Attention Span

You hear a lot about the Attention Span of children, but I think there are two other considerations in regards to someone's ability to pay attention: Depth and Breadth.

A couple of personal experiences have sparked this idea, the first being learning to drive. Personally, I know all the things I'm supposed to be paying attention to simultaneously while driving, but when it comes down to it I really cannot spread my attention across all of them.......or even very many of them. In a similar vein, one of my friends has trouble cooking an entire meal all at once. Instead she will cook the chicken, eat it, then cook the corn, eat that, then come back and fix the next item, and so on. Both of us seem to have difficulty with "multi-tasking" or paying sufficient attention to more than one thing at a time. This is what brought the idea of Attention Breadth to my mind. How much a person can pay attention to and notice at once can be an advantage or disadvantage in a busy fast-paced culture, but I don't think I would go so far as to assume that having broad attention is the ideal state of being for everyone.

In regards to breadth of attention, I have noticed that some people seem to notice more in their surroundings, and be able to interact competantly with more than one activity or conversation at once. They don't ever seem to be too engrossed in something to not notice other things going on around them, or to not remember something they know is coming up in the near future. Because of the wide area their attention takes in, I would immagine that some people may assume these people are easily distracted or 'have a short attention span.' But that's not really the case, they just seem to take in and process more things all at once, which can cause what they do or mention to others (who aren't taking in the same ammount) to seem scattered and hard to follow. On the other hand people with great breadth of attention may percieve others who don't notice as much as they do as being too 'out of it.' I think for some people who have this breadth of attention, it can even be necessary for them to have several things to do or think about at once so that they don't get bored or antsy, thus causing them to be at their peak when they have a lot going on.

Another observation I've had about people for quite a long time is that frequently when someone is chided for 'not paying attention' or for 'spacing out' it is not because their brains are vacant (as the assumption seems to be), but rather because they are so intensely absorbed in one thought or paying so much attention to one thing they are doing, that they simply don't have any attention to spare to notice that someone else is talking to them or something else is happening. This is Depth of Attention, and something which I believe is very valuable to people as a whole, in spite of the 'absent minded proffessor' style misshaps it may cause. I'm not sure that Depth and Breadth of attention are necessarily mutually exclusive, but that may be the case. It certainly seems that the ability to focus in depth on one thing brings with it the ability to 'tune out' the myriad of other things which might vie for attention. This intense 'deep' attention can cause everything else, not only in one's surroundings, but also in one's mind, to disappear for the time being from one's consciousness. This is merely assumption, but it would seem that with just one thing to process, the mental sharpness to analyse it with and the level of understanding gained would be much greater than when taking in a lot of things at once. Whether or not that is true, it does seem like some people have a natural inclination to be more thorough, detailed, or deep in their investigation or consideration of something that they have turned their attention to, while others tend to engage less fully with anything, regardless of how long they are paying attention to it.

It would seem logical if there was some connection between either E and I or S and N and having breadth or depth of attention, but I'm not sure if this actually plays out in real life or not.