Editing Attention (section)

===1910–1949===
During this period, research in attention waned and interest in behaviorism flourished, leading some to believe, like [[Ulric Neisser]], that in this period, "There was no research on attention". However, Jersild published very important work on "Mental Set and Shift" in 1927. He stated, "The fact of mental set is primary in all conscious activity.  The same stimulus may evoke any one of a large number of responses depending upon the contextual setting in which it is placed".<ref>{{cite journal| vauthors = Jersild AT |year=1927|title= Mental set and shift |journal= Archives of Psychology |volume=14 |issue= 89 |pages= 5–82 |url= https://archive.org/details/mentalsetshift00jers }}</ref> This research found that the time to complete a list was longer for mixed lists than for pure lists. For example, if a list was names of animals versus a list of the same size with names of animals, books, makes and models of cars, and types of fruits, it takes longer to process the second list. This is [[Task switching (psychology)|task switching]].

In 1931, Telford discovered the [[psychological refractory period]].  The stimulation of neurons is followed by a refractory phase during which neurons are less sensitive to stimulation. In 1935 [[John Ridley Stroop]] developed the Stroop Task which elicited the [[Stroop Effect]]. Stroop's task showed that irrelevant stimulus information can have a major impact on performance.  In this task, subjects were to look at a list of colors. This list of colors had each color typed in a color different from the actual text. For example, the word Blue would be typed in Orange, Pink in Black, and so on.

Example:  '''<span style="color:red">Blue</span> <span style="color:green">Purple</span> <span style="color:blue">Red</span> <span style="color:brown">Green</span> <span style="color:red">Purple</span> <span style="color:purple">Green</span>'''

Subjects were then instructed to say the name of the ink color and ignore the text. It took 110 seconds to complete a list of this type compared to 63 seconds to name the colors when presented in the form of solid squares.<ref name="Johnson 2004 1–24"/> The naming time nearly doubled in the presence  of conflicting color words, an effect known as the Stroop Effect.