Final answer:
Attention can be maintained through control mechanisms that amplify or increase the response to a stimulus. Tasks that maintain attention include vigilance and monitoring, as well as divided attention.
Designing systems to support attention involves understanding the resources demanded by conscious thought and the phenomenon of inattentional blindness.
Step-by-step explanation:
Attention can be maintained through various control mechanisms that amplify or increase the response to a stimulus. In terms of tasks that maintain attention, one example is vigilance and monitoring, where individuals are able to recognize signals in noise. Another example is divided attention, where individuals can focus on multiple tasks simultaneously.
Designing systems to support attention involves understanding the resources demanded by conscious thought. Tasks that require significant attention place increased energy demands on the brain, leading to periods of high-attention activity. Additionally, attention is limited and focused, which can be seen in the phenomenon of inattentional blindness where individuals fail to notice something that is completely visible because they were actively attending to something else.
Keywords: attention, control mechanisms, vigilance and monitoring, divided attention, inattentional blindness