Human Awareness Study Human Awareness Study Psychology Research Paper

Human Awareness Study
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Human Awareness Study
Introduction
The term interest has been defined variously as a type of consciousness that accompanies and stimulates the attention (Lamme, 2003). Various psychologists have stated that interest is the main driver of attention which in turn affects awareness of an individual on their surroundings. Therefore, it is correct to say that people are more likely to attend to what interest them. Thus, interest can be said to affect attention or an aspect of attention, and its special significance lies in its close link to the mental activity of attention (Lamme, 2003).
In the field of psychology, attention is referred to as the concentration of awareness on one activity relative to other stimuli. Early psychologists, including Edward Bradford, stated that attention influenced the composition of consciousness which in turn determined the quality of conscious experience (Chen et al., 2017). Nevertheless, subsequent psychologists placed less emphasis on the subjective aspect of consciousness. Rather, they concentrated more on behavioral characteristics through which attention could be recognized in individuals. While one’s experience is influenced by the manner in which they direct their attention, it is apparent that they do not have full control over such direction (Wyart & Tallon-Baudry, 2008). For instance, in some occasions, a person may find it difficult to pay attention to a particular task, sets of events or a conversation. In other occasions, one’s attention may be captured by an unexpected event instead of voluntarily directed towards it.
Various scholars state that attention is influenced by the immediate experience of the person and, therefore, it is the state of the present awareness. Of course, several events occur simultaneously in real life situations each affecting individual’s sense differently. Also, several events are occurring in the body that influence attention due to the fact that there are different representations of past events stored in an individual’s memory but only accessible to awareness in appropriate circumstances. One may think that the present awareness is the combination of all these events, but this is not the truth of the matter. An individual only focuses on or attends to only a limited subset within a whole set of experiences.
A theory has been put forward to explain why there is this limitation. The theory states that coordination and control of stored experiences and many inputs and the organization of appropriate patterns of responses are the functions of the brain. The brain possesses an impressive processing ability but has a limited space (Ramsey et al., 2004). Thus, it is difficult for a person to consciously experience all information and events available at any given time. Similarly, it is not possible to simultaneously initiate different actions. Thus, the question arises on how an appropriate subset of inputs, transitional process and outputs are preferred to command attention and involve available resources. Then, attention can be said to be a condition of selective awareness that controls the quality and extent of the individual’s interac...