Individuals focus on particular event(s) at any given point in time. This focus requires a lot of mental effort or concentration and this is what cognitive psychologist term attention. Attention refers to the concentration and focusing of mental effort (Best, 1995). Focus is selective, divisible and shiftable. Focus is selective when we pay attention to some things and not others. It is shifable when we are able to move our attention from one thing to another and focus is divisible when we can attend to two or more activities …show more content…
Considering the nature of activity, if it is difficult to perform then a lot of cognitive effort will be required and vice versa. According to Broadbent (1958), the amount of information that can be attended to at anytime is limited, if the amount exceeds our cognitive resources capacity, an attention filter is brought in that allow some information in whereas the rest are blocked. Thus, we make little meaning out of blocked information. This filter saves us from information overload when there is too much information to process. Treisman (1960) also explained this using the attenuation theory of attention. This theory postulates that the volume of the unattended information is turned down and we can make meaning out of them because they might still be