Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!amdcad!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!vdx!roberta!dez
From: dez@roberta.UUCP (Dez in New York City)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: oscillating consciousness
Summary: What Cognitive Psychologists Know
Keywords: sorry...lost the header
Message-ID: <46@roberta.UUCP>
Date: 21 Oct 88 23:10:45 GMT
References: <1133@leah.Albany.Edu>
Organization: Turkey City Military Academy, Santa Cruz, CA
Lines: 18

> Take it as you want.  We know that people can not attend to the entire
> environment at once (or, at least that's what the cog. psychologists
> have found).

No that is not what cognitive psychologists have found.  What we have found is:
	a) people gain as much information from the environment as their
	   sensory systems are able to pick up.  This is a very large amount
	   of information, it may well be the entire environment, at least as
	   far as the environment appears at the sense receptors.

	b) people have a limited capacity to reflect or introspect upon the
	   wide range of information coming in from sensory systems.  Various
	   mechanisms, some sense specific, some not, operate to draw people's
	   immeadiate awareness to information that is important.  It is this
	   immeadiate awareness that is limited, not perception of, or
	   attention to, the environment.

Dez - Cognitive Psychologist  uunet!vdx!roberta!dez