Attention, mechanisms of

1. Brief history of attention The problem of attention is the problem of selecting for active processing certain aspects of our physical environment (e.g., objects) or some ideas in our mind (which are stored in our memory). This problem is one of the oldest and most central issues in psychological science. Many great minds have wrestled with the definition of attention. In 1890, William James wrote: "Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession of the mind in clear and vivid form of one out of what seem several simultaneous objects or trains of thought." James' account heavily joins attention with subjective experience. Moreover, James' effort to deal with both attention to objects and attention to "trains of thought" is important for understanding current approaches to sensory orienting and executive control. However, attention in the sense of orienting to sensory objects can actually be involuntary and can occur unconsciously, so attention is not, as the quote from William James implies, the same as being aware.