Keep Your Eyes on the Ball

So, the Super Bowl do be soon upon us, and thus did I decide to post an essay which I recently wrote about “attention.”

Keep Your Eyes on the Ball

At a football game, there are many things that we could pay attention to; the players, the crowd of fans, the mascot and cheerleaders, an old friend calling our name, or the ball itself. How we focus our attention on the game and its surroundings depends also on our experiences and position – if we are a seasoned fan going to their tenth game, a total newbie who knows nothing about football, a player in the game, even a referee – how we pay attention to the game would also be affected.

In this football game, something that obviously seems to draw our attention would be the ball itself. For a fan, our eyes would probably follow the ball as it moves throughout the game. Paying object-based attention to the ball would allow us to (quickly) learn the ball’s attributes – its colour, shape and whether or not it’s in motion, for example. Paying this sort of attention means that we focus on an individual object and assimilate its details. However, paying location-based attention is much better in this case – it allows us to notice details about what’s happening around it – because we can notice which players are running for the ball, where it’s going, and who or what is in the way for a pass. If we are a spectator or a player, paying attention to the location of the ball and its surroundings lets us better understand the game.

We may also pay object-based attention to individuals: for example, the player who injured his leg and is sitting on the bench. What does he look like? What is he doing? Quickly, our senses can identify his attributes by paying attention to only him. Suddenly, while we are scrutinizing the player, our ears detect that someone has called our name. Now, we switch our attention to the direction of the voice – more location-based attention. We “shine our spotlight” in that direction until we can identify our friend – and after paying attention to just him (object-based attention), we notice what he’s wearing, how he’s moving, and other details. After speaking with our friend, the crowd begins to cheer; and so we switch our attention back to the playing field, using location-based attention to sweep the area and understand what has changed. When our gaze realizes that there is a lot of movement on the blue team’s side, we turn our attention to focus on the blue team, processing that they have scored a goal.

Depending on if we’re a seasoned fan, a player, the referee, or the team mascot, the game may require a different level of attention as well. If this is our twentieth game, then it would be fairly routine, and we wouldn’t have to worry about figuring out what’s happening – we would know how the game works. In such a case, if something unusual happened – such as a player making a fatally foolish mistake – then it would probably be easy for us to notice what happened, and quickly focus our object-based attention to the player who made the mistake. If we were new to football games, then we would probably constantly be paying attention to the whole field, and thus small irregularities wouldn’t stand out to us as much. Finally, if we are a player, then we would constantly be paying location-based attention to the layout of the field, as well as the location of the ball, the goalposts, and probably some mix of both types of attention to watch players who are blocking us, teammates who we want to pass to, and probably the big guys who are running to tackle us!

Different situations and our experiences affect how we pay attention, not just in a football game, but in all sorts of activities – whether it’s object- or location-based attention, or a mix of both. It affects how we process information which is important in some way to us, and can block out stimuli which are less important. Attention allows us to comprehend details, and put those details together to understand a situation, environment, or individual object.

Happy Super Bowl everyone!