Attention and its Crisis in Digital Society

Enrico Campo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000587548
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Cognitive Psychology & Cognition
• Index: Psychology

In the context of debates surrounding the effects of new technologies on our mental faculties, particularly the attention span, this volume addresses the notion of a deterioration of attention, and the related ideas of cognitive overload, an inability to concentrate, and attention deficit disorder. Through a new conceptualization of attention based not on individualistic or universalistic approaches, but centered instead on the cultural and social variability of cognitive processes and the multiplicity of forces and environments that encourage, stimulate, and inhibit certain cognitive mechanisms, the author rejects the idea of a degradation or crisis of attention and proposes an alternative vision of the problem of attention in contemporary societies. Placing cultural conventions, social norms, and ecological environments at the forefront of our understanding of individual and collective attention, Attention and its Crisis in Digital Society will appeal to scholars of sociology, psychology, and philosophy with interests in social theory, cognitive processes, and the criticisms often levelled at digital society and new technologies.

1Does Attention Exist?

DOI: 10.4324/​9781003225522-2

1.1 In Search of a Definition

A first, almost obligatory step for anyone wanting to study attention consists in trying to define it in order to delimit the field of investigation. The preliminary question to ask has a vague metaphysical flavor: what is attention? Philosophers and, above all, psychologists have tried to provide an answer to this question but, as we will see in the following pages, finding a clear and unanimous definition of “attention” is anything but simple. In fact, the debate on attention during the long history of psychology has also been a debate on what is meant by “attention” and on what its main functions and mechanisms are. The metaphors used to tackle these problems are numerous and, due to the difficulty of finding a common solution, the existence of attention as an autonomous process has been questioned several times (Johnston and Dark 1986; Allport 1993; Pashler 1998; Fernandez-Duque and Johnson 1999; Anderson 2011; Wu 2014). In this chapter, we will outline some salient features and then discuss the semantic autonomy of the concept, particularly in relation to that of consciousness.

Very often, studies dedicated to attention begin their investigation with its definition by William James [1842–1910] found in his Principles of Psychology:

Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others.

(James 1890, 403–4)

This definition is particularly useful for several reasons. First, it provides an initial delimitation of the field of study as focus and concentration on certain stimuli, which also implies the exclusion of others present. Attention would thus seem to be the invariably limited ability to make a selection between different stimuli, both internal and external, to which we could potentially direct it. In fact, the concepts of selection and the limitation of attentional resources are among the most used for the study and definition of attention and immediately render its functioning intelligible: since our cognitive resources are not infinite, it is necessary to deploy them on a finite number of objects in order to process them adequately. As we will see in the next chapter, this first delimitation of the field, though seemingly simple, actually conceals several pitfalls: the same concept of “selection” can assume different valences depending on the context in which it is used. Moreover, selection alone does not do justice to the wide variety of mechanisms that guide attention, and it is no coincidence that to this James also added the idea of “concentration.” There is not only a quantitative dimension, so to speak – the selection of stimuli – but also a qualitative aspect concerning how they are processed. It is clear, for example, that when we read a book we are able to exclude many internal and external stimuli thanks to attention, but it is also true that we have more difficulty concentrating if we are tired and we may even read a page and be unable to recall anything we just read. In this case, attention also seems to imply an effort that allows us to better focus our mental energies on a specific task.

This example also helps clarify a fundamental aspect that underlies our study: “Attention is not of one kind, so rather than searching for a single definition, we need to consider attention as having a number of different varieties” (Styles 2006, 3). That is, it is multifaceted, has different varieties, and can be broken down into many mental operations. As such, despite the fact that everyone knows what attention is – in that common sense gives us a clear enough idea what attention is for the purposes of everyday life – there is no agreement among scholars on a precise definition of attention and on the mechanisms that regulate its functioning. Thus, there seems to be a contradiction those seeking to analyze attention must continuously face: though its functioning and its definition appear self-evident, it is an extremely difficult category to circumscribe at the same time. As soon as the study of attention is deepened, what seemed to be a unitary construct begins to crumble. This is why Harold Pashler has proposed overturning the Jamesian assumption and beginning from the opposite position: it is preferable to assume “instead that no one knows what attention is, and that there may not even be an ‘it’ there to be known about (although of course there might be)” (Pashler 1998, 1).

A question we must ask then concerns the semantic autonomy of the term “attention.” It could in fact be that attention does not exist as a process with its own autonomy and that we use this word to indicate some phenomena that are scarcely related to each other. In this case, it would probably be preferable to abandon this term in favor of others.

1.2 One Word, Many Processes

The multifaceted nature of attention is also expressed in the varied use we make of it in daily life: the same term is applied in the most disparate situations and in reference to heterogeneous mental operations. Let’s imagine an everyday scenario to illustrate how the concept is made use of in our common sense understanding: Peter and Paula stroll down a busy street in the city center until, at a certain moment, Peter abruptly interrupts the conversation and points toward a building about 30 m away and invites Paula to turn her attention toward a vase behind which a very colorful parrot is hidden.¹ Paula directs her gaze in the direction indicated, but is unable to immediately find the vase. After a few seconds, with Peter’s help, Paula is able to identify the precise area in which to focus her gaze. Both then focus their attention in the same direction, waiting for the parrot to make its appearance, but suddenly the sound of flapping wings attracts their attention: a dove has taken flight from a balcony next to the one they were watching. Realizing they had the wrong target, the two return their gaze toward the vase. The parrot finally takes flight as well and our friends can follow its movement with their eyes.

How many aspects of attention did we refer to in this short, imagined scenario which would probably only last a few seconds? We used the term attention often, but were we always referring to the same cognitive process? Or perhaps the term attention is ambiguous? Let’s try to answer these questions by breaking down the process analytically, in order to focus on different aspects.

1. Peter and Paula are engaged in a conversation, so their attention is directed toward this coordinated action (and not toward what people around them are saying or the noise of the street, for example).
2. Peter’s attention is attracted automatically (i.e., without the specific volition of Peter) by something that, for some reason, stands out in his field of vision (the colored parrot which is unusual, unexpected, and unfamiliar in an urban context).
3. Peter tells Paula to turn her attention to an object (the vase) which is near the thing that attracted his attention (the parrot).
4. Paula voluntarily directs her attention to the area indicated by Peter, but at first is unable to identify the vase.
5. Thanks to Peter’s help, Paula identifies the vase, focuses her attention in that direction, and waits for the parrot to appear.
6. At this point, however, a noise distracts the two friends: a dove takes flight from a nearby balcony. Their attention is then automatically drawn to the dove.
7. Paula and Peter redirect their attention toward the original target (the vase) until they are finally able to follow the flying parrot with their gaze.

As is apparent in this breakdown, we continued using the word “attention” but referred to different, though connected, processes. For example, with regard to the first point, attention stands out as the ability to select a preferential stimulus (the conversation) to the detriment of others; thus the concept of attention appears above all as the ability to exclude certain stimuli. But not only, because our friends, during their conversation, are able to coordinate each other’s attentional processes in an orchestrated way.

A very different mechanism is at work in the second point: here something seems to have a sort of magnetic power capable of breaking the very exclusion mechanism we just referred to. Or, to give another example, look at the fifth point we’ve identified in which a process different from the others seems to be active, through which attention seems to improve or strengthen the perception of a stimulus with respect to the task to be completed (the search for the parrot).

This example clearly demonstrates how one of the greatest difficulties that is systematically encountered in defining attention concerns the pervasiveness and transversality it has in our cognitive activity: substantially every practical and theoretical process is attentionally guided and modulated. Yet, it is precisely from this initial difficulty that we can attempt to further specify our field of research. Unlike other mental activities, attention does not have its own specific product but transversely concerns all the other dimensions of our cognitive life: although attention does not have an exclusive object, it intervenes in some way in the other functions, regulating and modulating their functioning. According to Natalie Depraz, it is precisely this concept of modulation that best renders the wide variety of attentional processes without mutilating their richness. For the French philosopher, Husserlian phenomenology, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience all converge in considering attention as an “embodied modulator” (Depraz 2004, 14) that is present in every mental activity:

Modulate means to vary, inflect, or adapt to different cases or contexts. In music the term “modulation” has a precise meaning: it is the variation of accent, pitch, or intensity of a sound at the moment of its emission; in biology it is the living being as a whole that can be considered a process of modulation and this marks its identification in its metastable form […]. This physical, sonic, and biological interpretation of the process of modulation recalls our approach to attention as an original dimension of consciousness: it is a factor of organic orientation and an indication of intentional acts; it accompanies and accentuates them and causes them to mutate.

(Depraz 2014, 170)

Depraz is saying that the ontological status of objects changes in relation to the degree of attention we give them. Think of our example: if the parrot had not attracted Peter’s attention, it would have remained in the extreme periphery of his field of vision, completely ignored – and therefore in fact, from Peter’s point of view, the parrot would never have existed.

Attention is therefore transversal, in the sense that it is situated at the intersection of different cognitive activities, “is not monolithic, but involves a number of ‘attentional states’” (Depraz 2014, 172), as a modulator of “other than itself,” it “appears as a second activity: it puts itself at the service of another activity, remains secondary, and makes this retreat its central role.” It is for this reason that it is ubiquitous, “literally everywhere” (Depraz 2014, 173).

Attention is thus a modulating, transversal, and multiple process, but we have yet to clarify how this modulation is achieved.² In this first phase, it is very useful to follow the indications of two eminent Italian psychologists, Paolo Legrenzi and Carlo Umiltà, who have proposed grouping the functions of attention into three broad categories: selective attention, which distinguishes objects on the basis of their characteristics (as in the first point of our example); spatial attention, which instead serves to monitor an area (think of the fourth point); and finally, attention also has an “energetic” aspect, which concerns the allocation of attentional resources to a specific task (as in the fifth point mentioned above). To summarize, the three major functions concern: “orientation, selection, and engagement” (Legrenzi and Umiltà 2016, 19). We notice this last ...