Focus Like a Pro: How Selective Attention Can Help You Become a Superior Studier

By Matthew Baird

Many people have said that you must go to college to get the “college experience,”  

which would open you up to new opportunities and material that would help fulfill your dreams in life. 

Over the years I have recognized this fantasy and replaced it with a more “real” outlook on college.  

Deadlines lurking around every corner,  

A new assignment posted every hour,  

A forgotten project pushed to crunch time.  

In short, the college experience has been extremely overwhelming and tough, but there is no reason to fear it because there are many ways in which you can drastically increase your attention ability.  

We will look at a particular psychological concept in this paper, that can improve your cognition and daily functioning [1], and help you grasp the most important information for studying. This concept is known as selective attention, and it works as our brain’s built-in thought filtration system. 

Selective Attention Scenario Illustration: The “Dog Video” 

Let’s begin the process of becoming an immaculate studier by applying selective attention to real-world scenarios to help the audience better understand this psychological term.  

Refer to the video linked below for this demonstration.  

Take a look at the two dogs running around the backyard.  

Keep notes on who has the ball the longest, who seems more playful, who seems more active, and who overall “succeeds” at playing fetch.  

Got your answer?  

Splendid!  

Now that you have your answer locked in your brain let me ask you another question. 

Did you see the boy coming out of the trash can?  

Go back to the video and re-watch it, but this time focus on the trash can in the background and see if you can spot it.  

If you didn’t spot the person the first time, don’t worry, 

It is a perfectly normal response to our brain’s mental “filter” excluding useless information that will not help complete our goal.  

If this psychological experiment seems familiar, then you have probably heard of the “gorilla video” regarding selective attention.  

This famous experiment, as well as my own, highlights the phenomenon where our brains exclude certain aspects of the environment from our consciousness to understand a selected subject more clearly [2] (In this case, which dog was more playful).  

Selective attention in simple terms is our brain’s way of blocking out activity from all around us while focusing on what the individual deems as most important.  

This occurrence can be applied in good and bad situations based on the circumstances of the person.  

Here is a situation that may seem familiar. 

You are trying hard to study for a test that is super important but there are so many noises around you taking away from your focus. 

The sound of a lawn mower,  

The scream of your siblings.  

Everything just gnaws at your attention span, preventing you from distinguishing important information from sensory garbage.  

This unfortunately has happened to me, and probably many of my readers. 

But there is hope.  

After extensive research has been done on selective attention and self-regulation, it has been concluded that a person’s ability to hone their focus on a particular subject can be reinforced positively to help someone study [3].  

Furthermore, you must be willing to complete the tasks you set for yourself, which is why adding academic benchmarks for subjects can be useful in improving your learning, Let’s explore these ideas more.

The In-Depth Pro Study Guide: 

Selective attention explains how our brains can become so easily distracted by our environment when trying to concentrate on something important.  

So, where do we look when trying to improve our focus? Our environment, this means everything that can be immediately observed.  

• Let’s begin by changing our environments to improve the quality of our study sessions. Find a room that has little to no distractions where you can talk and use sound.  

• Now that you have found your location and the subject picked for studying, start to write out the material that needs to be studied. After each written sentence, look back on your work and recite it out loud to yourself.  

• Do this multiple times with your chosen definitions and concepts until you can remember what you will write before you write it.  

Now, there are a few more techniques that I will be going over, but this step is crucial in the recollection of the information you gather.  

Multiple learning styles are being activated when going through this process.  

Auditory (hearing), visual, and the process of writing out the problem provide varying ways in which an individual can receive his/her information.  

In this step, we have minimized various distractions that could present themselves while increasing the chances of retaining information.

In this sense, we are using selective attention to separate distracting events from our specific topic of choice by occupying multiple senses with that subject in an isolated, distraction-free environment.  

The Importance Of “Brain Breaks” 

Now that we have gone through some intense studying, let’s discuss how we can further reinforce the information collected so that we can foster excellent memory recall.  

I know all this studying seems extremely grueling. 

Which is why I believe you will be very pleased with the next step.  

After around 30 to 45 minutes of studying, you need to take what I like to call a “brain break.”  

I know this sounds very exciting 

But this isn’t a sleep kind of rest; we need to involve some physical activity.  

Studies have shown that brief, low to moderately intense activities after studying can improve attention, as well as slightly increase concentration [4].  

• Going for short walks or engaging in moderately intense activities such as basketball will constitute a brain break.  

• Not only does this short series of exercises improve attention and concentration, but it also gives your eyes, hands, head, and other body parts time to relax and distress so that you can return to your studying ready to deliver your full attention. 

Short Quiz/Tests Improves Memory Recall: 

Now that your mind and body are sufficiently loose, our next step will be to provide yourself with a small test or quiz.  

As you are studying your chosen topic,  

• Consider the most important concepts and questions.  

• Write these questions down and create a small test (This step should be done before your short brain break).  

• Once you’ve created your test and you have finished your physical activity, go over the short test and see how many you get right.  

Repeated recollection of information from a certain subject can drastically improve your long-term memory of the selected subject [5].  

If you have read this far, congratulations!  

You now have some essential tools to help guide you on your amazing studying journey.  

We have discussed selective attention and how it affects our focus by selecting a specific stimulus in the environment to observe while disregarding all other incoming information. Additionally, we learned how to manipulate our attention to influence the incoming information we receive to what we desire by choosing our environment and how we receive our information, as well as providing ourselves with well-constructed short tests or quizzes.  

Furthermore, brain breaks are crucial to allowing our minds and bodies to destress while improving attention and concentration. 

College can be scary, I know guys. 

But with these new studying techniques, your concentration will never be the same! 

References 

[1] Bater, L. R., & Jordan, S. S. (2019). Selective attention. Encyclopedia of personality and individual differences, 1. 

[2] Wang, C., Cesar, P., & Geelhoed, E. (2013). An invisible gorilla: is it a matter of focus of attention?. In Advances in Multimedia Information Processing–PCM 2013: 14th Pacific-Rim Conference on Multimedia, Nanjing, China, December 13-16, 2013. Proceedings 14 (pp. 318-326). Springer International Publishing. 

[3] Self-optimization of coverage and capacity based, accessed April 15, 2025, https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/self-optimization-coverage-capacity-based-on/docview/1530196415/se-2. 

[4] Maiztegi-Kortabarria, J., Arribas-Galarraga, S., Luis-de Cos, I., Espoz-Lazo, S., & Valdivia-Moral, P. (2024). Effect of an Active Break Intervention on Attention, Concentration, Academic Performance, and Self-Concept in Compulsory Secondary Education. European Journal of Investigation in Health, Psychology and Education, 14(3), 447-462. 

[5] Roediger III, H. L., McDermott, K. B., & McDaniel, M. A. (2011). Using testing to improve learning and memory. Psychology and the real world: Essays illustrating fundamental contributions to society, 65-74.