selective attention

British  

noun

1. psychol the process by which a person can selectively pick out one message from a mixture of messages occurring simultaneously

---

Example Sentences

Previous research had shown pigeons learned how to solve complex categorization tasks that human ways of thinking -- like selective attention and explicit rule use -- would not be useful in solving.

From Science Daily • Oct. 25, 2023

Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons famously showed the effects of selective attention in a video that went viral in 2010.

From The Guardian • Mar. 6, 2018

Reading reality TV requires selective attention — or inattention, more to the point.

From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 15, 2017

A series of experiments at Stanford showed that people who regularly multitask are a lot worse at basic tests of spatial perception, memory, and selective attention than people who don’t.

From Slate • Jun. 15, 2016

In this way a good tone of mind is cultivated, and selective attention is taught to dwell by preference upon what is weighty and essential.

From Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays by Russell, Bertrand