Concepts (page 2)
- Attachment Theory
A human baby cannot feed itself, warm itself or get away from anything. A baby that keeps a responsive adult close therefore survives better than one that does not, and attachment theory says the…
- Attention as Zero-Sum
Attention as zero-sum is the premise that there is a hard ceiling on how much attention a human being has to give, so that every unit captured by one thing is a unit taken from something else. The…
- Attention Merchants
An attention merchant is a business that captures people's attention cheaply, usually by giving away content or a service for free, and then resells that attention to advertisers. The term is Tim…
- Attention Residue
Attention residue is Sophie Leroy's term for the part of your attention that stays with a task you have just left, so the next task runs degraded. Her 2009 experiments found something most summaries…
- Attention Restoration Theory
Attention restoration theory holds that directed attention is a resource spent down over the course of a day, and that natural environments replenish it in a way built environments do not. It was…
- Attention Theft
Attention theft is Tim Wu's name for claims on attention that are non-consensual and unavoidable: the screen bolted above the petrol pump, the advertisement running in a waiting room, any captive…
- Attentional Control
Attentional control is the ability to hold focus on the information that matters and keep everything else out. It is not memory and it is not intelligence, though it is easily mistaken for both. The…
- Attentional Revolt
Attentional revolt is Tim Wu's name for the recurring public backlash against attention harvesting, and for the fact that it almost never wins. Revolts force cosmetic reform, a new remote-control…
- Automate Last
Automate last is the fifth and final step of the Algorithm, the operating sequence set out in Jon McNeill's The Algorithm: automate only once the process has been questioned, cut, simplified and…
- Automatic vs Controlled Attention
There are two kinds of attention: the reflexive kind that is seized involuntarily by movement, colour or noise, and the deliberate kind a person chooses to direct. The distinction is one of the most…
- Automaticity
Automaticity is how far a behaviour runs without deliberate thought, effort or awareness. It is the quality most habit researchers measure, usually by asking people how automatic an action feels. In…
- Availability Heuristic
The availability heuristic is judging how common or how large a category is by how easily instances of it come to mind. Nothing is counted. The speed with which examples arrive becomes the answer…