| Domain of attention | Definition | Functional example |
| Alertness/arousal | Ability and readiness to respond | Response to warning signals |
| Selective attention | Ability to focus on a specific stimuli while ignoring irrelevant stimuli | Reading while people talk in the background |
| Sustained attention (vigilance) | Ability to maintain attention over a prolonged period of time | Driving a car for long distances |
| Spatial attention | Ability to detect and deploy attention to all sides of space | Attending to people sitting on left and right side of the table |
| Divided attention | Ability to multitask and to divide attention between 2 or more tasks | Talking on the telephone while cooking |