10525 Visual Attention 1

Credits: 6 advanced credits in Psychology

Prerequisites: 36 credits, including Introduction to Statistics for Students of Social Sciences I, Introduction to Statistics for Students of Social Sciences II, Research Methods in Social Sciences, Introduction to Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Participation in Psychological and Educational Research and Research Experience, Regression Analysis and Analysis of Variance. Students must also fulfill all English requirements and take bibliographic instruction in the Library.

The materials include courseware on CD for conducting experiments and analyzing their results and a reader edited by Lilach Shalev-Mevorach.

Attention plays a central role in daily life. How can we explain the fact that we hear when our name is called even when we are engaged in an interesting activity? Why can’t we read a book and listen to a story simultaneously, yet we can drive a familiar route while carrying on a conversation with the passenger sitting next to us? These questions and others refer to various aspects of attention that are discussed in the course.

The course deals with one of the major areas of cognitive psychology which is constantly being developed and updated. The course presents early theoretical approaches and their derivative experimental methods as well as the major contemporary theories and leading issues in the field today.

Topics: Introduction; Selective attention; Review of contemporary theories; The role of attention in perception; Visual attention or object attention?; The neuropsychological aspects of visual attention; Summary: A critical discussion.

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1Students may write a seminar paper in this course, although it is not required.