Absent-mindedness can refer to three very different things:
- a low level of attention ("blanking" or “zoning out”);
- intense attention to a single object of focus (hyperfocus) that makes a person oblivious to events around him or her; or
- unwarranted distraction of attention from the object of focus by irrelevant thoughts or environmental events.
Consequences
editLapses of attention are clearly a part of everyone’s life. Some are merely inconvenient, such as missing a familiar turn-off on the highway, and some are extremely serious, such as failures of attention that cause accidents, injury, or loss of life.[1] Beyond the obvious costs of accidents arising from lapses in attention there is lost time, efficiency, personal productivity, and quality of life in the lapse and recapture of awareness and attention to everyday tasks. Individuals for whom intervals between lapses are very short are typically viewed as impaired.[2] Given the prevalence of attentional failures in everyday life and the ubiquitous and sometimes disastrous consequences of such failures, it is rather surprising that relatively little work has been done to directly measure individual differences in everyday errors arising from propensities for failures of attention.[3]
Fictional absent-minded characters
edit- Hay Lin
- Amberglas ("The Seven Towers" by Patricia Wrede)
- Alicja (detectives by Joanna Chmielewska, Alicja is described by the author as "the epitome of absent-mindedness")
- The Absent-Minded Professor
- Caboose
- Near
- Kiri Koshiba
See also
editFootnotes
edit- ^ Carriere, J. S. A., Cheyne, J. A., & Smilek, D. (2008). Everyday Attention Lapses and Memory Failures: The Affective Consequences of Mindlessness. Consciousness and Cognition Sep;17(3):835-47. Epub 2007 June 15.
- ^ Robertson, I. H. (2003). The absent mind attention and error. The Psychologist, 16, 9, 476-479.
- ^ Giambra, L. M. (1995). A laboratory method for investigating influences on switching attention to task-unrelated imagery and thought. Consciousness and Cognition, 4, 1-21.
Further reading
edit- Reason, J. T. (1982). Absent-minded? The Psychology of Mental Lapses and Everyday Errors. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
- Reason, J. T. (1984). Lapses of attention in everyday life. In R. Parasuraman & D. R. Davies (Eds.), Varieties of attention. New York: Academic Press.
- Reason, J. T. (1990). Human Error. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Schacter, D.L. 1983. Amnesia observed: Remembering and forgetting in a natural environment. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 92, 236-42.
External links
edit
- Oops! The Absent and Wandering Mind, University of Waterloo