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Learn about Attentiveness
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Attention is the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things. Examples include listening carefully to what someone is saying while ignoring other conversations in a room (the cocktail party effect) or listening to a cell phone conversation while driving a car. Sometimes attention shifts to matters unrelated to the external environment, a phenomenon referred to as mind-wandering or "spontaneous thought". Attention is one of the most intensely studied topics within psychology and cognitive neuroscience.

William James, in his monumental Principles of Psychology (1890), remarked:

"Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state which in French is called distraction, and Zerstreutheit in German."