Attention is best thought of as the process by which an individual
A) categorizes emotional stimuli to high and low effort activities.
B) allocates part of his or her mental activity to a stimulus.
C) stimulates memory.
D) categorizes schemas.
E) decreases the rate of nonretrieval.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Attention is the process of allocating cognitive resources to a particular stimulus or task. Therefore, option B is the most appropriate choice. Option A is incorrect because emotional stimuli may not necessarily require high or low effort activities, and even if they do, this is not the core definition of attention. Option C is incorrect because while attention may stimulate memory, it is not its primary function. Option D is incorrect because schemas are mental frameworks used to organize knowledge, and while attention may play a role in processing schemas, it does not categorize them. Option E is incorrect because nonretrieval is not a well-defined term in the context of attention.

Attention Is Best Thought of as the Process by Which