the third property of attention at any given time - it is his degree, that is, how much we are currently focused on a particular impact on a particular impression. How to measure the degree of attention? The best way that psychologists have come up with so far - is to try to distract the person from what he was doing, the influence of a certain strength, but we need, accordingly, the line for these actions. Therefore, psychologists often use objective neuro-physiological methods. For example, it turned out that the indicator of the degree of attention can be a change in the pupil diameter during the observation of those or other effects or in the course of solving a particular problem when it comes to intellectual tasks. Now it is even used in professional diagnostics.

And in order to measure the amount of attention we can show very briefly a number of unrelated elements, or cause a person to keep track of multiple objects.

It appears that the scope of our attention on the fact terribly limited, is three or four elements.

If very much practice, you can hold on to six, but it's not possible to everyone.

And what will happen if we see what happens with these properties in time? For example, what can we say about the direction of change? It can be changed more easily or less easily? That is our focus may be more or less easy to switch - thus we get switching properties, that is, ease redirection from one object to another, or from one activity to another.

Reswitching problem - it is a very important application problem because, firstly, it is a very important quality demanded by professional, for example, the secretary, which also responds to emails and phone calls. On the other hand, there may be up correcting the problem, because switching of disorders are, for example, for children's distraction, for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder when reswitching is too high, uncontrolled attention jumps from one object to another. When senile distraction opposite occurs: switching of attention is sharply reduced.

Two other properties - property of the degree of attention and scope - can also be considered in the dynamics. What happens over time with a degree of attention? It can be held, or it may be reduced to recover and, for example, again.


They talk about sustainability focus property. Stability - is, in fact, the ability to save a certain degree of attention with respect to this impact over time. Accordingly, attention span, we can also measure using a monotonous job, causing, for example, cross out a certain person letters in long sheets of paper, looking at how often he was wrong and where it all begins to make mistakes.

And finally, what can we say about the amount of attention? We can say that this volume we may try to distribute between different activities. In attention there is the property of dispensability. One person more or less effectively divides his attention between several activities, it is given to another person worse. Accordingly, we also is diagnosed using combination of tasks.

That is, we get at least three primary properties of attention: focus, extent and volume - plus sometimes referred to as the concentration ratio between the degree and scope, that is, the degree of attention with respect to the unit volume of attention. Accordingly, if one element is equal to the degree of concentration.
And we're talking about at least three secondary or derivative, properties of attention - it's his pereklyuchaemost is its stability, is its dispensability. It is these properties of secondary attention, describing it as a process, most frequently employed in the diagnosis of psychological, especially in the diagnosis of and professional school, which are designed for special tests and techniques.