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| Field of llusion...can you find it? |
To use the metaphor inspired by the brilliantly forward-thinking 19th Century American psychologist, William James, our visual attention system works a lot like a spotlight that scans the world around us. This ‘attentional spotlight’ represents the finite region of space that is occupied by our focus of attention at any given moment. What falls inside the spotlight is consciously processed while that which is outside is not. By moving our eyes around a visual scene, we can shine our spotlight on any area of the environment we want to inspect in detail. In fact, in-depth processing of an object, a string of text, or a location can’t be carried out unless it is first brought inside the spotlight of attention. Our conscious awareness operates like a spotlight, bringing the details that matter into sharp relief.
We have a localized spotlight of attention because taking in all the visual information from the environment at once would overwhelm the brain, which is a system with limited resources, much like a computer. The spotlight allows your mind to focus only on what's important while ignoring the irrelevant. This makes reality comprehensible.
Now imagine that this attentional behavior is going on all the time. As the threat bias filters out the positive and lets in only the negative, worry and fear flow through the cognitive system. The result is an overly threat-conscious appraisal of the environment. Essentially, to the anxious, the world literally looks like a much scarier, unhappier place.
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