psychology

L03 Normal Mental Ac�vity In this part of the lesson, normal mental activity is reviewed.

Just like a computer can only process so much information, one's mind can only focus on so many things at once. There exists a limited amount of attention that

we can be distributed between different points of focus. During normal mental activity, limited attention is divided between all the things happening around an

individual. Someone talking in the background, music playing, an alert popping up on a phone. All of these things require attention and may take away from the

ability to focus on the task at hand.

A term used to describe normal mental state is mental entropy, which is another way of saying mental chaos. If a flow state is depicted by the orderly brick wall

below, the normal state of mental entropy may be depicted by the pile of bricks on the right. There is the same number of bricks in each illustration, but without

structure and organization, the pile on the right serves no purpose.

An orderly brick wall. An unstructured pile of bricks.

L03 Normal Mental Activity: RPTM 120, Sectio... https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2069156/p...

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