FREE ESSAY ON CHILDHOOD SCHIZOPHRENIA

CHILDHOOD SCHIZOPHRENIA

Attention can be defined as the concentrated direction of the mind. We can also improve
and develop it in our struggle to grasp the best possible understanding of the world
around us so as to exploit it to our best interest. Without the aptitude of attention the
amount of information available in the environment would be infinite. For example when
someone is faced with a life-threatening situation one needs to be economical in dealing
with the information arriving at his/her senses. Even in normal circumstances our
environment is a buzz of chaos, and we need to select from many different events those to
which we should attend in any given moment. Selective attention provides the means by
which we reduce the workload on our mental systems. The restriction of mental processing
to one event at a time is called "selective attention". Our ability to attend the one
main event whilst being remotely conscious of the others provides the psychologist with
the paradox of how attention can be both a selective and a divided process
simultaneously.
Cherry in 1953 (sited in Eysenk, 2000), gave subjects a dichotic listening task to
perform. This involved wearing a stereo headphone, which enabled the experimenter to
present one message to one ear and a second message to the other ear. However what
interested Cherry was how much of the unattended channel was only analysed by the subject
at a very primitive level. For instance the subject was aware of the sex of the speaker
but had no awareness of the context of the message. Cherry concluded that the unattended
channel was analysed for its physical properties, such as tone and pitch, but nothing
deeper than that.
Broadbent (1959; sited in Eysenk, 2000) devised a model to explain how he believed
attention is controlled by a 'filter'. This simplified version of Broadbent's theory
shows that information that becomes filtered out of the system will receive only a low
level of analysis. This systems explains much of the experimental findings of studies
such as that of Cherry, yet it fails to explain how people respond to information such as
their own name in the unattended channel and what decides that the system should tune to
one channel rather than the other. 
For that matter, Treisman (1960; sited in Eysenk, 2000) pointed out a number of flaws in
Broadbent's filter theory of attention. In one task her subjects shadowed the message to
one ear whilst the unattended message contained random strings of words. However, whilst
the task was in progress the channels were reversed, and the shadowed and random-word
channels were swapped over. Her subjects were not aware that the meaningful message had
been transferred to the channel that had previously been occupied by the random words and
they continued to shadow it without interruption.
Treisman (1964; sited in Eysenk, 2000) again showed that subjects do analyse information
in the unattended channel at the semantic level. Her subjects were bilingual. They were
given the task of shadowing a message in one channel whilst the unattended channel
contained the same message but in their second language. Treisman found that subjects
were aware that the unattended channel was repeating the shadowed message and this must
mean that they were making a semantic analysis of the non-shadowed channel. To explain
this Treisman proposed a model in which the unattended message is 'attenuated' in much
the same way that one would turn down the volume of the radio in order to concentrate on
the message coming from the television. 
In Treisman's model, instead of blocking the meaning of the unattended channel the
selection device simply attenuate it, causing less overall disturbance to the primary
high level analysis of information taking place in the attended channel. However
Treisman's model does not explain enough about the nature of the attenuator 'device', for
instance how the attenuator controls attention and how the things in the unattended
channel are salient enough to be brought up into primary attention. In other words, what
is the attenuator and what is the attenuator control the basis of its function? Is the
attenuator control itself controlled by an attenuator control controller? Treisman's
model therefor does not generate clear predictions owing to these and these and other
issues related to the complexity and the ambiguity of its design. Another historical
reason why Treisman's model was unpopular was that it did not fit into the two-process
model of memory.
What seems to emerge from the research and theory discussed above is that some tasks
require a greater attention than others do. This is why more than one thing can be done
at the same time - no one of them requires the full capacity of the attention system. But
however skilled one is at a particular activity and therefore, however much attention can
be devoted to some other concurrent task or tasks, surely there is some overall limit to
how many things we can do simultaneously. Furthermore our capacity for dividing attention
between tasks increases with practice on them. It may then be possible to develop our
cognitive resources in more efficient ways once the principles are more clearly mapped
out.
Bibliography
Gleitman, H., Fridlund, A.J., & Reisberg, D. (1999). Psychology. (5th Edition). New York:
Norton. Pp 227-228; 244-247. 
Eysenk, M. W., & Keane, M.T. (1995) Cognitive psychology. A student's handbook. 3rd
Edition. Hove, UK: Psychology Press. Pp. 97-107.
Atkinson R.L., Atkinson R.C., et.al, (2000). Hilgard's Introduction to Psychology. Ed.
13th. Atkinson R.L., Atkinson R.C., et.al, (2000). Harcourt Brace, USA
Richard Grosh (1996). Psychology the Science of Mind and Behaviour. 3rd Edition. Hodder &
Stoughton.