“Paying attention refers to the brain’s ability to take all of the stimuli around us, immediately categorize and organize information as relevant or irrelevant, and focus the mind on one thing. For a child in a classroom, paying attention to the teacher means filtering out as many as 30 other students and the dynamics between them, visual or outside distractions, noises, and more…”
Check out the PBS website’s section about Attention through their “MisUnderstood Minds” project.
The EdFive 