Wisen's notes

# Paying attention may reduce task that require automatic processing

Supposedly if there's a task that requires automatic processing, like touch typing or playing a piano, our performance will degrade if we try to pay attention to it.

I'm not so sure, I do touch typing and when I look at my hands, I don't feel like my performance is degrading. Maybe there's a specific thing I need to foes on in trying this experiment.

I once was being coached in my badminton practice. I wanted to improve my serve, and my coached asked me to pay attention to my wrist - surprisingly I can no longer serve when I do that!

Goldstein, Cognitive Psychology (p. 108).

Try paying attention to what your fingers are doing while typing and notice what happens to your performance. Concert pianists have reported that if they start paying attention to their fingers while they are playing their performance falls apart.