ABSTRACT
As far back as 1890, William James claimed that, “Everyone knows what attention is” (James, 1950, p. 403). However, some of us may identify more with what one of my graduate students lamented in a seminar on attention: “No one seems to know what attention is” (Anonymous graduate student, 1996). Part of the confusion may be due to the fact that attention is a multidimensional construct. Thus, even though he claimed we all knew what it was, James (1950) provided a fairly lengthy definition of attention:
[Attention] is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state which in French is called distraction. (pp. 403–404)
