Editing Cognitive psychology (section)

===Attention===
{{main|Attention}}
The psychological definition of [[attention]] is "a state of focused awareness on a subset of the available sensation perception information".<ref name=APA>{{cite web|title=How does the APA define "psychology"? |url=http://www.apa.org/support/about/apa/psychology.aspx#answer |access-date=15 November 2011}}</ref> A key function of attention is to identify irrelevant data and filter it out, enabling significant data to be distributed to the other [[mental processes]].<ref name="Anderson" /> For example, the human brain may simultaneously receive [[Auditory system|auditory]], [[visual]], [[olfactory]], [[taste]], and [[Touch|tactile]] information. The brain is able to consciously handle only a small subset of this information, and this is accomplished through the attentional processes.<ref name=Anderson />

Attention can be divided into two major attentional systems: exogenous control and endogenous control.<ref name="Chicaetal2013">{{Cite journal |doi=10.1016/j.bbr.2012.09.027|pmid=23000534|title=Two cognitive and neural systems for endogenous and exogenous spatial attention|journal=Behavioural Brain Research|volume=237|pages=107–123|year=2013|last1=Chica|first1=Ana B.|last2=Bartolomeo|first2=Paolo|last3=Lupiáñez|first3=Juan|s2cid=22314128}}</ref> Exogenous control works in a bottom-up manner and is responsible for [[orienting reflex]], and pop-out effects.<ref name="Chicaetal2013" /> Endogenous control works top-down and is the more deliberate attentional system, responsible for [[Attention#Multitasking and divided attention|divided attention]] and conscious processing.<ref name="Chicaetal2013" />

One major focal point relating to [[attention]] within the field of cognitive psychology is the concept of divided attention. A number of early studies dealt with the ability of a person wearing headphones to discern meaningful conversation when presented with different messages into each ear; this is known as the dichotic listening task.<ref name=Anderson /> Key findings involved an increased understanding of the mind's ability to both focus on one message, while still being somewhat aware of information being taken in from the ear not being consciously attended to. For example, participants (wearing earphones) may be told that they will be hearing separate messages in each ear and that they are expected to attend only to information related to basketball. When the experiment starts, the message about basketball will be presented to the left ear and non-relevant information will be presented to the right ear. At some point the message related to basketball will switch to the right ear and the non-relevant information to the left ear. When this happens, the listener is usually able to repeat the entire message at the end, having attended to the left or right ear only when it was appropriate.<ref name="Anderson" /> The ability to attend to one conversation in the face of many is known as the [[cocktail party effect]].

Other major findings include that participants cannot comprehend both passages when shadowing one passage, they cannot report the content of the unattended message, while they can shadow a message better if the pitches in each ear are different.<ref name="Cherry">{{Cite journal |doi=10.1121/1.1907229|title=Some Experiments on the Recognition of Speech, with One and with Two Ears|journal=The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America|volume=25|issue=5|pages=975–979|year=1953|last1=Cherry|first1=E. Colin|bibcode=1953ASAJ...25..975C|hdl=11858/00-001M-0000-002A-F750-3|hdl-access=free}}</ref> However, while deep processing does not occur, early sensory processing does. Subjects did notice if the pitch of the unattended message changed or if it ceased altogether, and some even oriented to the unattended message if their name was mentioned.<ref name="Cherry" />