🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3671@cup.portal.com> roger_warren_tang@cup.portal.com writes:
>
>    Instead of guessing, why not asky the cognitive people?
>
>
>    And they'll tell you that humans pay attention to only one thing at a time.
This is a distortion of what "attention" means.  Humans have a primary
attention *focus*, but they simultaneously receive and process other
information - which can mean information from another sense (hearing,
smell, feel, etc.) or from a non-central part of the visual field
(noticing motion "out of the corner of your eye", for example).  This
information is not the focus of your attention, but processing it is
being attended to.

>The example about gauges and flying is inaccurrate; a pilot glances outside,
>then to the gauges and then outside again.
The example *is* relevant.  When you fly on instruments, you cannot
stop yourself from receiving peripheral-vision information about the
orientation of the horizon (assuming it's visible), except by wearing
a hood that cuts off your external view.  Such hoods are standard gear
for practicing instrument flying in visual-flight weather.
--
Dick St.Peters                        
GE Corporate R&D, Schenectady, NY
stpeters@ge-crd.arpa              
uunet!steinmetz!stpeters