Absent-mindedness can refer to three very different things:
- a low level of attention ("blanking" or “zoning out”);
- intense attention to a single object of focus (hyperfocus) that makes us oblivious to events around us; or
- unwarranted distraction of attention from the object of focus by irrelevant thoughts or environmental events. Attention is the Cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things Hyperfocus is an intense form of mental concentration or visualization that focuses Consciousness on a narrow subject or beyond objective Reality Distraction is the diversion of Attention of an individual or group from the chosen object of attention onto the source of distraction
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Consequences
Lapses of attention are clearly a part of everyone’s life. Some are merely inconvenient, such as missing a familiar turn-off on the highway, and some are extremely serious, such as failures of attention that cause accidents, injury, or loss of life [1]. Beyond the obvious costs of accidents arising from lapses in attention there is lost time, efficiency, personal productivity, and quality of life in the lapse and recapture of awareness and attention to everyday tasks. For other uses see Time (disambiguation Time is a component of a measuring system used to sequence events to compare the durations of Productivity in Economics refers to measures of output from production processes per unit of input Individuals for whom intervals between lapses are very short are typically viewed as impaired [2]. Given the prevalence of attentional failures in everyday life and the ubiquitous and sometimes disastrous consequences of such failures, it is rather surprising that relatively little work has been done to directly measure individual differences in everyday errors arising from propensities for failures of attention[3]. The word error has different meanings and usages relative to how it is conceptually applied
Memory aspects
Absent-mindedness is related to memory failures. In Psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store retain and subsequently retrieve information For example, Schachter treats absent-mindedness as one of the seven sins of memory[4] created by Daniel Schacter. The Seven Sins of Memory How the Mind Forgets and Remembers is a book (ISBN 0-618-21919-6 by Daniel Schacter, former chair of Harvard University 's Daniel Schacter (* June 17 1952 in New York is Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. It is specifically under the subcategory, sin of omission[5]. Omission is in Catholic teaching the failure to do something one can and ought to do Absent-mindedness is simply a failure in attention, involving an overlap between both attention and memory in both the encoding and retrieval stage of memory. Absent-minded memory failures occur when one is distracted with issues or concerns, and he/she is unable to focus on things needed to remember. For example, Schacter exemplified the conditions of misplacing one's keys or glasses. It is clear, however, even from this brief description, that the primary problem in absent-mindedness is one of attention. Recent research has reported that attention lapses may be direct causes of both memory failures as well as action slips. [6] [7]
Footnotes
- ^ Carriere, J. S. A. , Cheyne, J. A. , & Smilek, D. (in press). Everyday Attention Lapses and Memory Failures: The Affective Consequences of Mindlessness. Consciousness and Cognition.
- ^ Robertson, I. H. (2003). The absent mind attention and error. The Psychologist, 16, 9, 476-479.
- ^ Giambra, L. M. (1995). A laboratory method for investigating influences on switching attention to task-unrelated imagery and thought. Consciousness and Cognition, 4, 1-21.
- ^ Schacter, D. L. (2001). The Seven Sins of Memory: How the mind forgets and remembers. The Seven Sins of Memory How the Mind Forgets and Remembers is a book (ISBN 0-618-21919-6 by Daniel Schacter, former chair of Harvard University 's Boston, MA: Houghtin-Mifflin.
- ^ Cheyne, J. A. , Carriere, J. S. A. , & Smilek, D. (2006). Absent-mindedness: Lapses in conscious awareness and everyday cognitive failures. Consciousness and Cognition, 15, 578-592.
- ^ Carriere, J. S. A. , Cheyne, J. A. , & Smilek, D. (in press). Everyday Attention Lapses and Memory Failures: The Affective Consequences of Mindlessness. Consciousness and Cognition.
- ^ Robertson, I. H. (2003). The absent mind attention and error. The Psychologist, 16, 9, 476-479.
See also
- Absent-minded professor
- Habit (psychology)
- Human reliability
- Mind-wandering
- Neural mechanisms behind shifts of attention
Further reading
- Reason, J. The absent-minded professor is a Stock character of popular fiction usually portrayed as an Academic with important information but whose focus on their learning Habits are habituated routines of behavior that are repeated regularly tend to occur Subconsciously and tend to occur without directly thinking consciously See also Daydreaming and Attention. Mind-wandering (sometimes referred to as task unrelated thought) is a topic in Experimental psychology The environment around us is full of various objects features and scenes that compete for our Attention. T. (1982). Absent-minded? The Psychology of Mental Lapses and Everyday Errors. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
- Reason, J. T. (1984). Lapses of attention in everyday life. In R. Parasuraman & D. R. Davies (Eds. ), Varieties of attention. New York: Academic Press.
- Reason, J. T. (1990). Human Error. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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