which by their very nature occupy the focal point in consciousness are
color and brightness, novelty, sudden changes and sharp contrasts,
rhythm and cadence, movement, and all other situations to which there
are other instinctive responses, such as hunting, collecting, curiosity,
manipulation, etc. In other words, children are born with tendencies to
attend to an enormous number of situations because of the number of
instinctive responses they possess. So great is this number that
psychologists used to talk about the omnivorousness of children's
attention, believing that they attended to everything. Such a general
attention seems not to be true. However, it is because so many
situations have the power to force consciousness to a crest that human
beings have developed the intellectual power that puts them so far above
other animals. That these situations do attract attention is shown by
the fact that individuals respond by movements which enable them to be
more deeply impressed or impressed for a longer time by the situations
in question. For example, a baby will focus his eyes upon a bright
object and then move eyes and head to follow it if it moves from his
field of vision. Just what the situations are, then, which will arouse
responses of attention in any given individual will depend in the first
place upon his age, sex, and maturity, and in the second place upon his
experience. The process of learning very quickly modifies the inborn
tendencies to attention by adding new situations which demand it. It is
the things we learn to attend to that make us human rather than merely
animal.

The fact of attention or selection must of necessity involve also
inhibition or neglect. The very fact of the selection of certain objects
and qualities means the neglect of others. This fact of neglect is at
first just as mechanical as that of attention, but experiences teach us
to neglect some situations which by original nature attracted attention.