Inattentive engagement with a task is a learned sophisticated capacity

Evidence

Christopher Mole explains, however, that carrying out a task attentively is not necessarily desirable: ‘In general, the capacity for inattentive engagement with a task is a sophisticated achievement.’ When we first drove a car, changing gear doubtless mobilized all of our background resources, and we are very lucky to be able to multi-task, carrying on a conversation with our passenger as we drive. Attentional unison is only, therefore, a particular and passing moment of our mental dynamic – a moment of concentration. To start with, there is the multiple: many things solicit us at the same time, generating scattered and contradictory echoes in us. Then comes the phase of attentional attunement, when our resources are concentrated on a single task, which may nevertheless call for multiple forms of simultaneous action – to change gear: press the left foot, lift the right foot, push the right hand, watch the pedestrian who is stepping into the road, listen to the firemen’s siren coming from the next crossroads. After this punctual unification, we return to our normal state of multiple competing and parallel tasks, among which our divided and often ‘distracted’ attentional resources oscillate. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 519

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: ‘attention as a passing moment’ — why multi-tasking guru culture inverts the developmental reality that automation of tasks is the advanced achievement.
• XREF: connects to: Attention is learned rather than innate, always and for everyone; Instructions induce attention processes that deepen with repeated group experience — Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening, 283; Children’s inattention often reflects unlistenable teaching, not distraction — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 260

Broader Connections

• Attention is learned rather than innate, always and for everyone #expands (0.85)
• Instructions induce attention processes that deepen with repeated group experience #expands (0.70) — Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening, 283