ABSTRACT
Most research on attention is concerned with selectivity of processing or the ability to perform multiple tasks concurrently. Attentional research has been conducted since the earliest days of psychology, but contemporary research is usually dated from the early 1950s. Interest in attention increased in part because of the performance demands of technology growing out of World War II and a shift from behavioral to cognitive approaches to psychology. The cognitive approach provided a descriptive language for conceptualizing the nature of attention. Using the computer as a metaphor, early models of attention viewed human information processing as proceeding through a sequence of stages. Hence, theoretical issues concerned the point at which attention intervened in the processing sequence.
