Chapter 3 - Perceptual Processes II: Attention and Consciousness

Chapter 3 discusses three types of attention: divided, selective, and saccadic eye movement. Divided attention is trying to pay attention to more than one detail, but causes a decrease in accuracy when this is done. Selective attention is where someone is instructed to respond selectively to certain kinds of information, while ignoring other information. Saccadic eye movements is the process which our visual system makes during reading. Chapter 3 also discusses consciousness, which is the awareness that people have about the outside world and about their perceptions, images, thoughts, memories, and feelings.

So far, we have learned about the types of perception: visual, audio, facial, and speech and I believe that when one is conscious of what is going on around them, using these perceptions, they are more aware and can give better attention.

This chapter was very interesting, so I understood most of it. One thing I had to reread to understand better was the working memory.

I would like to apply this to my own teaching by using my conscious to pay more attention to which students have high working-memory versus low working-memory.

After trying all of the demonstrations the author provided, that was proof enough to believe these theories. I fell for every one of them.

It is important to know this information in order to be able to know our students better through knowing their attention processing capabilities. The saccadic movements students use to read will help me differentiate from the poor readers and the good readers.

I would use the saccadic eye movement in order to help students practice being better readers. I am currently researching the EyeQ reading program, which I think helps with improving reading by exercising the eyes by reading words on a computer screen from left to right.

This EyeQ program is very expensive, so I believe this may be accomplished just by having students read anything on a computer screen or maybe have the words fly across the computer to build faster readers (it may start out slow, then move faster as the student progresses).