Soviet Psychology

ISSN: 0038-5751 (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/mrpo19

The Problem of Attention

P. Ya. Gal'perin

To cite this article: P. Ya. Gal'perin (1989) The Problem of Attention, Soviet Psychology, 27:3,
83-92

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/RPO1061-0405270383

Published online: 19 Dec 2014.

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 P. YA. GAL’PERIN

The Problem of Attention

Ever since psychology became an independent branch of knowl-

edge, psychologists in very different areas have, for a variety of
reasons, unanimously denied that attention is an independent
form of mental activity. Some have done this because they deny in
general the activity of the subject and reduce all forms of mental
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activity to different manifestations of the same general mecha-

nism-associations, or the formation of structures; others have
done so because they identify attention with various mental func-
tions or with some aspect of them. Indeed, there is no function or
combination of functions, or even a mental phenomenon-from
“directedness’ ’ to “a change in the organization” of mental
activity, from “dark” kinesthetic sensation and motor sets to
consciousness as a whole-that has not been identified with atten-
tion.’
When attention is denied along with other mental functions,
this has nothing to do with attention in particular. But when
attention is identified with other mental phenomena and pro-
cesses, then the real difficulties with regard to the problem of
attention emerge-the impossibility of discriminating it as an
independent form of mental activity. An analysis of these difficul-
Russian text 0 1976 by Moscow University.
A. N. Leont’ev, A. A. Puzyreya, and V. Ya. Romanova (Eds.), Khresto-
matiya PO vnimaniya [Selections on attention]. Moscow: MGU, 1976. Pp.
220-28.

83
 84 P. YA. GAL’PERIN

ties leads to the conclusion that all of the varied range of views on
the nature of attention are based on two cardinal facts:
1. Attention never functions as an independent process. Either
to oneself or to external observation, it always divulges itself as
an orientation, the attunement, the concentration of some mental
activity, and, consequently, as only an aspect or property of that
activity.
2, Attention has no discrete, specific product of its own. Its
result is the improvement in any activity to which it is linked. But
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the chief proof of the existence of a particular function is the

existence of a characteristic product (even when the process of the
function is completely or almost completely known). Attention
has no such product, and that more than anything else speaks
against regarding attention as a discrete form of mental activity.
It is impossible to deny the significance of these facts and the
correctness of the discouraging conclusion that derives from
them. We have always inwardly disagreed with this conclusion,
and could present a number of considerations concerning the
strange and difficult position in which we have been placed by
such a conception of attention; but while our conceptions contra-
dict the facts, we psychologists have no other sources of facts
than observation (external observation, observation of corporeal
manifestations of attention, and internal, subjective experience
of attention)-so these facts retain their full validity. The denial
that attention is a discrete form of mental activity is therefore
inevitable and warranted.
Studies of “mental actions” enable us to approach this ques-
tion from a somewhat different aspect. Such studies have shown
that the formation of mental actions, in the final analysis, leads to
the formation of a thought, and a thought is a dual structure: the
thinkable objective content and the thought in the strict sense
about it as a mental action addressed to that content. Moreover,
analysis has indicated*that the second term in this dyad is nothing
other than attention, and that this internal attention is formed
from the checking or monitoring of the objective content of an
a ~ t i o n Then,
.~ of course, the following question arises: Is it
 THE PROBLEM OF AlTENTION 85

possible to understand attention at all as a function of mental

checking? The purpose of the discussion below is to show that if
we view the mind as orienting activity and if we know the changes
that an action undergoes in becoming a mental action, it is indeed
possible to see attention in this way, and we shall be able to view
the problem of attention in a different light and more optimisti-
cally.
To see the mind as orienting activity means to approach it not
from the standpoint of the “phenomena of consciousness,” but
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from the standpoint of its objective role in b e h a ~ i o rIn

. ~contrast
to other forms of orientation, mental orientation presupposes an
image, i.e., an image of the medium of an action and of the action
itself, an image on the basis of which the action is controlled.
Control of an action on the basis of an image requires the com-
parison of a task with its execution. Consequently, checking is a
necessary and essential part of this contr01.~The forms of check-
ing may vary, along with the degree of their development; but
without a monitoring of the course of an action, it is impossible to
control it, and that is the basic task of orienting activity. In one
form or another, and varying in its degree of isolation and devel-
opment, control is an inseparable element of the mind insofar as
the latter may be regarded as activity.
But in contrast to other actions that yield some product, the
activity of checking has no discrete product of its own: it is
always directed at what already, even if only partly, exists or is
taking place, and has been created by other processes. To exercise
the function of checking, it is necessary to have something to
check. Let us assume that attention is such a function of check-
ing-indeed, this is even, in a certain sense, quite close to the
usual understanding of attention. If we do so, then the most
serious of all objections against regarding attention as an inde-
pendent form of mental activity, namely, that it lacks a discrete,
characteristic product, immediately vanishes.
Knowledge of the changes that arise when mental actions are
formed also eliminates a second objection: the impossibility of
indicating the content of the process of attention. We now know
 86 I? YA. GAL‘PERIN

that when an action becomes intellectual, it is inevitably short-

ened, resembling an “act in conformity with a formula.” When
this shortening takes place, there is a direct, associative transition
between the preserved elements (in the case of an “action in
conformity with a formula, ” the transition is between the initial
data and the results). For the observer, this transition has no
concrete content; but depending on how the shortening took
place, this transition is accompanied, or not accompanied, by
(1) an understanding of the abbreviated content, and (2) the sub-
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ject’s inner experience of his own activity. If the abbreviation was

systematically noted and assimilated, this understanding and ex-
perience are formed and retained. But if the abbreviation of an
action took place spontaneously, then the abbreviated content is
forgotten, and along with it the sensation of being active in the
automatic execution of an abbreviated action. It is just this second
case that most fully corresponds to the usual sequence in the
formation of mental functions. If, moreover, a spontaneously
formed function also has its own discrete product and always
takes place only in connection with some other activity, then it
will appear to observation (both external and internal) as only one
aspect of that activity, not as attention, but as attentiveness (in
carrying out that other basic activity).
The activity of checking, which has developed spontaneously,
becomes intellectual and abbreviated and, by logical necessity,
must appear devoid of content and, in addition, deprived of inde-
pendence. It must appear as an aspect or a property of some other
activity (which it monitors). In fact, this does fit the observed
picture of attention. It is therefore clear that the above two facts,
which have played such a negative role in the theory of attention,
actually have very limited significance: they reflect the situation
as it appears to internal and external observation and express
psychology’s restriction to the findings of “direct observation. ”
But attention, i.e., the discrete, concrete action of attention,
comes into play only when the action of checking becomes not
only a mental action but also an abbreviated action. The process
of checking performed as an expanded activity with objects is just
 THE PROBLEM OF ATTENTION 87

that, and no more, and is not itself attention. On the contrary, it

requires attention, which by this time has developed. But when a
new action of checking becomes an intellectual and abbreviated
action, then, and only then, does it become attention-a new
concrete process of attention. Not every act of checking is atten-
tion, but all attention is an action of ~ h e c k i n g . ~
There is one other consideration. Checking only evaluates an
activity or its results, but attention improves them. How is it that
attention, if it is only mental checking, not only evaluates but also
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improves an activity? This comes about because checking is done

with a criterion, a measure, a model; and psychology has long
known that the existence of such a model, an “anticipatory im-
age, ” makes possible more precise comparison and discrimina-
tion, and so results in a much better diagnosis of phenomena (and
hence in other positive changes so characteristic of attention).
Examples are familiar enough: if a tuning fork is first sounded,
the corresponding sound will be easily discriminated within a
complex chord, and the overtone can be discriminated within the
composite tone; if a song is familiar, its words are distinguishable
even in a poor transmission; if we know what something is about,
words are much more easily recognized even in an obscure text,
etc. These facts were once explained by the process of appercep-
tion-a poor and specious explanation; but the facts are undispu-
table; they are numerous and weighty. What they mean, taken
together, is that an anticipatory image heightens discriminating
capacity with regard to the object of an image and decreases it
with regard to all other objects.8
Thus, the use of a model explains two basic properties of
attention-its selectiveness (which consequently by no means
always expresses interest) and its positive influence on any activ-
ity with which it is associated. And this is the first test of the
hypothesis that attention is an activity of mental checking.
The second test is that, knowing the concrete content of the
activity of attention, we can answer the difficult question of the
nature of voluntary attention. Hitherto its distinctive features
have been considered to be the existence of an aim (to be atten-
 88 P. YA. GAL’PERIN

tive) and an effort (to keep attention focused on an object that

itself is not the cause of attention). But it has long been known
that both these attributes are inconsistent. If we are sufficiently
acquainted with an object, then attention becomes voluntary inde-
pendently of any interest in the object, without the aim or an
effort to be attentive. Indeed, generally speaking, the aim and
effort are testimony only of what we want, not of what we
achieve; if the effort (to be attentive) is unsuccessful, then atten-
tion remains involuntary. It was said long ago that our needs, our
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independence of circumstances, our ‘‘nonfreedom’ ’ are ex-

pressed in goals. But effort is, to a certain extent, inversely
proportional to real possibilities; the more an activity has in it,
the less effort it requires.
Vygotsky was profoundly right when he attempted to apply to
psychology, and especially to the problem of attention, the gener-
al Marxist thesis that the instruments of an activity are the deci-
sive condition and measure of free will. But how are we to
understand the instruments of mental activity? Vygotsky thought
them to be signs by relying on which man can do what he cannot
do without them. However, how a sign is used must still be
understood; and, of course, Vygotsky soon discovered that a sign
fulfills the role of a psychological tool only to the extent that it
acquires meaning. Vygotsky equated the meaning of a sign with a
concept and postulated that the development of voluntariness of
mental functions was dependent on the development of concepts,
i.e., on an understanding of how it was necessary to act in a
particular case. But this rationalist understanding of free will
amounted to an unwarranted narrowing of the problem: free will
naturally requires an understanding of circumstances; but not
every understanding, even a correct one, of circumstances is the
equivalent of voluntariness-there must also be a possibility of
acting in accordance with such an understanding and of having
the necessary means for this. The question of the means of human
mental activity cannot be reduced to understanding, and Vygot-
sky’s solution to this question cannot be considered definitive.
From the perspective of attention as the activity of mental
 THE PROBLEM OF AlTENTION 89

checking, the question of the structure of voluntary attention is

resolved as follows. Attention is voluntary if it follows a plan,
i.e., if the checking of an action is carried out on the basis of a
previously compiled plan, using previously established criteria
and methods for applying them. The existence of such a plan,
criteria, and methods makes checking possible; in addition, atten-
tion can then be directed to what we want to direct it to, not to
something else that “strikes the eye.” Of course, this systematic
action is social in its origin and nature and presupposes the par-
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ticipation of speech in its organization; it is possible o d y in man.

Like any action acquired on the basis of a social model, it initially
appears, and is assimilated, in its external form (when it is still
not attention, as we have said); only then, in its speech form, does
it pass over to the mental level, where, after becoming abbreviat-
ed, it becomes voluntary attention. Because of its objective social
organization and stage-by-stage assimilation, such an action does
not depend either on the directly attractive properties of an object
or on the interfering influences of transitory states in the person
himself. It is voluntary in the strict and full meaning of the word.
Involuntary attention is also a checking, but a checking that
goes on after an object or a circumstance “strikes the eye.” In
this case, one part of an object is used as a yardstick for another,
initial segment of a connection, for comparison with its continu-
ation. The trajectory and the means of checking in this case do not
follow a preassigned plan, but are dictated by the object on which
we are wholly dependent in both these respects, and is hence
involuntary. But the content of the activity of attention is still
checking-checking of what perception or thought, memory or
feeling, r e ~ o r d . ~
Of course, regarding attention as a discrete form of mental
activity remains, for the present, a hypothesis. But aside from
eliminating theoretical difficulties, its advantage is that it opens
the door to experimental investigation and testing and to a sys-
tematic formation of attention. If we know its content as an
activity and the ways to form it as mental activity, we can teach
attention, as we do any other mental activity. Indeed, to develop a
 90 P. YA. GAL'PERIN

new technique for voluntary attention, we should, along with the

basic activity, also give the assignment of testing (or checking) it,
indicating the criteria and techniques, the general direction, and
the sequence of actions for this. All this must first be given
externally, in material or materialized formlo; one cannot begin
with attention, but rather must first organize checking as a specif-
ic external activity (which only then is transformed into a new
action of attention). Moreover, this action of checking is carried
to a mental, generalized, abbreviated, and automatized form by
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means of stage-by-stage refinement," in which it is also trans-

formed into an action of attention corresponding to the new
assignment.
A child's involuntary attention can be cultivated in a way we
should like to see it. In this case, we do not give the child a
specific task of checking, but we teach him to carry out the main
activity in a specific way: to carefully follow its individual stages,
comparing and contrasting them, and their connections and rela-
tions. Thus, without making checking a special assignment, we
include it in the main activity as a way to carry it out. Then, in
addition to the main activity, involuntary attention is also formed.
Seen from the perspective of attention as an activity of mental
checking, all concrete actions of attention, voluntary and invol-
untary, are the result of the formation of new mental actions. Both
voluntary and involuntary attention must be created and cultivat-
ed in individual experiments; in man this is always on the basis of
socially given samples. In the systematic cultivation of attention,
the most successful and promising of such models should first be
selected for every sphere of activity and for every level of devel-
opment. And we can hope that insofar as we now in general know
the content of the activity of attention and a system for inculcating
full-fledged mental actions, the task of systematically forming
more and more new actions of attention will no longer entail any
fundamental difficulties. Now the decisions in resolving existing
uncertainties should be handed over to experimental investiga-
tions. l2
 THE PROBLEM OF ATTENTION 91

Notes
1 . Today, abroad and in this country (on this point see E. D. Khomskaya,
[Brain and activation]. Part 1 , chapter 2. Moscow State University, 1972),
people have begun to identify attention with the level of “waking” or “activa-
tion,” but this only (I) confirms the dissatisfaction with previous attempts to
reduce attention to other mental phenomena, (2) at the same time is an attempt
to reduce it to psychologically new, almost unknown, aspects of mental activity,
and also (3) signifies involuntary recognition of the inability to decipher exactly
what attention is.
As far as the “level of waking” and degree of activation are understood
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today, they correspond to what previously was called “consciousness” and its
various levels of lucidity. Identifying attention with them is tantamount to a
reversion to the old reduction of attention to “consciousness,” so to speak, at a
“contemporary level, ’ ’
Hence, for every new attempt to reduce attention to something that is
attention no longer, the old questions fully apply: What do we gain in our
understanding of these processes from calling attention “activation” or “wa-
king” or, on the contrary, from calling activation or waking “attention”? If we
knew what attention or waking and activation were as substantive processes or
states, then such reductions would be the same as declaring something still
unknown to be known. So long as we do not know this, such reductions signify
merely that there is some external similarity between them and nothing else.
Such similarity can be found between any “mental phenomena,” but this does
not provide the key to a real understanding of any of them.
2. P. Ya. Galperin, [Mental actions as a basis for the formation of
thoughts and images] [English translation in this issue].
3. This does not mean that thought is attention or that attention is thought,
but merely the following. Every human action contains an orienting part, an
executory part, and a checking part. When an action becomes a mental action
and then continues to change so that the orienting part becomes “comprehen-
sion,” the executory part becomes an automatic associative passage of the
objective content of the action through the field of consciousness, and checking
becomes an action by which the “ego” of the subject focuses on this content;
then the activeness of the subject, internal attention, and consciousness all fuse
together as an action into one experience. In self-observation this is something
simple and even indivisible, as others have also described it in the past.
4. Orienting activity is not limited to cognitive processes. All forms of
mental activity are different forms of orientation defined by differences in the
tasks and the means used to resolve them.
5 . Checking on the basis of an image takes place via an action with things.
6. The ascription of a regulatory function to attention comes very close to
this conception of attention (see, in particular, the section on attention in the
Ukrainian textbook [Psychologyfor teachers ’ colleges]. Kiev, 1955. P. 434).
But regulation is a broader concept; and if attention is analyzed into selectivity,
 92 P. U. GAL’PERIN

direction, and concentration, the similarity to checking is removed.

7. We must recall La Mettrie with deference; he was the first, as far as I
know, to clearly point out that attention was an activity of checking; he ascribed
to it special significance in the life of the soul. But La Mettrie did not develop
this concept of attention systematically; and since it expressed a function, not
an “empirical” viewpoint of mental phenomena, it was forgotten by later
empirical physiological psychology.
8. The natural question, How, then, can you explain attention to an object
before a distinct image is formed of it? is explicated as follows. If it is
involuntary attention, it uses first impressions for checking subsequent ones; if
it is voluntary attention, it uses schemata developed in past experience with
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objects of the same type.

9. Hitherto only an orienting reflex-the orientation of the sense organs to
a new stimulus-not the investigatory activity with regard to a new object, the
checking aspect of which is, strictly speaking, attention, should have been, and
was, explained as involuntary attention.
10. It is worth pointing out that in the section on attention in a textbook on
psychology in 1956, Professor A. A. Smirnov stressed the significance of
material forms of an action in the early stages of formation of attention and in
cases in which attention encounters difficulties.
11. I shall not dwell on the content and procedure in stage-by-stage forma-
tion of mental actions or on the concept of a materialized action. These are
presented in a number of other papers: [An experimental study in the formation
of mental actions] in Simon, 1957-[see Bibliography]; [The formation of
mental actions and concepts]. Vestnik MGU,1957, No. 4; [Mental actions as a
basis for the formation of thoughts and images] [English translation in this
issue]; [The psychology of thinking and the theory of stage-by-stage formation
of mental actions]. In [Research on thinking in Soviet psychology]. Moscow:
“Nauka” Publishers, 1966.
12. This experimental study was carried out by L. S. Kabyl’nitskaya (de-
ceased in 1970). A brief pr6cis of it is given in the article by L. S. Kaby1’-
nitskaya in the collection [Control ofcognitive activity ofpupils] (Moscow State
University Publishers, 1972). (There are German and Italian translations of
this article.) In this study, the subjects were third-graders distinguished for
having made many characteristic mistakes on account of “inattention. These
”

children were taught (using the method of stage-by-stage formation) how to

check, first, in their own written exercises, and then in various assignments of
another type (the Bourdon test, mistakes in patterns, absurdities of meaning in
pictures and stories). When this checking had become a general, abbreviated,
automatic, ideal action, our outstandingly inattentive subjects became attentive
(and this, of course, was accompanied by considerable improvement in their
school achievement). Thus, the initial hypothesis that attention is an ideal and
abbreviated action of checking received its first experimental confirmation.