Face-to-face human interaction is divided into "focused" and "unfocused" types. Unfocused interaction often conveys important content and context information and contributes to group cohesiveness and effectiveness. Research in Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) and Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) is also concerned with human interaction. CMC tools, such as electronic mail, and C...

The current study compared thought suppression, focused attention (mindfulness) and unfocused attention as strategies for managing spider fear. Spider fearful participants were exposed to a strategy induction before completing a Behavioural Approach Test (BAT). The BAT is a 10 step measurement of how close participants are willing to move towards a spider. Participants were instructed to use wh...

This study was conducted to investigate the effect of meaning-focused versus form-focused input-oriented and output-oriented task-based instruction on elementary level Iranian EFL Learners’ vocabulary comprehension and recall. For this purpose, a sample of 120 male students from a private school in Tehran was selected through convenience sampling and based on availability. The participants were...

A totally focused user always finishes the current task or subtask before moving on to another. Typical users, however, sometimes shift back and forth between incomplete tasks and do not always communicate before doing so. This behavior poses a problem for a software agent that uses plan recognition to support its collaboration with users. Our solution is a discourse interpretation algorithm wh...

The study investigated the effect of selection cues in working memory (WM) on the fate of not-selected contents of WM. Experiments 1A and 1B showed that focusing on 1 cued item in WM does not impair memory for the remaining items. The nonfocused items are maintained in WM even when this is not required by the task. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that items that were once focused in WM remain streng...