The movements of someones eyes to sift through different visual stimuli. When one walks into the room, they may visually scan it to see who is there and what the room consists of.

Visual scanning

Shifting attention can be classified by eye-movement by:
- Covert attention
- Overt attention

Overt and Covert attention

Pausing (fixating) eye movement on an object. 

Fixation

Moving one's eyes to another object. Involves a rapid, jerky movement.

Saccadic eye-movement

- Overt and Covert attention
- Fixation
- Saccadic eye movement
- Visual scanning

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

- Selective attention
- Distractions
- Divided attention
- Attentional capacity
- Attentional capture
- Eye movement
- Stimulus salience
- Binding

Focuses of Research on Attention

Goldstein, E. B. (2014). Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research and everyday experience. Nelson Education.


Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research and everyday experience

Attentional capacity

Selective attention is the psychological process of focusing on a specific subset of available sensory information while ignoring other distracting stimuli. Because it acts as a filter for incoming sensory data, selective attention helps explain why some environmental stimuli are consciously perceived and others are not.

Selective Attention

A stimulus that interferes with the processing of another.

Distractions

Paying attention to more than one thing at a time. In a sense attention is being divided among different stimuli.

Divided attention

When the focus of someone's attention quickly changes, often due to some significant stimuli (i.e. loud noise, bright light, etc)

Attentional capture

Focuses of research on eye movement

The physical properties of the stimulus, such as color, contrast or movement, that influence attention.

Stimulus salience

How features (color, motion, shape, etc.)  come together through attention to form a perception of an object.

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