How does a stimulus unconsciously attract our attention?

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Some stimuli naturally attract our attention, whether we want them to or not. This is called bottom-up attention. The way this works depends on the sense that is triggered. You can attract attention a little better with sound than with images. Above you read about the attenuation theory, which causes stimuli to weaken through a filter. Sounds get through this filter especially easily when they are sudden. That is, when we do not expect them.

For visual stimuli, our bottom-up attention proceeds in two phases. To describe this, we have the influential Visual Integration Theory , by Anne Treisman. According to this theory, we first look for striking features in the image we receive. In doing so, we pay particular attention to things that deviate from the rest. If we do not see any azerbaijan phone number library striking features in the first phase, we merge all the features and consciously look at them. For example, look at the left panel in the image below:

Deviation directs our gaze
Try to find the red 'S' in both of these areas.

Your attention was probably automatically drawn to the red 'S'. It is the only letter that stands out because of its red color and so it catches our attention.



Now look at the right plane and try to find the red 'S' again. That was probably a lot harder because there are now other red letters in between. The red 'S' deviates less and therefore stands out less.

Expectations that are not met
Now I will discuss the most important things that unconsciously attract our attention. People have expectations of how a situation will go and what they will encounter in it. Stimuli that you did not expect in a situation will attract your attention faster than other stimuli. For example, if you arrive at a construction site, you probably expect to hear drilling, hammering and sawing. The sound of a sawing machine will probably not attract your attention on that construction site.

Now imagine that on that same construction site you suddenly heard the cry of a baby. Few people would expect a baby on a construction site and so that cry would be very noticeable. That same baby would be much less noticeable in a daycare center, while the saw machine would be.

So we focus our attention on things we don't expect in a certain situation. This is also called expectancy violation . We make these schemas of what we do and don't expect based on experience and our associations . So it can be that when you are new to a situation, your attention is drawn to completely different things than when you have experienced that situation before.