Research Orientation
Cognitive
Psychology
Attention and
Performance
Emotions
Psychopathology
Selected Publications and manuscripts
Books
Divided
Attention (1997, Hebrew). Based on a multi-stage empirical research
on 680 subjects, 1981-1991
The
role of the limbic system and self esteem in Psychopathology - the emotional
roots of systematically inefficient behavior
Articles and manuscripts
An excerpt from
"Divided attention": Uni-focal vs.
multi-focal schemata: A system integrative approach to complex
problem-situation
http://www.psychologie.uni-bonn.de/online-documents/litdocs/english/sharon.pdf
Early
chapters from the work on divided attention (1984;
1990) http://michael-sharon.com/theorg.doc
An
outline of "divided Attention" including the statistical chapter
(Partial) and bibliography http://michael-sharon.com/DAcont.doc
A Meta Theory of Skill and Ability Acquisition http://michael-sharon.com/tath.doc
(1996; 2000) Divided
Attention, and Aspects of Processing Complex Information http://michael-sharon.com/Aspcts.doc
(1994) Semantic Top-Down
Vs. Perceptual Bottom-Up Processing in the Global Advantage Phenomenon - Shape Processing and Modes of Analysis
as determined by figure’s properties (Hebrew) http://michael-sharon.com/Globalproc.pdf
(1975) Group
Pay-Off System, Group Performance and Hostility (Partly translated from Hebrew) http://michael-sharon.com/gruperf.doc
(1982)
Efficiency of Information Processing and Its Implications Regarding Vulnerability to
Environmental Stressors (Partly translated from Hebrew)
http://michael-sharon.com/csuf/effprocess.pdf
(1981) Individual Differences in Stress
Responses Of Workers Exposed to Industrial Noise - a Cognitive Psychophysiological
Approach (Partly
translated from Hebrew)
http://michael-sharon.com/csuf/org81.pdf
(1986)
Sensitivity to environmental stressors and its impact on psychological and
behavioral stress responses and cardiovascular risk factors (Partly
translated from Hebrew) http://michael-sharon.com/cardiov.doc
Research works
-
Efficiency of processing and divided attention; as related to complex tasks’
performance in industrial setting; to stress responses to random noise; to
working memory and serial pattern reconstruction (Reconstructions of complex
non-redundant patterns flashed serially, showing intra-task and inter-task
systematic error/interference patterns); task-coordinated inhibition of
tendency focal-emphases and componential "excess-baggage" information
in high divided-attention (1982; 1991).
-
Differential patterns of attentional organization in right/left Hemiplegics
(1984).
-
Object-based and spatial-based attention; unifocal
temporal-schematic processing, redundancy-based, with 2D morphology vs.
multi-focal, non phasic, spatially integrated attention, of non-redundancy 3D
mode (e.g., Pop-Out phenomena); attention de-energization,
due to stationary/repeated representations, focal centering and feature
abstraction; unifocality and directional
feature-dilution, in increasing perceived homogeneity of attended field;
Insertion of attentional vantage-point as setting schematization and
attentional stabilization, diminishing lateral inhibition among free-floating
representations (1991).
-
Homologies; superimposition of features; attentional inertia (Processing
dominance of non-current properties), attentional recency
and working memory. Isotropic spatial attention (attenuating attentional
vantage points, through coordinated inhibition of componential dominance), as
shown in fine-grain analysis of dual task (1991).
-Task-coordinated
attention as selectively cutting through schematas and binding features across
representations, rendering “excess-baggage” information latent-preserved, in
high-divided attention (1982;1983;1991)
- Neuropsychology: The Frontal Lobes; Dopaminergic
and Cholinergic mechanisms (1982-)
-
Perceptual framing, focality, and features’ dilution
effects (e.g., in round vs. rectangular television’s screens; in hierarchical
figures) (1991a)
-
Uniqueness (uniformity) vs. non-uniqueness of form; forms in addressing either
non-redundant, 3D high-resolution perceptual processing mode, of wide spatial
frequency spectrum; or 2D schematic-semantic, redundancy/completion based
processing; as determining degree of size invariance and perceptual accuracy in
inter-object relative size, distances and envelopes’ form, with imposed stereoptic processing, and binocular-disparity (1992; 1993)
-
Attention-based representation modes
Frameworks:
*
Group Pay-Off System, Group Performance And Hostility
(1975).
*
Locus of Control as Determined by Degree of Parents’ Rationality (1974) This manuscript of an early work of mine concerns adverse
implications on cognition of family-helplessness - assessed by my
Rationality-Arbitrariness Scale. I had been elaborating this concept since Army
days: In 1970 I wrote on Helplessness in Abd-el-Nasser
heavy bureaucratic power-centralized
*
Autonomy, Productivity, Coercion and Social Processes: An Inquiry into the
Logic of Collectivism (1979)
* The Role of the Limbic System and the Concept of Self-Esteem in Psychopathology (2004)
çìå÷ú ÷ùá -
"à÷ãîåï", çðåú ñôøéí î÷ååðú, äàåðéáøñéèä äòéáøéú
This pioneering and wide-ranging work on high capacity for Divided Attention and complex task performance, is highly in accord with the information revolution age since last decade. The book integrates results in experimental Psychology from numerous articles, as well as results obtained throughout a multi-stage extensive research project (1980-1991) on about 700 participants.
The capacity to control a number of activities simultaneously and to focus on two or more things in a single act of attention focusing has fascinated human imagination since early times. Historical biographies attribute such competence to eminent persons such as Julius Caesar or Napoleon Bonaparte, performing at excellence level on most subjects dealt with. The art of managing their combat battles was based on consolidation of immediate and accurate overall scene out of multitude of events in the battlefield, and organization of unexpected and most effective maneuvers, while attaining high economy in human resources and equipment.
The book "Divided Attention" characterizes this ability and points out its constituents. It also portrays personality characteristics of people who spontaneously cope effectively with complex problems and decisions - people whose global view or creativity do not tax the thoroughness and efficiency of their action.
The Competence for Divided Attention unfolded here in its numerous aspects allows introducing for the first time the concept of
Simultaneous
Intelligence (SI)
or what has been termed by common thinking Natural Intelligence, or plainly put - Wisdom - the essence of which is highly effective multi-purpose organization of complex information.
The present framework integrates into broad-ranging synthesis numerous empirical results from domains of Cognitive psychology, Attention, Neuropsychology, as well as from other diverse information sources, and some of its main building blocks are based on converging evidence from my own empirical research results.
Detailed synopsis:
The capacity to split attention into a number of foci constitutes a decisive factor in generating a continuum of optimal, as well as qualitative solutions in data-environments which are complex and/or change-intensive. These settings evolve environmentally or in consciousness - to provide a few examples - during engagement with a scientific problem or with technological research and development effort; in management under conditions of rapidly changing market; in the classroom; while driving in a busy road; in the basketball court or football field where control of operating a number of simultaneous activities is demanded; and in fact in any multi-component or diversified subject.
Attention splitting (Dividing focused attention) enables maximal and accurate utilization of the components of the information overload characteristic of such environments, while reducing the arbitrariness factor in processing information overload as a mainly stress source that necessitates massive "trimming" by utilizing accidental "vantage point" factors, which are salient in the stimulus space.
The frequent alternative - focusing at any time-point on a single aspect of the information confronted (while serially shifting focus from an aspect to another) - entails in numerous cases an arbitrary rejection of crucial data - imposed by an anticipatory set of processing "presuppositions", defining what is to be held irrelevant.
These - not being at first hand tailored to the specifics of the situation confronted - are in most part in this process blocked from being updated by oncoming information. This commonly results in specific fallacies in perception and conceptualization, as well as in planning and performance, and in occurrence of harmful "surprises".
Awareness of issues of attention organization as highlighted in this book, is in accord with the revolutionary turn of last decade - a steep surge in number of people managing information and complex information systems:
"There is a brain boom. We are living in a period that is equivalent to the transition from the agricultural to the industrial age. An increasingly large percentage of our work force makes its living simply off mental activity." (Bruce Lehman, assistant commerce secretary and commissioner of patents, A.P., 22 October 1997).
Such orientation necessitates, both an effective extraction of large amount of information - in an age of information "explosion" in most areas - as well as turning this information into an active factor enabling generation of novel possibilities, in the course of producing creative and problem-effective solutions.
This is enabled by focusing attention simultaneously into a number of aspects of the complex information.
The book "Divided Attention" describes in detail two main modes of organization of complex information in our brain, one of which - involved in high divided-attention - is the human brain's built-in integrated system suitable for complex survival problem-situations and tasks in rapidly changing comlex environment, is essential for Man's ontogenesis Sui Generis, being rooted in the development of brain's frontal lobes - evolutionary being brain's latest structure.
Paradoxically, this mode of high-level organization is less frequently utilized than the other cognitive mode, and has been largely suppressed throughout history in despotic and power-centralized forms of social organization.
Historically, a functional unfolding of this Organization mode - based on high divided-attention multi-focal integration of information - towards its full potential was capacitated in western civilization at the Baroque age and the social turns during the 17th and 18th century followed by the Scientific Revolution. In the next 200 years, rapid development of science, technology, economy forms and new modes of consciousness evolved to an extent and in a rate unpreceded by the former 40,000 years or more of Homo Sapiens intellectual developement.
In addition, this high divided-attention based organization may be susceptible to over-vulnerability and decline in effectiveness facing environmental stress factors (like random noise); in relatively chaotic and non-regular environment; or where emphasized messages are repeatedly presented.
This book presents broad ranging synthesis, of both data collected in research on about 700 participants, and findings reported in hundreds of articles in areas of experimental psychology.
It is indicated, among other things, that even while availing extensive and accurate knowledge about a complex problem, we are often in a state of partial knowledge, in the sense that information represented in our brain collapses into schematic structures, entailing "completion" of lost information by arbitrary assumptions.
The fallacies of the low divided-attention uni-focal mode of organization are often revealed in exertion of a handful of adventurous and wasteful improvisations - susceptible of turning critical - being demonstrated in detail by a hypothetical description of setting up a transportation infrastructure (See the excerpt [in English] from the book presented here).
An excerpt from the
book:
http://www.psychologie.uni-bonn.de/online-documents/litdocs/english/sharon.pdf
In comparison, the book introduces as a pioneering contribution the bi-focal and multi-focal system-integrative approach, being optimally fit for highly effective coping with complex information (See the excerpt from the book presented here).
Chapter 2.9 describes in detail personality orientations based on the two modes of attentional organization, culminating in patterns of perception, action and attitudes, such as:
Patterns of space-construction.
Preferred modes of knowledge.
Personal time perception.
Preferred modes of coping.
Attitudes towards: change; invariants of reality; and the arbitrary/accidental.
Social exchange - voluntary vs. coercive modes.
Approaches towards the other.
Compassion and Empathy.
Emotional insight.
Neuroticism.
The research findings attained within this framework and its data collection paradigms portray unexpected and fascinating picture, challenging prevalent conventions and rhetorics.