Attended stimulus refers to the stimulus that a person is attending to at a given point in time.
In the context of psychology, an attended stimulus refers to the object or event that an individual is focusing their attention on. It is the sensory input that receives an individual's conscious attention and processing.
Examples of attended stimuli include a person's name being called out in a crowded room, a car horn blaring in traffic, or a specific visual feature in a complex image, such as a particular color or shape. Essentially, the attended stimulus is whatever an individual chooses to focus their attention on at a given moment.
The concept of attended stimuli is closely related to selective attention, which refers to the cognitive process by which an individual focuses on a particular stimulus while ignoring or filtering out others. The attended stimulus, in this case, is the target of the individual's selective attention, while the other stimuli are considered irrelevant or distracting.
Similar concepts to the attended stimulus include the unattended stimulus, which refers to sensory input that an individual is not actively focusing on, but which may still affect their behavior or cognition in some way. For example, a person may be reading a book while also hearing the sound of rain outside their window. Although they are not actively attending to the sound of the rain, it may still influence their mood or level of distraction.
Another related concept is the concept of divided attention, which refers to the ability to attend to multiple stimuli simultaneously. In situations where an individual is required to monitor and respond to multiple stimuli at once, such as while driving or playing a video game, they must divide their attention between different sources of sensory input.
Overall, the concept of the attended stimulus is a fundamental aspect of human cognition and perception. It plays a critical role in the way we process and respond to sensory information, and it can have a significant impact on our behavior and decision-making. Understanding how attention and selective attention work can help us to better understand the ways in which we interact with the world around us, and how we can improve our cognitive functioning and decision-making abilities.