Which selective attention factor refers to the fact that an extreme effort to accomplish a task may inhibit attention?

Which selective attention factor refers to the fact that an extreme effort to accomplish a task may inhibit attention?

• A. Expectancy
• B. Cognition
• C. Effort
• D. Salience

Answer: (C)

Selective attention depends on how much mental effort you devote to the task. When you push your effort to an extreme, you can disrupt automatic processing and flood working memory with self-monitoring and overthinking. This cognitive overload makes it harder to pick up and attend to the most relevant cues, effectively inhibiting attention rather than helping it. In other words, there’s an optimal level of effort for focusing attention: too little leaves you under-engaged, while too much can impair performance by overloading your cognitive system. That’s why this factor is described as effort. The other factors—expectancy (what you expect to happen), cognition (general mental processing resources), and salience (how much something stands out)—don’t specifically capture the idea that excessive effort can impair attention in the same way.

Selective attention depends on how much mental effort you devote to the task. When you push your effort to an extreme, you can disrupt automatic processing and flood working memory with self-monitoring and overthinking. This cognitive overload makes it harder to pick up and attend to the most relevant cues, effectively inhibiting attention rather than helping it. In other words, there’s an optimal level of effort for focusing attention: too little leaves you under-engaged, while too much can impair performance by overloading your cognitive system. That’s why this factor is described as effort. The other factors—expectancy (what you expect to happen), cognition (general mental processing resources), and salience (how much something stands out)—don’t specifically capture the idea that excessive effort can impair attention in the same way.