ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses attention and how it can affect learning. It also discusses the limitations of attention. The chapter focuses on ways to help students pay attention to information that helps them learn and to avoid attending to information that distracts from learning. It also focuses on attention, which can be thought of as the activated portion of long-term memory, or the spotlight/focus of attention. Providing prequestions is another technique that can influence the relevance of information and help to focus students' attention. Hence, relevance is particularly important to learning. When a lesson is relevant to students, they are more likely to pay attention, and in turn, learn the material. Emotional content also grabs attention. In the classroom, teachers can make lessons scary, funny, exciting, or contentious, with a great effect on attention. The physical properties of learning material can also attract attention.
