Continous Partial Attention (CPA)

As described in Wikipedia, continuous partial attention “usually involves skimming the surface of the incoming data, picking out the relevant details, and moving on to the next stream. You’re paying attention, but only partially. That lets you cast a wider net, but it also runs the risk of keeping you from really studying the fish.”

Continuous partial attention is being exercised more regularly in this times compared the past. With rampant information available, audiences have to skim through articles , picking out main points and eliminating “noises” from the articles.

Many people, however, confuse themselves with multi-tasking.

As defined in Wikipedia, Continuous partial attention describes how many of us use our attention today. It is different from multi-tasking. The two are differentiated by the impulse that motivates them. When we multi-task, we are motivated by a desire to be more productive and more efficient. We’re often doing things that are automatic, that require very little cognitive processing. We give the same priority to much of what we do when we multi-task — we file and copy papers, talk on the phone, eat lunch — we get as many things done at one time as we possibly can in order to make more time for ourselves and in order to be more efficient and more productive. To pay continuous partial attention is to pay partial attention — CONTINUOUSLY. It is motivated by a desire to be a LIVE node on the network. Another way of saying this is that we want to connect and be connected. We want to effectively scan for opportunity and optimize for the best opportunities, activities, and contacts, in any given moment. To be busy, to be connected, is to be alive, to be recognized, and to matter.

The implication drawn here is that marketers have to take note that with news feeding application such as RSS, people are paying less attention to advertising messages. Advertising messages are now considered intrusive, invading online activities and audiences of such advertising messages are moving away to avoid them.

This may just be why advertising is incorporated into games, facebook application and other interactive applications available online