ATTENTION WINDOW AND THE SITUATION AWARENESS
Looking is turning our fase and eyes to a certain
direction and percieve the objects there as a whole. For example, percieving that the sides of a
rectangle connect and the sides are parallel.
In contrast, seeing is identifying this object as
‘door’. Looking is a simple operation
without mental depth, a process in which lower level seeing information is
stored temporarily at the buffer regions.
In seeing the object that is seen gets binded or related
with the ‘door object’ in the semantical memory.
Focusing is the limitation of the area that we see under
mental control and inhibition of the area outside.
Concentrating is the increasing of the binding operation
during seeing.
For example, the evaluation of the door size, whether it
is old or new, a comparison with the other doors etc.
Paying attention includes both focusing and some
concentration. We first focuse and limit the area af attention and then
concentrate, increase the binding depth somewhat.
The focused thing does not have to be a percievable object. One can focus on an abstract subject. The increasing attention transforms into
concentration.
Attention window is the area, details of which contents
are binded with their meanings. We see
the objects that are in the frame at which we focus our attention.
The attention window may be visually three dimensional as
in driving. Attention window is not
visual only. The area which has a high
relational depth forms the attention window when focusing on an abstract
subject.
While solving a problem, attention concentrates on
different aspects of the problem and subjects related to these. The relation’s depth and amount determines
the size of the attention window.
In tasks such as Air Traffic Control, the controller who
may be faced by serious problems, will have to redirect his/her attention
window, shed light upon other subjects, direct his/her attention just after solving the problem.
Experiments have proved that, even some of the things
that reside in the same screen may not be noticed, when the attention window
gets too small.
Situation Awareness requires awareness of the size of the
current attention window.
