
What a new theory of attention says about consciousness - johanam
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/09/how-brain-helps-you-pay-attention/598846/
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pdkl95
> The brain wasn’t brightening the light on stimuli of interest; it was
> lowering the lights on everything else.

An outstanding demonstration of this process is Apollo Robbins' "pick-pocket"
act[1]. You can clearly see how he gives his subject a bunch of things to
think about - his hand movements, what he's talking about, sounds, touch, etc
- until it fills up the subjects attention capacity and they suddenly stop
noticing everything else going on right in front of them. He basically
performs a denial-of-service attack on someone's attention system until they
cannot notice him take their wristwatch off. All done with a flourish for the
camera, of course, which works because he's not DOSing the _audience 's_
attention.

A particularly good example is from his talk[2] at defcon (the entire talk is
worth watching). Right when he asks "When you walked past me, did you check to
see where your wallet was?" you can see the volunteer suddenly put all of his
attention on that question and not his wristwatch.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoUSO_Mj1TQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoUSO_Mj1TQ)

[2] (demo starts at 31:22)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kkOKvPrdZ4&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kkOKvPrdZ4&feature=youtu.be&t=1882)

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PeterStuer
If attention is achieved by tuning out other stimuli, could an attention
deficit also come from an overeager filter tuning out also the target of the
attention?

As a child I was a voracious reader, often reading a book a day. I remember
many times when the situation would allow it turning on both the television
and the radio, both with sound on, to create a 'distraction field' that let me
'cocoon' in the reading.

I always thought it could have been just masking distractions like 'strange
noises' in the house that would cause one to have to pay attention, like some
people use white noise, but could it be in this theory's model that I was
putting load on the 'filters' so as to prevent them catching the desired
attention target, the text I wanted to focus on?

~~~
loceng
I think this is a very important concept that needs to be better understood.
As others have posted in this thread, I tend to work better - at least on
certain tasks, when sitting in a busy cafe vs. at home where it's quiet. It's
made me realize that certain people may have an optimal minimal amount of
stimulus required, otherwise leading to restlessness - boredom. It would make
sense that a system, body and mind, designed or optimized for a higher level
of sensory input - when active and not sleeping - wouldn't just be able to
"rev down" quickly, which perhaps would be more akin to a depressed state - or
suppression/repression of where someone's systems naturally want to them to
efficiency wise for the amount of stimulus they can process. A quiet classroom
may be a terrible environment for some people to learn - yet is common
practice for most school systems.

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hbarka
I’ve often wondered why I can focus for a very long time when working in a
coffee shop, yet when working alone at home I can easily go off on a tangent.

~~~
mettamage
IMO those processes you describe are from classical conditioning, operabt
conditioning and the fact that you have some social control.

~~~
hbarka
Not to sound rude, but those phrases sound like cliches and don’t mean
anything. There really is something to trying to tune out distractions which
converts to laser focus as a net effect.

~~~
mettamage
Cool, let me go into detail with specific examples. Because those phrases are
not cliche and they do mean something. Game-designers use social control (I
suppose a better term is: social processes), classical and operant
conditioning processes all the time! And it makes them money.

In all fairness, my comment is a bundle of hypotheses, but I tend to think
they are true. In my previous comment I was less nuanced about it since I
wanted to be brief. But to test that they are true requires a lot of
experiments. And also note: these processes may be different to other people.
I can't focus in coffeeshops, for example. I'd rather be alone.

Moreover, upon thinking about this more deeply, I forgot the imitation aspect
of social control. I'm not going into that, this thing is long enough to
write.

In any case to go back to my previous comment, there are 3 processes: (A)
social control (a word that I invented on my own), (B) classical conditioning
and (C) operant conditioning.

(A) Let's start with the easiest: how does social control play a role for you
to focus a very long time when working in a coffeeshop versus working alone at
home?

(1) When you're alone at home, nobody is watching you.

(2) You feel more free to do whatever you want because of it. Want to take a
nap? Go for it! Want to work in your underpants? You can. Want to take a break
and play video games/watch youtube/<insert favorite entertainment>? Yep, all
possible.

These things are less possible in a coffee shop. Even when it comes to
entertainment: you need wear headphones. You might be embarrassed on laughing
out loud publicly. You don't feel as relaxed.

In other words, because other people being there in the room that are silently
judging you on your behavior (i.e. social control), you won't feel as
compelled to just chill in your own idiosyncratic way.

Yes, you can find ways around it. Yes, you can hack it and find counter
examples. But it won't be as accessible compared to doing it at your own
house. So one feels less compelled to do so.

(B) How does classical conditioning play a role for you to focus a very long
time when working in a coffeeshop versus working alone at home?

Recap on classical conditioning: bell --> food --> salivation, the learning
then became bell --> salivation.

In this case: a biological potent stimulus (e.g. coffee), is being paired with
a previously neutral stimulus (e.g. the atmosphere). Which then results in
learning: coffee shop atmoshpere is cofee high.

So: atmosphere --> coffee --> coffee high, therefore: atmosphere --> coffee
high.

What does a coffee high do? It makes you feel more alert. Does that makes you
feel more focused? Not necessarily, but it helps. Therefore, it plays a role.

(C) How does operant conditioning play a role for you to focus a very long
time when working in a coffeeshop versus working alone at home?

Recap on operant conditioning: the strength of a behavior is modified by
rewards (technical term: reinforcement) and punishment. Example: a child
learns to open a box to get the sweets inside.

The social control that I described earlier is a form of operant conditioning
as one might anticipate a punishment for acting out of line (e.g. lying on the
couch to sleep, something you can do in your house, not in a coffeeshop).

You getting work done gives you a feeling of accomplishment. So if the first
couple of times of working in a coffee shop went well for some reason, you
tend to associate a coffee shop with a place where you get work done? Sounds
obvious, I suppose, but that's what operant conditioning can mean.

Drinking coffee at a nice cafe can be seen as a reward in itself, and you only
get to go there if you focus and work there.

\---

Obviously, there are more processes at play. But the article is about how our
brain suppresses the information flow of certain stimuli. You happen to
experience in coffee shops that you tend to focus better, in other words that
your brain suppresses information flow better than at home.

I simply describe a couple of hypotheses of why this might be. The theories
that I use have been validated by psychologists for decades and also by game-
designers who actively use them in casual games. So their theoretical
underpinning in that it works (and to some extent how it works) is quite
strong.

Only in your second comment, below mine do you make clear what your implicit
hypothesis in the first comment was "there really is something to trying to
tune out distractions which converts to laser focus as a net effect." Putting
your PFC in overdrive might indeed be a thing. I wouldn't know.

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Gormisdomai
The interesting thing about this for me is that I've always assumed that the
default state of an awake mind is a kind of inattentiveness where we take in
an process no data at all. But this article makes it sound like, by default,
our minds are constantly trying to process and take everything in, and the
extra work goes in to filtering the input we get.

This seems to match with the phenomenal experience of being overwhelmed in
noisy or crowded situations, and of the difficult part of meditation being
teaching yourself not to suppress experiences as they arise and just take
everything in.

~~~
collyw
> I've always assumed that the default state of an awake mind is a kind of
> inattentiveness where we take in an process no data at all

Try a bit of meditation and you will realise this is far from the case.

