Selective Attention
Posted on August 11th, 2016
Selective Attention
What is selective attention?
At any given moment the human brain is receiving thousands of messages. Internal messages about what is happening in the body and external messages from the environment. For example, the sound of someone talking, the temperature, the feel of breeze on our skin. However, we don’t pay attention to all these sensory messages, as we only have the ability to focus on a limited number of things at one time. Our brain selects the things it thinks is most relevant at that point. So in other words, we can’t focus on everything so our brain becomes picky. So all the not so relevant information is pushed to the side. This ability to focus on one thing at a time is called selective attention.
When we are using selective attention, the other messages are still there but we don’t focus on them (they tend to blend into the background or we are completely oblivious to them). However, as soon as we choose to pay attention we can focus on any one of these messages.
“In order to sustain our attention to one event in everyday life, we must filter out other events, “ (Russell Revlin in his text Cognition: Theory and Practice).
How can a knowledge of Selective Attention help us manage stress, anxiety and worry more effectively?
Our emotions (e.g. anxiety and worry) are created by our thoughts. So selective attention is the ability to limit or focus our thoughts. Therefore when we practise selective attention we can reduce anxiety, stress and worry.
Mindfulness
If you have been reading our previous blogs you would have already learned about mindfulness (if not, please take time to go back and have a look). Mindfulness is the process of paying detailed attention to what we are experiencing at any given moment. Therefore, the idea of selective attention goes nicely with what we have already learned on mindfulness.
Redirect unhelpful thoughts
Selective attention can also be helpful when we are stewing or obsessing on a thought. We can actually choose to redirect our thoughts to other things. It’s not to say that our unhelpful thought will disappear, but we can choose to push it to the background and focus on something else.
Pay attention to what is important
When we are caught up in our thoughts we miss other important things that are happening around us. Being able to redirect our attention or choose to focus our attention on alternative things is important. For example Daniel Simon’s famous Invisible Gorilla Experiment. If you are not familiar with the Gorilla experiment, please take time to watch the attached youtube video.
By using selective attention we can focus on what we choose rather than being caught up in things that aren’t so helpful to us or missing things that are important.
Written by Judy Travis
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