Attention is the selective enhancement of some aspects of behaviour over other aspects. Selective attention specifically refers to the ‘selective’ aspect of attention that focuses behavior on specific tasks. Another definition derived from information processing theory is: … control of information processing so that sensory input is perceived or remembered better in one situation than another.” (p. 4 in Schneider, W., & Shiffrin, R.M. Controlled and automatic human information processing. 1. Detection search and attention. Psychological Review, 1977, 84, 1-66). Accordingly, the resources for selective attention are assumed to be limited. This is because processing capacity is overloaded in numerous situations that a subset of information arriving must be given special attention‚aa (p. 4). Two types of selective attention deficits are identified: Divided attention deficits when attention has to be allocated to additional inputs (e.g., attempting to follow two conversations at the same time, or performing a concurrent secondary task), and focused attention deficits when attention is distracted by irrelevant inputs (e.g., attempting to listen to a conversation without being distracted by other conversations)
. See Attention, Continuous performance, Focused attention, Sustained attention