Attention and visual search

Have you ever traveled a familiar
route while so lost in thought that you barely experienced the details of the
trip itself? Compare this to an experience in which you had to pay attention to
a specific set of directions to get to a location you had never visited How
did the characteristics of each situation affect your experience? As these
examples show, attention exerts important influence over perception

Cultural and societal influences
also affect attention Consider DeGloma and Friedman’s (2005) example of
“thieves and FBI agents [evading detection by posing] as garbage
collectors” (p 17) This strategy may work to conceal identity by
leveraging societal views of blue-collar workers as people less worthy of
attention Because of the “invisibility” of such workers in the eyes
of many, some may not register the existence of a unique personality within a
uniform

In this Discussion, think about
theories of attention as well as cultural and social variables Consider the
relationship between all of these factors and cognition

With these thoughts in mind:

1 A
brief comparison of one early theory of attention to the Guided Search theory
of attention

2 Then
describe how these theories apply to visual search

3 Finally,
describe one cultural and one social variable that might influence attention
and explain how