When you “divide your attention” you:?

Question

A. Create a secondary, but temporary, attentional ability
B. Attend to both things simultaneously
C. Switch back and forth
D. Split your attention into two components

Answer 1

E. Comprise the ability to focus on both events.

A. So there is not a secondary of temporary ability, but one ability divided into two.

B and C. Both events can not be fully attended to simultaneously. We do not have the neurological components to justify this. Nor do we seem to have the ability to split our attention into two components, there doesn't seem to be the cerebral hardware - the Parietal Lobe and Temporal Lobes are generally associated with visiual and auditary attention. However work on 'hemisphere lateralization' may be more constructive when adressing this question (than Cognitive Psychology or Cognitive Science maybe).

'Hemispheric Asymmetry'. especially 'dichotic listening'. Where two auditory stimuli (usually speech) are presented to the participant simultaneously, one to each ear, normally using a set of headphones. Participants are asked to attend to one or (in a divided-attention experiment) both of the messages. They may later be asked about the content of either message.

Cherry (1953) found that participants performed badly in such tests, showing that subjects are unable to divide their attention equally. He also conducted other tests, the best known being the 'Cocktail Effect'. Sidtis (1981) found that healthy adults have a left-ear advantage on a dichotic pitch recognition experiment. And is usually used to demonstrate right-hemisphere dominance for pitch discrimination.

In relation to C. If you were to switch back and forth, this would not be 'divided' attention as you would be paying the first activity a 100% of your attention, then paying the second activity 100% of your attention and switching back and forth, therefore not paying attention to both events at the same time.

I hope that this has been of some help, if not, I hope it has given you some alternative ideas.

Answer 2

d split your attention into two components

Answer 3

d