Divided attention — hold multiple sources at once
Expand awareness to hold three or more sounds simultaneously without collapsing back to one.
Key takeaways
- What it is: Expand awareness to hold three or more sounds simultaneously without collapsing back to one.
- Why it works: Dividing attention across multiple sources counters the tunnel-focus that characterises threat-preoccupied states. It also builds metacognitive awareness: to hold multiple inputs you must monitor your own attentional scope, which is the same monitoring capacity that lets you catch and exit rumination in daily life.
- Evidence: Established clinical or therapeutic practice.
- Avoid: Cycling between sounds rather than genuinely holding them in parallel — sequential shifting is easier but misses the divided-attention training stimulus.
Why it works
Dividing attention across multiple sources counters the tunnel-focus that characterises threat-preoccupied states. It also builds metacognitive awareness: to hold multiple inputs you must monitor your own attentional scope, which is the same monitoring capacity that lets you catch and exit rumination in daily life.
How to do it
- 1After the shifting phase, try to attend to three sounds simultaneously — hold them all in awareness at once.
- 2Notice the pull to collapse to one; that pull is what you are training against.
- 3If you lose the wide field, restart with two sources and add a third after 30 seconds.
- 4Hold divided attention for 90–120 seconds to complete the ATT session.
What the evidence says
Clinical practiceDivided attention is the third phase of Wells’s ATT protocol. The broader literature on divided attention training shows it improves attentional breadth in laboratory tasks; ATT trials show downstream clinical benefit.
Honest caveat: Transfer from the auditory training task to real-world attentional flexibility in anxiety contexts is plausible and supported by ATT trials but not fully decomposed.
Common mistake
Cycling between sounds rather than genuinely holding them in parallel — sequential shifting is easier but misses the divided-attention training stimulus.
IX Coach uses the divided-attention phase to close each ATT session and asks you to rate how wide you could hold your field — building a longitudinal self-report that reflects real attentional change.
Practice this with IX Coach →