Arthur F. Kramer – författare

The study of attention in the laboratory has been crucial to understanding the mechanisms that support several different facets of attentional processing: Our ability to both divide attention among multiple tasks and stimuli, and selectively focus it on task-relevant information, while ignoring distracting task-irrelevant information, as well as how top-down and bottom-up factors influence the way that attention is directed within and across modalities. Equally important, however, is research that has attempted to scale up to the real world this empirical work on attention that has traditionally been well controlled by limited laboratory paradigms and phenomena. These types of basic and theoretically guided applied research on attention have benefited immeasurably from the work of Christopher Wickens. This book honors Wickens'' many important contributions to the study of attention by bringing together researchers who examine real-world attentional problems and questions in light of attentional theory. The research fostered by Wickens'' contributions will enrich not only our understanding of human performance in complex real-world systems, but also reveal the gaps on our knowledge of basic attentional processes.

Attention has been one of the most popular subjects in basic cognitive-psychology research, and so its study has generated much empirical data and many theoretical explanations. It has also become a very important factor for those who study how we interact with technological systems and environments. How can these researchers in human-technology interaction take advantage of all the knowledge amassed on attention in basic-science research? This volume addresses this question by bringing together the leading researchers who have pursued both the development of models and theories of attention and their application to investigating and solving practically relevant problems in areas such as aircraft and automobile design, technology applications for health care settings and the home, and adapting technology for the aging population. The volume will include a comprehensive introduction on briding theory and practice in the psychology of attention and a conclusion outlining a future research agenda.