18 Ways Attention Goes Wrong
When attention goes badly wrong it can play some nasty tricks on us.
Imagine if every time you walked into a room with a neatly turned down bed, you automatically took off your clothes and got into it -- even though it wasn't bedtime, wasn't your bed, and wasn't even your home. This might sound fanciful but it's a documented behaviour of patients with attentional problems caused by brain damage (Lhermitte, 1983).
Many everyday occurrences can also be explained by attentional errors, like when we miss obvious changes in the environment, fail at sports or simply forget to put the milk back in the fridge. More seriously psychologists have found that attentional processes can play a role in psychological problems like anxiety, panic, insomnia, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Here are 18 ways attention can go wrong, some very common, some extremely unusual, a few downright weird; each giving us an insight into how our minds work.
1. Utilisation behaviour
Experienced by people who have suffered certain types of damage to the frontal lobes: patients find themselves unable to resist the routine actions suggested by objects around them. They will get into neatly turned down beds, even though it's not their bed; they will put on glasses, even though they don't wear glasses; and they will start eating when they see a plate and cutlery, even though the plate is empty and they're not hungry. These strange behaviours, reported by Lhermitte (1983) and others, are partly caused by an inability to inhibit automatic behaviours, it's like the old comedy standby of a distracted person continuing to spoon sugar into their coffee, except much more extreme.
2. Spatial neglect
Brain damage can produce weird shifts in behaviour and experience. People with damage to certain areas of the right hemisphere fail to pay full attention to things they see on their left (because of the way the brain is wired, the right hemisphere processes information about the left-visual-field). They may only eat the food on the right-hand-side of their plate, or only shave half their face. They seem to see things to the left, but not to notice them.
3. The rubber gloves illusion
Competition for attention between the senses can create strange illusions. In one spooky study by Spence et al. (2000), participants were made to 'feel' a touch on empty rubber gloves in front of them, despite their own hands being hidden from sight underneath the table, free from tactile sensation. This suggests information from the visual system can override attention to tactile sensation (or lack thereof) from the hands, to create an apparently impossible sensation.
4. Pain
Even more than sight, though, pain is the ultimate attention-grabber. Unsurprisingly people who experience chronic pain of one kind or another can find it difficult to concentrate (Ecclestone, 1995). Pain pulls sufferers' attention away from task demands and forces them to continually re-focus to achieve their goal. One of the promising treatments for people suffering from chronic pain is 'attentional management': effectively helping people to direct less attention to their pain (Elomaa et al, 2009).
5. The cocktail party problem
The 'cocktail party effect' is our impressive ability to tune our auditory attention to just one voice at a party. Unfortunately for those with hearing loss this can become the cocktail party problem, a difficulty in separating one voice from all the others. Hearing aids can be somewhat helpful, but often can't restore full function (Marrone et al., 2008). This shows just how sensitive aural attention is to vocal characteristics: without precise information on spatial location, onset, offset, intensity and prosody, it's much more difficult to pluck one voice from a multitude.
6. Alcohol myopia
My favourite technical term for the insidious effect alcohol has on attention. After a couple of beers long-term consequences of actions are ignored in favour of short-term impulses. The intoxicated become attentionally short-sighted, even failing to spot clear environmental cues that things are going to end badly. Of course I wouldn't know anything about that: I just read it in a book. Ahem.
7. Errors of automaticity
When our attention is distracted we carry out highly practised behaviours automatically, occasionally at inappropriate times. Like putting the milk out and the cat in the fridge. In a classic diary study of everyday slips and lapses Reason (1979) got people to describe all sorts of cute out-of-context slips. One person reported unwrapping a sweet (candy to the rest of you), throwing the sweet away and putting the wrapper in his mouth, another to putting shaving cream on his toothbrush and another to going upstairs to change for the evening, then finding himself wearing pyjamas. Although practice makes perfect, it can also make an unthinking robot.
8. Inattentional & choice blindness
It's absolutely incredible what changes people will miss when they're distracted. Participants in psychology studies fail to spot a gorilla in plain sight (Simons & Chabris, 1999); don't notice their conversational partner has suddenly changed mid-conversation, albeit hidden by a conveniently passing door (Simons & Levin, 1998); and frequently fail to recognise which of two people they originally chose as the most attractive (dubbed by the authors choice blindness).
9. Ironic processes of control
In fact sometimes attention is a real bear. What about when you really want to get something right, like putt the ball, hit a beautiful serve right in the corner or reverse the car into a narrow space? Naturally you concentrate even harder than normal, really focus. Unfortunately that just seems to make things worse: you miss the putt by a mile, frame the ball 50ft in the air and ding the car. What gives? These are what Wegner et al. (1998) call 'ironic processes of control'. Sometimes too much attention is just as detrimental as too little.
10. Insomnia
It's all very well smirking at the irony of people unable to putt, serve or park, but anyone who has suffered insomnia knows it's no laughing matter. Attention gets a look in here as well. Recent research suggests that insomnia may be partly explained by an attentional bias towards 'sleep-related threat' (Harvey et al., 2005). In other words insomniacs keep themselves awake by focusing too much on the bodily sensations associated with sleep and any environmental noises that might be keeping them awake. Unfortunately also somewhat ironic.
11. Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
Now the most well-known of attention disorders, it consists of three broad types: (1) mostly inattentive, (2) mostly impulsive and hyperactive and (3) all three (jackpot). Those with the attention-deficit component find it difficult to concentrate, are easily distracted and likely to day-dream. The vast majority of those diagnosed with ADHD are children. ADHD is often partly treated with a stimulant (Ritalin), along with behaviour therapy.
12. Anxiety
You may be surprised to learn that anxiety is a sort of attention disorder, but being overly self-focused seems to be involved in many different mental health problems. Amongst people with social phobia and social anxiety their self-focused attention tends to maintain the problem (Spurr & Stopa, 2002). It makes perfect intuitive sense: a person continually thinking about themselves in social situations is bound to become more self-concious. Unfortunately it's another rather ironic process.
13. Panic attacks
Paying too much attention to bodily processes is a strong feature of those who experience panic attacks. Clearly we should all pay some attention to our bodily processes - otherwise we'd just ignore the toothache and our teeth would drop out. But people who experience panic attacks are hypervigilant to somatic sensations (Schmidt et al. (1997). One person's heartburn is another's death-knell.
14. Hypochondriasis
And talking of paying too much attention to bodily sensations, you'll be unsurprised to learn that hypochondriacs tend to be hypersensitive to odd twinges (Barsky et al., 1988).
15. Eating disorders
Again people with eating disorders like anorexia nervosa seem to have attentional biases around body image (Rieger et al., 1998)
16. Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
People with OCD typically carry out particular tasks -- like hand-washing -- repeatedly in order to relieve anxiety about an obsession. Excessive attention towards anxiety-inducing thoughts, particularly those that are threat-related seems to be at least partly to blame (Lavy, 1994).
17. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
After experiencing a traumatic event, most people will recover given time, but to a significant minority relief is elusive. They experience flashbacks, nightmares and the feeling of losing control. Attention seems to be involved as PTSD sufferers are especially attracted to and vigilant for negative stimuli in the environment (Vythilingham, 2007).
18. Depression
Like those with PTSD, people experiencing depression also show an enhanced processing for negative stimuli (Ingram et al., 1994). One important maintaining process in depression is thought to be rumination. Individuals who are more prone to going over negative experiences again and again are more susceptible to developing clinical depression.
Well balanced
In many, perhaps all these examples of how attention can go wrong, it isn't just attentional processes that are causing grief; psychological problems are frequently caused by many different factors. What this list does demonstrate, though, is how disruptions to attentional processes can cause or are involved in all kinds of different problems.
Something that psychologists are heard to say increasingly often is that the potential for many of these extreme experiences is within all of us. Anxiety, panic, insomnia and the rest are a part of the human condition - everyone can empathise to some extent.
What strikes home is how delicately balanced attentional processes have to be in order to produce pleasant everday experience. Too little attention and it's difficult to achieve goals in life, too much attention and it's hard to break free from loops of negative thinking and feeling.
→ Part 5 of a series on the psychology of attention →
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Very imformative, I especially liked the information on PTSD, depression, and panic attacks. The question - if memories are updated with new information then why is PTSD sometimes described as reliving? And if a person is encouraged to pay attention to good, healthy "information" will it naturally decrease symptoms like depression and panic attacks?
Good post! I found very interesting, specially because attention seems to have been quite ignored in psychology until a few years ago, and it has very strong influence in several problems and disorders. Attention is a so basic process that it can affect nearly everything!
Please bear with me. I understand what your post is trying to do here and I appreciated most of the article's points (especially how pain can be managed with re-directing attention) but when you add certain disorders like Panic attacks to the list, you are oversimplifying a complex autonomic reaction that has nothing to do with a person's being "hypervigilant to somatic sensations." I see your reference is from 1997. A lot has been learned about panic disorder since then.
Anxiety and panic are different. Panic is a fear reaction that is not anxiety or worry. Panic is an autonomic response - fear in the brain. That fear can be triggered by subconscious thoughts or the environment (danger or perception of danger including heat, elevation, even humidity).
Panic can also be induced by exercise or yoga, in which the nervous system reacts to the stress placed on the heart or nervous system in long-held poses. This is not a psychological reaction but a primal one, similar to the fear you would feel if you were actually being suffocated. The body would fight or flee.
It's taken me 30 years and a very good cardiologist to understand this disorder correctly. Beta and calcium channel blockers can alleviate this disorder better than anti-anxiety drugs because panic is not anxiety.
Please don't give it short shrift here. It is a complex disorder with a complex set of solutions. It is not caused by being oversensitive. While a lifetime of hypervigilance can induce changes in the nervous system that cause anxiety, it doesn't explain how one can have panic from very, very early, preverbal childhood. Most likely there may be some genetic or prenatal connection.
Ditto for your connecting rumination to depression. And grief is known to live in the tissues of the body (especially in the heart), sometimes for life.
I don't mean to discount your article. The subject of attention is very interesting and I was enjoying your take on it very much when you examine the neurological reasons for attention deviation. I just think you went a little too far into behavioral psych when you approach more complex conditions like panic and depression.
I think there's a little irony there if you say "the brain" has hits and misses when it comes to attending to actions but later you say that we need to "break free from loops of negative thinking and feeling" to be well balanced. Positive thinking isn't going to help the person who eats at an empty table.
Thank you for listening to my take on this very important subject.
I developed panic attacks after I lost the ability to turn left, right, and around without getting totally lost. The weird thing is as I began to relearn these skills; I had an assortment of memories to choose to react to. Memory #1 – I can do it. Memory #2 – I can’t do it. Memory #3 – I could, then couldn’t, and now sometimes can.
And while it is very true that “Positive thinking isn't going to help the person who eats at an empty table.” The question is – does that make an empty table a hopeless situation and therefore rationalize the fear?
Fear isn't rational, or psychological, it's physical, autonomic. Some fears are innate and cannot be removed. They might be mitigated by behavioral techniques that allow you to have "some" control over autonomic reactions after the fact, i.e., slowing your heart rate through breathing techniques, talking yourself down, etc. But this is different than removing the fear itself. I'm sure that those with neurological situations like eating at an empty table or seeing only half the room don't need to rationalize their disability nor are they condemned for not being able to overcome it.
I think panic fits into this category in that there should be no need to feel like you are responsible for "curing it" through sheer will or behavioral techniques.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that Oliver Sacks would agree that most of these neurological disorders are not curable (is hopeless) and so doctors should help patients cope with their dilemma without stigma (and hopefully with compassion and a little humor). I'm concerned about stigma when you start talking about rationalization.
When I had a panic attack from yoga, there was no choice how to react to it. Powerful chemicals were pumped into my body and would have to subside before I could be calm (I had tachycardia). I took a xanax instead of waiting. I also had a panic attack in a dinosaur exhibit where the loud roars and noises caused my system to react as if it were real. Panic disorder runs in the female line of my family. I'm sure there's a genetic origin.
So I'm not sure what you mean by rationalize the fear? Our culture sure takes a hard line against fear. We shun it, but it's natural and a survival instinct. Sometimes it runs amok in certain individuals.
I guess that is where the Bible comes into play for me. I have hope.
Oops. I had believed that I had a very rational reason for my panic attacks until today. Now I realize that an empty plate isn't hopeless.
While it could be true that I can not put food on the plate myself, it does not mean that food can not or will not be provided. I must be more flexible in my thinking. I have to open my mind to alternatives.
Whenever I drive my car, it takes me through the first few turns to my place of work, even when it's the weekend and I'm not going there.
Being on automatic pilot is something we all do - it cuts down on using our mental machinery - I think it's our brain's way of helping us. It's just that it doesn't!
Our brains aren't 'hard-wired' and this is evidence of it - everything is connected.
Thanks
Rob
Being on automatic pilot helps the child riding his bike to concentrate on the road rather than concentrate on the bike peddals. Driving a car really should be more of a conscious experience because traffic is never the same old same old. A police officer once told me that most accidents happen because we get lost in a routine and stop paying attention.
Man your blog rocks!
I especially love those series. Thanks for bring us such great content!
"Positive thinking isn't going to help the person who eats at an empty table."
But negative thinking can certainly get stuck in a feedback loop and spiral to dramatic proportions, causing us to react in ways that seem ridiculous in retrospect - or to others.
Positive thinking can cause looping spirals as well, they just usually don't have such negative consequences (unless one convinces oneself of one's invincibility and does something stupid, or something like that).
It's not a matter of positive or negative thinking, it's a matter of being able to break out of that thinking and think something else instead of being consumed by it.
This posting is great information, no matter how seriously your viewpoint. As a major in psychology and a sufferer of some attentional deficits, I can appreciate this article for what it is; I suggest people keep an open mind and simply do just that.
Nothing is set in stone, as the research and subsequent conclusions are all theories. There are no definitive answers for many of these topics; we all know each and every one of us reacts differently to the array of stimuli in our environment--varying not only because we're individual by nature, but also as a result of circumstantial factors.
For example, the remarks made by Diana are insightful. However, bear in mind that her input pertains exclusively to herself. I, too, had [supraventricular] tachycardia. This arrhythmic condition certainly has an impact on cognitive processes and may increase one's susceptibility to behavioral or mental disorders... Or it may not.
Each one of us has a different threshold against which our capacity to cope indicates the degree of trauma we experience. Panic disorder is not as simple as something that can be posted here. Similar to social anxiety or anything related to our locus of control, it is a combination of complex reactions in the mind-body cause-effect cycle that defines the everyday human condition.
At the risk of becoming embroiled in debate, the statement as I read it says that, "Paying too much attention to bodily processes is a strong feature of those who experience panic attacks." The article is on attention and therefore it touches on a part of panic attacks that is related to attention. It does not claim that panic attacks are created solely by missapointed attention or that it is the sole fix.
Chris,
What do you think society offers as part of the sole fix of somebody who lost lower skills associated with full blown PTSD? Pills? Mental institution? Now add sexual abuse to the equation. And remember doctors treat symptoms, not problems. What are the symptoms of panic attacks?
Chris,
Indeed, the article's focus was attention. Naturally, allusions to disorders that, in part, are due to attentional problems are thereby warranted; the author was not trying to thoroughly explain panic disorder, but merely highlight its relation to distortions in attention.