SPAN OF ATTENTION - Practicum3

By- Ms.
Pooja Soni
Assistant Professor
Renaissance University, Indore
 Span of Attention
 Tomeasure the span of attention of the
subject .
 The span of attention decreases as number
of dots increases.
 Attention is not a name for any specific mental
function, as is perception, learning,
remembering, or thinking. It may characterize
all mental activities. We have thus attentive or
inattentive, perception, learning, remembering,
and thinking, and so on.
 Attention has accordingly been described in
various ways, for example as a state of
preparedness for the exercise of mental activity,
as quality of clearness or vagueness
accompanying any mental function as a process
of setting the stimulus into figure ground
relationship, etc.
 Theterm “span of attention” refers to the
numbers of object which can be grasped in
one short presentation.
 The term “span of attention” refers to the numbers
of object which can be grasped in one short
presentation. Sir William Hamilton (1959) was the
first to carry experimental study in this field. Later
on, serial studies were carried on revealing
significant facts.
 Dallerback (1929) studied the span of attention for
dots, words, figures and colors of found them to be
8,8,7,9, 3.9 and 3.0 respectively. Attention is defined
as the process which compels the individuals to
select some particular stimulus according to his
interest and attitude out of the multiplicity of stimuli
present in the Environment.
 Thus, in short it is the selective activity of
consciousness as a process of getting an object of
thought clearly before the mind.
 Span of attention actually tells us that how many
things can exist in the focus of consciousness at one
time in an individual.
 The span of Visual apprehension is observed through

the instruments named Tachistoscope. Tachistoscope
is an apparatus designed to expose objects for a brief
space of time.
 A subject is given a momentary glance from 1/5th to

1/10th of a second on regular or irregular groups of
dots or letter and is required to tell how many he had
observed.
 This instrument was manufactured by Hamilton and

was first used by Whipple.
 Apparatus:
Tachistoscope
 8 cards showing
dots varying from
three to ten on
each card.
 Record sheets.
 Graph paper.
 Stationery-
Pen/Pencil
 Name:
 Age:
 Sex:
 Educational Status:
 Place:
 Date:
 Time
 The name of the apparatus which will be used in the
experiment is known as „Tachistoscope‟. The
apparatus is mounted on a wooden frame. The front
of the apparatus is covered by a metallic sheet which
is painted in black.
 In the middle of the metallic front there is a
rectangular wooden box that is fitted with a glass
through which materials used in the experiment may
be exposed. Cards of the size of the slit may be
inserted in the box and may be kept tight behind the
glass with the help of a wooden mechanism fitted
with springs.
 On the back of the apparatus, there is a metallic
door with a bigger slit. The door is used for exposing
experimental materials through the slit in the
apparatus. A releaser is there to release the falling
door
 The dots are prepared first and those dots
are pasted on the chart-paper. The chart
paper was cut according to the size of the
board in the Tachistoscope.
 The number of dots vary from 3 to 10; that
is, all together 8 cards were prepared. The
dots are equally spaced. The dots should be
placed in such a way that they should not
form any symbol or design. After preparation
of the cards and making everything ready for
the experiment the following procedure may
be followed
 During the experiment, the Tachistoscope
was placed on the table of the laboratory
room. The subject was invited to sit in the
chair, where the apparatus was placed.
 The apparatus was placed in such a way so
that the subject could see the card clearly.
The experimenter then explained the nature
of the experiment by giving the following
instruction as:-
 “You will be shown some cards with dots in
them. Please give your full attention as each
card will be shown to you for only half of the
fraction of a second.
 After seeing the cards with the dots, you
have to report the number of dots you have
seen. Is it clear to you? Are you ready?” After
getting positive response from the subject,
the experimenter started the experiment.
 The experimenter then put the card at the slit
and then asked the subject to give full
concentration. The experimenter then put the
card one by one in the slit and released the
falling door and accordingly the subject reported
to the experimenter the number of dots seen.
 The experimenter exhibited the dotted cards in
serial order and the experiment was stopped
when all the cards had been exposed 40 times,
that is each card has been shown for 5 times in a
random order. All the responses made by the
subject were recorded in the work sheet
 After completion of the experiment, the
introspective report was taken and the
subject was thanked for his co-operation and
was allowed him to leave the laboratory
room. After that the percentage of span of
attention for each card was found out.
 Example:- “I enjoyed the experiment. I’d
thought it’d be some boring experiment
and I’d be able to do it without much
effort, but it was harder than I’d thought.
But that made it all the more exciting.”
Analysis Table
Number of Trials
S
No. of Dots Correct Response Percentage
No.
1 2 3 4 5
1 3 yes Y y y y 5 100
2 4 y y y y y 5 100
3 5 y y n n y 3 60
4 6 y y n y n 3 60
5 7 y n n y y 3 60
6 8 y y n n n 2 40
7 9 y n n n n 1 20
8 10 y n n n n 1 20
 X-axis –no of dots
 Y- axis percentage
 The percentage of span of attention was shown graphically. For this
purpose two ordinates ‘X’ and ‘Y’ was drawn in the graph paper where X-
axis represented the number of dots and Y-axis represented the
percentage of the span of attention. Percentage was plotted on the graph
paper and points were joined in a straight line.
From the experiment it can be observed that
the span of visual attention gradually
decreases with the increase of number of
stimuli (dots).
(discuss analysis table correct response and
percentage)
Thank You

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By- Ms.

 The span of Visual apprehension is observed through

 A subject is given a momentary glance from 1/5th to

 This instrument was manufactured by Hamilton and

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