Eye witness testimony, training, driving, and display design: these are just a few of the real-world domains in which depend on undivided attention. Emphasizing the link between theory and application, Applied Attention Theory provides a deep understanding of how theories of attention, developed from laboratory-based psychological research, can inform our understanding of everyday human performance in a wide number of applications and environments. The basic theories discussed concern divided, focused, and selective attention, and areas of application include mental workload measurement, multi-tasking, distracted driving, complex display design, education, and the training of attentional skills.

• Includes an extensive reference list and citations to both basic and applied work
• Provides intuitive descriptions of attentional phenomena in the world beyond the laboratory
• Discusses applications of attention theory to diverse areas such as graph design, distracted driving, and process control
• Offers an engineering orientation as well as a psychological orientation to research
• Highlights the critical role of effort in single task behavior, such as decision and choice, to the extent that humans tend to be effort-conserving in their choice of activities
• Examines how multiple tasks are managed in a discrete fashion