ABSTRACT
In common language, attention is mostly used to indicate the "paying of attention" to a particular source of information, e.g. traffic lights, or the voice of a lecturer in an academic setting. Cognitive psychology has incorporated and elaborated the various meanings of attention, and added a few concepts of its own. The problem is, that whereas "attention" is used in daily language in a variety of ways, psychologists and other neuroscientists have given different definitions of the concept. Hence, to avoid confusion when talking about the assessment of attention, our terminology should be as clear and consistent as possible. On the behavioural level the effect of a phasic increase in alertness can be assessed by comparing reaction times with and without a warning signal within one subject. The layperson obviously had some knowledge of time-on-task effects: no-one is surprised when attention falters should an audience be confronted with a dull lecture, or the reader with a boring text.
