Field of Consciousness | Psychology

This article provides an overview on Fields of Consciousness.

The ‘Field of Consciousness’ is divided into two parts:

(i) The ‘field of attention’ and

(ii) The ‘field of inattention’.

The field of attention is the focus of consciousness. It is the region of clear and distinct consciousness. The field of inattention is the margin of consciousness. It is the region of vague and indistinct consciousness. The field of attention is the region of discriminated consciousness.

The field of inattention is the region of un-discriminated conscious­ness. The farther from the focus of consciousness, the more indistinct is the consciousness; the nearer the focus of consciousness, the more distinct is the consciousness.

Stout wrongly calls dim and indistinct consciousness sub-con­sciousness. He asserts that there are indistinct and un-discriminated contents of consciousness, which are present to the mind, but which are not clearly distinguished from one another. He calls such implicit awareness ‘sub-consciousness’. We prefer to call such implicit and indistinct consciousness the margin of consciousness or marginal consciousness.

Sometimes ‘inattention’ is used in the sense of attention to an undesirable object. A student is rebuked by his teacher for his inattention in the class-room. Here the student is not attentive to the lecture to which he should attend; but he attends to other things to which he should not attend at the time, e.g., the noise in the compound, the passing motor-car, the trees and birds outside, or music in a neighbouring house.

This is the popular meaning of ‘inattention’. In psychology we take it in the sense of vague and indistinct consciousness.

Attention and Interest:

Attention is selective activity of the mind. It is a mental process of function. It is determined by effective disposition or interest. Interest is an enduring disposition. It is a mental structure which supplies the driving power needed for conative activity. The stronger is the interest, the greater is the force it generates, which arouses and sustains attention. Thus interest as an enduring disposition determines attention.

McDougall says, “Interest is latent attention; attention is interest in action.” Interest is an enduring disposition which is manifested in attention. It is a latent attention. Attention lies dormant in interest. If there is a interest in the mind, it will be ready to attend to the objects which will satisfy it.

Interest is the condition of attention. It is the subjective determinant of attention. Attention is interest in action. Interest is expressed in attention.

Interest means, what ‘matters’. It is the affective-conative disposition which prompts attention and sustains it. It not only generates the force that makes attention possible, but also sustains it. Why the mind attends to certain objects to the exclusion of others depends upon its native or acquired interest.

Native interest is instinct-interest. Acquired interest is acquired by experience. Sentiments for objects and ideas are acquired interest. They are emotional dispositions: Native or acquired interest is an enduring disposition or structure which determines attention.

Interest gives the drive of attention. Drever regards interest as “a disposition in its dynamic aspect.” It is the fundamental affective factor which gives an experience “meaning”. “Feeling of value” or “worthwhileness” expresses this aspect of experience clearly.

When we speak of an interest, we refer to an affective disposition. An interest is not an affective experience. It is of the nature of a disposition. It is structure of the mind, not a function of it. Attention is determined by interest.

Native interest or instinct-interest determines sensory and immediate attention. We attend to those objects which appeal to our instincts. Sentiments or acquired interests determine derived, and voluntary attention. If a person has sentiment of patriotism, anything affecting the weal or woe of his country will evoke his attention. Self-regarding sentiment determines sustained voluntary attention.

Interest is a subjective condition of attention. It is always accompanied by attention. If you have interest in music, you are sure to attend to it. The greater.is the interest, the greater is the attention. But attention is not always accompanied by interest. We attend to many things in which we do not find any interest.

We add up figures in the office though we do not take any interest in them. Nor is it true that the greater is the attention, the greater is the interest. Attention and interest do not invariably go together. They are not identical with each other. Interest is a condition of attention. But attention is not a condition of interest. Nor is it invariably accompanied by interest.

The object of attention may be related to the self in, different ways. It may further its ends and evoke pleasurable interest in it. Or it may thwart its ends and evoke painful interest in it. The account of a battle may evoke a pleasurable interest in a soldier of an optimistic disposition, who looks for his promotion.

The same account may evoke a painful interest in another soldier of a pessimistic disposition, who is overwhelmed by the fear of death.

Sometimes we speak of interest not as a fleeting process but as a stable condition or bias of the mind. We possess permanent interest in football, photography, or gardening. These permanent interests also determine attention.

Not only is interest at the moment a condition of attention, but also a permanent interest determines attention. The systematized bodies of beliefs make up our intel­lectual, moral, and religious interests. These permanent human interests also determine attention.

Development of Attention:

Attention is subject to development. It passes through three stages in its development. First, there is primary, immediate, non ­voluntary attention. It is determined by instinct-interest; it is an instinctive, exploratory sort of attention.

It is favoured by the native factors of advantage. The intensity, suddenness, novelty, striking quality, and other characteristics of the stimuli or situations favour this kind of non-voluntary attention. Next comes the stage of forced, derived, secondary, or voluntary attention. It is driven by extraneous motives, such as fear or self-assertion.

The influence of social forces acts upon the mind in voluntary attention. Finally, the stage of objective interest comes. Attention prompted by objective interest, again, becomes spontaneous. It is determined by acquired interest. Thus attention is forced only in the middle stage. The child attends to pictures in his primer spontaneously. His at­tention is primary, immediate, and non-voluntary.

Then he attends to the alphabet, words, and sentences with the help of pictures. Gradually he exerts his will to attend to them, and his attention becomes voluntary. Then he reads paragraphs and whole lessons. His attention becomes secondary, derived, forced, and voluntary.

Then he acquires objectives interest in his study, and he reads his lessons without any effort of the will. He attends to them spon­taneously. This is the third stage of attention. It is determined by permanent interests sustained by the sentiment of self-regard.

Attention and Consciousness:

Some psychologists hold that attention is nothing but clear and vivid consciousness. Titchener maintains that attention does not depend upon mental activity, but upon the vividness of mental process. He identifies attention with sensory clearness or vivid consciousness.

But this is view is wrong, because vivid consciousness is the effect of attention, and not identical with it. Attention is of the nature of conation. It is the mental activity which is focussed on an object and produces a clear and vivid consciousness of it.

Ward holds that attention is the pre-condition of consciousness. Attention is the minimal activity of the mind which makes conscious­ness possible. There are movements of attention within attention. These movements of attention are acts of fixation of the mind. These are the conditions of clear and vivid consciousness.

This view is wrong. Ward uses the term attention in an unusual sense. Attention means focussing the mind. The act of focussing is a condition of clear and vivid consciousness. Attention, in this sense, is not a condition of dim consciousness. In fact, dim conscious­ness is a prior condition of attention. We cannot attend to an object unless we are dimly conscious of it already.

Thus dim consciousness is a prior condition of attention. Attention is a prior condition of clear and vivid consciousness. But attention is not identical with clear and vivid consciousness. Nor is it a condition of consciousness in itself, or dim and indistinct consciousness.

The Effect of Habit on Attention:

Habit has a two-fold effect upon attention. First, we can develop the habit of attention to relevant and desirable objects. We can cultivate the habit of fixing the mind on our lessons and other objects which have healthy influence upon the mind.

Secondly, we can also develop the habit of inattention to irrelevant and undesirable objects. Those who live near a market, cultivate the habit of not attending to the din and bustle of the place.

Those who live near a railway station cultivate the habit of inattention to the whistling and rattling sounds of the trains. The individual forms habits of attention and habits of inattention in adapting himself to the environment effectively. Without these habits, our life would be a confusion.

Motor Adjustments in Attention:

Attention involves certain motor adjustments. First, there is the general attentive attitude. In sensory attention the whole body is adjusted to the object. When we watch a game, we stand erect, lean-forward, crane our neck, and adjust the whole body to the object of attention. In ideational attention also we assume a similar rigid attitude. In attention the whole body is oriented towards its object.

Secondly, there is the motor adjustment of the sense-organs. In sensory attention there is the adaptation of the sense-organs to the objects. In vision, for example, the eye must converge upon the objects, and the lenses must be accommodated to the distance of the object.

In hearing, the ears are adapted to the sound. In touch, we explore the object with the hand. In smelling, we inhale in order to bring the odorous particles into contact with the olfactory mem­brane at the upper part of the nasal cavity. In tasting, we press against the substance in the mouth with the tongue.

In all sensations, we adapt the sense-organs to their objects. Sensory attention is always accompanied by accommodatory movements of the sense-organ concerned that make the sensation more adequate and complete. The movements are the immediate outcome of attending. They are partly non-voluntary in their nature. They come without thought.

In ideational attention also there is slight adaptation of the sense organs concerned with the objects. If we attempt to recall the image of our house, we find that our eyes tend to turn in the direction of the imagined locality. In recalling, an odour we make slight movements of inhalation. In recalling a taste we make slight movements of the tongue.

Thirdly, attention is accompanied by a contraction of most of the muscles of the body due to overflow of motor excitations. When a person strongly attends to any object, he becomes tense, his brow wrinkles, his teeth are set, his fists are clenched. Tension increases with greater attention.

In sensory and ideational attention both, there are certain inhibitory processes. In very close attention to sensible objects the body becomes tense and motionless. This fixed and motionless attitude of the body facilitates attention. It excludes disturbing influences which might otherwise interfere with it. In ideational attention also the disturbing movements of the body are inhibited to prevent its distraction.

Fourthly, there are certain other movements due to individual peculiarities. Some persons scratch their heads; some compress their lips; some pull their beard; some look in a particular direction.

These motor factors are not the only physiological processes in attention. In sensory attention there is the activity of the sensory centres corresponding to the different sensations, and of the motor centres in adapting and controlling certain muscles. And the activity of the centres in the brain involves increased supply of blood to the centres.

In attention, there are vivid sensations in the focus of conscious­ness or the field of attention, and dim impressions in the margin of consciousness or the field of inattention. Vivid sensations are due to nervous reinforcement while dim sensations are due to nervous inhibition. Titchener offers this explanation of the vivid and dim sensations in the focus and the margin respectively.

When a teacher rebukes a pupil for his inattentiveness, the pupil is not absolutely inattentive. He attends to something other than the lesson, which arouses his interest at the moment. Thus inattention does not mean the total absence of attention; inattention to one thing means attention to some other improper thing.

The so-called inattention of a person is really attention to something at the moment undesired. The objects of relative inattention produce dim impressions in the margin of consciousness or the field of inattention. Absolute inattention is impossible in waking consciousness. There is no such thing as total inattention in normal waking life.

In normal waking life there is no absolute inattention. It is possible in a state of sleep or swoon. It may be produced by the shock of a sudden and violent excitement. Otherwise, we always attend to some object or other in normal waking life, though our attention always rambles fitfully from object to object.

But it is nearly always present in some degree. Relative inattention is a constant feature of our normal waking life, although absolute inattention is rare in it.

Distraction:

When we attend to one thing, very often our attention is distracted by other things. When you read a book, your attention is diverted to music in an adjoining house, or a talk among your friends. Anything that interferes with attention is a distraction. It competes for attention. It has some factors of advantage.

Distraction may be overcome in several ways. First, it may be overcome by throwing greater energy into the task. In order to overcome distraction while reading, you may read aloud to drown the distracting noise. Secondly, it may be overcome by forming a habit of inattention to the distraction which recurs frequently.

If you live near a railway station, you gradually cultivate the habit of inattention to the. whistling and rattling sounds of running trains by fixing your attention on your tasks which are interesting.

This is negative adaptation of attention. Distraction will loose their force automatically when you get absorbed in an interesting task. If you try to ward off a distraction consciously, you will keep it in the foreground. So do not try to fight off the distraction.

You should have an increased positive concentration on your own task. Thirdly, in certain cases distraction may be overcome by linking it with the main task. The beginner at the harmonium finds it difficult to use both the hands. When the right hand presses the reeds, the left hand ceases to blow. But by practice he can couple both the hands and play upon the harmonium efficiently.

It is interesting to observe that a certain amount of distraction increases the efficiency of work, instead of decreasing it. When distracted, the individual gets an incentive to work. He is urged to rise to the occasion and master the situation.

His self-regarding sentiment spurs him on to work. But when distraction is violent, it decreases efficiency of work because the mental energy cannot cope with it. In overcoming distraction there is a drain of mental energy and a consequent fatigue.