Week 9, Question 2

Selective attention is something that I have a lot of experience with unfortunately. I notice that it happens a lot when I am being told something that I already know or when I don't find that specific topic interesting. I notice that this also happens when I am reading books for school or sometimes even when I'm talking with friends and family. When I do it with my friends and family I'm not doing it to be rude. I tend to do it when I have a lot of other responsibilities to take care of and I am stressed out. For the most part I pay attention to what other people have to say to me. When I am reading my text books I notice that my mind tends to wander and I have to read some sections over a few times in order for me to retain any of the information. This happens because a lot of the time I'm not interested in what the book is saying. One recent example where I had selective attention was when I had to attend the showing of a documentary one of the professor put together. The documentary was very long and I found it really hard to pay attention. I found myself daydreaming a lot and then I would come back and pay attention to the movie. This happened quite a few times while the documentary was showing. I did this because I wasn't interested in the topic and it's not something that I wanted to be doing at the time. By the last bit of the film I was able to overcome my selective attention and pay attention to the message of the documentary.