But the process of how we choose stimuli, and what happens to the rest, has been up for debate throughout the scientific community over the years. Psychologists have understood without the need for experimentation that we can only pay attention to a limited set of stimuli at one time. In this video, we’ll explain the basics of Selective Attention Theory. So your brain has to choose which stimuli it will focus on and what it will process. You simply can’t focus on every sound, sight, smell, taste, and feeling that is occurring at a particular time. It’s impossible for the brain to take in all of the stimuli around you at once. Even when you are sitting at home on your computer, there are always new sounds to take in or small details that you might not have noticed before. There is so much stimuli around us at every moment of the day. I mean can you remember every person that was there, everything that was said, the color of the tables, the size of the silverware, the type of flooring that you walked on, all of the smells…? Can you remember every detail? No really.

Take a moment to think back to the last time you were at a party. Our attention seems to be limited by certain things, and cognitive psychologists attempt to explain how our focus works using selective attention theories.

Dichotic listening experiment