The world is full of stimuli that can attract our attention through various senses. The environmental stimulus is everything in our environment that has the potential to be perceived. This might include anything that can be seen, touched, tasted, smelled or heard.
For example, imagine that you are out on a morning jog at your local park. As you perform your workout, there are a wide variety of environmental stimuli that might capture your attention. The tree branches are swaying in the slight breeze; a man is out on the grass playing fetch with his Golden Retriever; a car drives past with the windows rolled down and the music blaring; a duck splashes in a nearby pond. All of these things represent the environmental stimuli, serving as a starting point for the perceptual process.
The attended stimulus is the specific object in the environment on which our attention is focused. In many cases, we might focus on stimuli that are familiar to us, such as the face of a friend in a crowd of strangers at the local coffee shop. In other instances, we are likely to attend to stimuli that have some degree of novelty.
From our earlier example, let's imagine that during your morning jog, you focus your attention on the duck floating in the nearby pond. The duck represents the attended stimulus. During the next step of the perceptual process, the visual process will progress. The attended stimulus is formed as an image on the retina.
For example, imagine that you are out on a morning jog at your local park. As you perform your workout, there are a wide variety of environmental stimuli that might capture your attention. The tree branches are swaying in the slight breeze; a man is out on the grass playing fetch with his Golden Retriever; a car drives past with the windows rolled down and the music blaring; a duck splashes in a nearby pond. All of these things represent the environmental stimuli, serving as a starting point for the perceptual process.
The attended stimulus is the specific object in the environment on which our attention is focused. In many cases, we might focus on stimuli that are familiar to us, such as the face of a friend in a crowd of strangers at the local coffee shop. In other instances, we are likely to attend to stimuli that have some degree of novelty.
From our earlier example, let's imagine that during your morning jog, you focus your attention on the duck floating in the nearby pond. The duck represents the attended stimulus. During the next step of the perceptual process, the visual process will progress. The attended stimulus is formed as an image on the retina.
It is then transformed into electrical signals in a process known as transduction. This allows the visual messages to be transmitted to the brain to be interpreted. The electrical signals then undergo neural processing. The path followed by a particular signal depends on what type of signal it is (i.e. an auditory signal or a visual signal).
Through the series of interconnect neurons located throughout the body, electrical signals are propagated from the receptor cells to the brain. In our previous example, the image of duck floating in the pond is received as light on the retina, which is then transduced into an electrical signal and then processed through the neurons in the visual network. Now, you will actually perceive the stimuli and become aware of its presence in the environment.
Author and Credits: Kendra Cherry