15/03/2026
Involuntary and Voluntary Control. Most contemporary models of attention make a distintion between voluntary and involuntary attention. Involuntary attention is passive or effortless processing in which attention is gripped, captured, or arrested by some object or event, despite the intentions of the subject. Voluntary attention, by contrast, describes the ability to direct the focus of attention in accordance with the i current expectations, plans, or goals.
Selective Attention and Filtering. Limited processing capacity necessitates that we allocate processing to relevant stimuli and avoid becoming overloaded by irrelevant stimuli. This is done through the process of selective attention and filtering. Filtering can be described as a data- driven control process by which some stimuli are selected to receive further processing because they display certain physical properties.
Focused and Divided Attention. A distinction is made between two modes of attention. In some tasks, the person is asked to divide his attention among two or more inputs: this is divided attention. Other tasks require the person to attend to a particular input while ignoring competing inputs: this is termed focused attention.
supervision
