Question

Explain the bio/psycho/social aspects of our ability to selectively pay attention to some information while inhibiting other.

Answer 1

The bio/psycho/social aspects of Selective Attention

Selective attention is a process by virtue of which we are able to focus on one object or one aspect of a situation while being able to tune out the rest. Broadly speaking, at any given moment, we are bombarded with a plethora of sensory information (because our five senses act as gateways to the outside world and any information that is outside of us passes through one or more of our senses and then into our mind), and with the help of selective attention, only a small fraction of all that information finds its way into our conscious awareness.
On the other hand, selective attention is not entirely a voluntary process. It takes place automatically even without us trying. For instance, if you are at a party interacting with a friend, even though you are voluntarily focusing on the conversation, you will still be able to notice someone calling your name from the other end of the room and have your attention shift there. This happens because the mind knows that it is important to pay attention when your name is called out. A similar observation was made when researchers were trying to study Broadbent's Dichotic Listening Theory, they called it the "cocktail party effect".

On the biological front, selective attention is not limited to a single region of the brain. This follows from the fact that attentional information is an interplay between the brain and the body (the sense organs). Sensory stimulation is the first step in the process of selective attention which then gives rise to neural activity that is related to behavior (because once you pay attention to a stimulus like a pretty flower or the sound of your name, you exhibit behavior like looking at the flower or turning towards the source of the sound). As such, neural clusters present in the lateral prefrontal cortex play an important role in selective attention (this is also the region actively involved with strategic behavior planning, and short term retention of information). A study conducted by Smith and colleagues (published in 2015, Behavioral Neuroscience) showed that attentional processing is modulated by Dopamine activity in the Amygdala region of the brain. This region not only plays an important role in selective attention but also in the processing of the information perceived as a result of it.

On the psychological front, selective attention is influenced by a variety of factors and each depends upon the corresponding sense. Broadbent's Filter Model suggests that we utilize a filter that helps us narrow down the information we pay attention to, and it largely depends upon the physical properties of the stimulus concerned. This means that the color, texture, pitch, volume, smell, taste, shape, and style of the stimulus matters and the less appealing stimuli are tuned out.
Treisman's Attenuation Theory carries Broadbent's work further in that it explains how we are still able to perceive information that was unattended. This happens by virtue of an attenuator instead of a classic filter. The attenuator merely turns down the volume with which we perceive everything other than the stimulus we are currently paying attention to. So, even though we might be focused on the scene in a movie, we are still able to pay attention to the background music albeit with less intensity.
Yet another theory is that of Memory Selection, which contains both aspects of the previous two theories but in a more sophisticated manner. According to this theory, we have not one but two filters that help us fine-tune the information that needs our attention. The information that successfully passes through both these filters ends up in the Short Term Memory.

On the social front, various studies have revealed rather interesting facts about how Selective Attention impacts our interactions with the outside world and society in general. We are more prone to identifying faces and as such, any structure that remotely resembles the outline of a face will have our attention -- this explains how some people mistook the shape of a hill on Mars to be a human face. This is simply because human faces signal familiarity, community, and safety.
Another aspect of selective attention is context -- the information given or received prior to paying attention to a certain stimulus. This has been demonstrated with the help of countless experiments, like the Moonwalking Bear Awareness Test. In this test, participants are asked to count the number of times a basketball is passed between the players of one of two teams in a video clip that they were about to see. With this information setting the context, participants' attention is directed towards counting the number of passes while paying no attention to everything else. Later, the participants were asked if they could spot a Moonwalking Bear (which was a man dressed in a bear costume moonwalking across the basketball court) in the video clip, and most participants denied it. When they were shown the video a second time, they could in fact spot the bear which was there all along.
In a broader context, selective attention can lead to bias. This was illustrated in a study (Park G, Van Bavel JJ, Hill LK, Williams DP, Thayer JF, 2016) on in-group and out-group bias where participants were asked to detect a target letter among other letters displayed on pictures of faces. It was observed that the in-group participants successfully identified target letters on in-group faces and less successful when the letters were displayed on out-group faces. This observation explains the occurrence of racism and discrimination amongst various societal groups -- we prefer the ones who look like us and discriminate against those that don't.

All in all, selective attention like many other Neuro-cognitive processes is a complex interplay between our biology, psychology, and social life -- with each of the three closely complementing the other.