Perception And Perception Of The Cognitive Development Of...

Both attention and perception are concepts that relate to the cognitive development of human beings. Both concepts contribute to our ability to control and direct the processing of stimuli, whether it is physical, visual, auditory or retrieved from stored memory. Perception is the ability to make sense of our surroundings, whereas attention is the ability to concentrate on any perceived stimuli. A link between perception and attention comes from an individual’s ability to choose which stimuli to allocate their attention towards. This ability is important due to the vast amount of information in which humans are presented with on a daily basis. By using selective attention, individuals are able to focus their attention on a specific†¦show more content†¦This is a lack of attention which is not caused by any visual or auditory deficits. It is when an individual fails to recognise an unexpected yet obvious stimulus. When there is too much stimuli for one to attend to, a ‘temporary blindness’ effect can occur and as a result individuals may fail to see unanticipated, yet obvious stimuli. There is a vast amount of research which suggests that no conscious perception can occur without attention. In Mack and Rock s (1998) study, subjects performed several trials of a length judgment task consisting of 2 lines in the form of a cross, presented on a computer screen. On one of the trials, an additional image was presented as well as the cross and participants were asked of their awareness of this. Results showed that a large percentage of participants failed to even notice the added figure, which suggests the existence of inattentional blindness. Mack and Rock (1998) therefore concluded that attention is needed for conscious perception. A similar conclusion was drawn by Rock and Gutman (1981) when they conducted a study where subjects were presented with a series of images of two overlapping lines. These were novel or familiar items and the lines were presented in different colours. The participants were instructed to only pay attention to one of the two lines, which caused inattention for the unattended figure. The results of Rock and Gutman’s (1981) study showed that participants