Answer :
Final answer:
Selective attention is crucial as it determines what we sense and perceive by allowing us to focus on certain stimuli while ignoring others, which can lead to inattentional blindness as seen in the study by Simons and Chabris (1999).
Explanation:
The importance of paying attention to either the message or peripheral cues lies in the concept of selective attention. This perceptual process allows us to focus on specific sensory inputs while ignoring others, which can dramatically affect our sensation and perception of events. For instance, in the famous study by Simons and Chabris (1999), participants focused on counting basketball passes and missed seeing the person in a gorilla costume, highlighting a phenomenon known as inattentional blindness. Similarly, in shadowing tasks, while individuals can recall the content of the message they focused on, they often cannot recall details of unattended messages, emphasizing that only certain sensory aspects, such as the pitch of a voice, are noticed.
