Publish at October 25 2016 Updated April 13 2023
Attention is the object of all stakes. It is for many authors the new scarce economic resource. But what is this attention, how does it work, what are the elements that promote or distract it?
Jean-Philippe Lachaux is a brain specialist, and he has particularly oriented his research towards attention.
In The Attentive Brain, he regularly makes the link between the mechanisms of attention as we experience them, and the biology of the brain. The video of his talk for FFFOD and Communotic is a very interesting introduction to his work, and is suitable for the world of training and teaching.
Selective attention allows us to spot a face in a crowd, words in a text, to select objects... It is distinguished for some authors from executive attention, which is the attention we pay to the mental operations we carry out. If we limit ourselves to perception, Jean-Philippe Lachaux indicates that attention is what makes objects objects for us. You fix your attention on your screen, you see it as an object. The surrounding objects are perceived as vague shapes, spots of color.
We are able to direct our attention to certain voices, colors or objects. Jean-Philippe Lachaux tells us about the'cocktail party effect. You are at a cocktail party or a drink with a colleague, and here comes a razor to make conversation with you. Next to you, another group has started a very interesting discussion. You manage to follow their conversation without difficulty, while nodding your head regularly to remain polite to your annoying interlocutor. Attention works like a filter.
Jean-Philippe Lachaux shows us this with an experiment where we are asked to fix our attention on a situation. I won't say more, and if you don't know it, I'll let you try.
We know how to direct our attention but the exercise can be difficult. If proper names, our own name, or simply words that evoke something for us are spoken in the conversation we don't want to follow, we will hear them, and they will disrupt our attention.
So we can focus our attention, mute stimuli... But what makes us direct our attention to this or that object? Jean-Philippe Lachaux explains that we have a system of pre-attention, which will build a salience map. This system tells us which areas to focus our attention on.
When we bring our gaze in front of us, then, there is an initial filter, a rather fuzzy map that orients us. It is the military, specialists in camouflage, who tell us what stands out on this map. The acronym FOMEC BLOT is used by them to retain the elements that attract attention and should therefore be avoided. Recognizable shapes, shadows, movement, flashes, bright colors, noise, lights, smells and tracks.
Everything that the military avoids in enemy terrain, the advertiser uses, of course, right down to the fake smells of leather or bread in the mall. But these distractions slow us down every time they divert our attention.
In one experiment, people are asked to locate all the letters T in the middle of letters L. When some Ls are in red, the average time to complete the task is longer. This experiment confirms what we feel, when our reading is slowed down on a web page where ads are flashing all over the place!
The reward circuit helps define this map. Like a social network, it spends its time voting and putting "+1s" and "-1s" on situations, objects, and people encountered. And in doing so, it changes our salience map, making us more attentive to what we find to be a source of pleasure.
Our attention depends on stimuli and their strength, but also on our habits. If you drive a car, you know where to focus your attention. If you are a regular reader of Thot you know which menu or content areas are likely to interest you,... But the salience map dulls too. A poster might catch your eye the first time you walk by, but by the fifth time you won't see it.
The task set corresponds to the memory of all the "stimulus-response" associations mobilized for a task. it allows us to define the "attentional set," which groups the stimuli to which to pay attention. We pay attention to the color and shape of the pieces on the chessboard, not to their material. Procedural memory also directs our attention.
Jean-Philippe Lachaux teaches us that there is a social dimension to attention. We direct it where the attention of others seems to be directed. We spontaneously follow the gaze of others. Here again, advertisements, like painters since the Renaissance, use the gazes of the characters presented to guide our own.
But our attention jumps around. Jean-Philippe LACHAUX insists that attention alternates with action, in 200 or 300 milliseconds. The gaze that rests on a photo moves from one object to another, in a non-linear way. Attention leads to perception, which leads to action. Often the perception is directly followed by the action, without passing through the reflection phase. When the eye meets the cell phone or the glass of water, the hand moves forward, without explicit intention.
The whole thing moves very quickly. When the attention leaves an area on which is stopped, it does not return spontaneously. Jean-Philippe Lachaux compares it to a family dog.
Attention, then, is always on the move. Solicited by many stimuli always in competition, it relies on many filters. The attentional brain details many other mechanisms that make our brain appear like a trading floor or a gigantic trade show.
He of course gives us some keys to channel it. It can be "muscled up," especially if we strive, on inconsequential activities, to be "mindful of our own attention."
Illustrations: Frédéric Duriez
Resources:
Jean-Philippe Lachaux "Can Neuroscience help us develop our sense of attentional balance?" - video added February 26, 2015
https://youtu.be/0UNwEU0A6y0
Jean Philippe Lachaux "The Attentive Brain" - intervention at FFOD - Communotic -added day in January 2014
https://youtu.be/GbMWsmZJM2Q
Jean-Philippe Lachaux The Attentive Brain. Control, Mastery and Letting Go Odile Jacob (Editions): March 24, 2011
http://www.decitre.fr/livres/le-cerveau-attentif-9782738129277.html
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