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<p>Assessed the cortical concomitants of selective mode-specific attention in Ss differing in the capacity for sustained attentional involvement. 10 high- and 10 low-scoring Ss on the Tellegen Absorption Scale were required to (a) simply attend to either a randomly flashing light or a randomly produced tapping sensation on the forearm during one block of trials and to (b) count the flashes and the taps during another trial block. The EEG was recorded from the left occipital and left sensorimotor regions and was filtered for alpha activity and quantified on line. Selective mode-specific attention produced reliable shifts in cortical patterning between kinesthetic and visual attention trials. During the counting condition, high-scoring Ss showed significantly greater specificity in cortical patterning than did low-scoring Ss. This difference was primarily a function of high-scoring Ss' ability to inhibit activation in the occipital region while counting taps. Findings suggest that high scores on the Absorption scale are associated with a flexible attentional style and that, given the requisite task demands, attentionally absorbed Ss show greater mode-specific cortical patterning during selective attention than do low scorers. (36 ref)</p>
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<p>Divides the study of human attention into 3 components: alertness, selectivity, and processing capacity. Experimental techniques designed to separate these components and examine their interrelations within comparable tasks are outlined. It is shown that a stimulus may be used to increase alertness for processing all external information, to improve selection of particular stimuli, or to do both simultaneously. Development of alertness and selectivity are separable, but may go on together without interference. Moreover, encoding a stimulus may proceed without producing interference with other signals. Thus, the contact between an external stimulus and its representation in memory does not appear to require processing capacity. Limited capacity results are obtained when mental operations, E.g., response selection or rehearsal, must be performed on the encoded information. (45 ref.)</p>