The process through which certain stimuli are selected from a group of others is generally referred to as attention.

Attention has different properties such as selection, alertness, concentration, and search.

(i) Selection: A large number of stimuli impinge upon our sense organs simultaneously but we do not notice all of them at the same time. Only a selected few of them are noticed. For example, when a student enters his classroom he encounters several things in it, such as doors, walls, windows, paintings on walls, tables, chairs, students, school bags, etc., but he selectively focus only on one or two of them at one time.

(ii) Alertness: It refers to an individual’s readiness to deal with stimuli that appear before him/her. For example while participating in a race in school, a student can see the participants on the starting line in an alert state waiting for the whistle to blow in order to run.

(iii) Concentration: It refers to focusing of awareness on certain specific objects while excluding others for the moment. For example in the classroom, a student concentrates on the teacher’s lecture and ignores all sorts of noise coming from different corners of the school.

(iv) Search: In search an observer looks for some specified subject or object among a set of objects. Example : When you go to fetch your younger sister and brother from the school, you just look for them among many boys and girls. All these activities require some kind of effort on the part of the people.