DISATTENTION

n.

The deliberate refusal to pay attention to certain things.

Or perhaps a marathon runner wants to learn to overcome the muscle fatigue she feels during a long run. Dr. Handel would teach this person "disattention," which means training the brain not to attend to, or simply to ignore, certain stimuli (although this technique is not appropriate for all situations, since pain may signal the need for medical attention).

—"Hypnosis: Controlling the Pain, Controlling Your Health," Tufts University Health & Nutrition Letter, October 1, 2000

It is a bleak message.What a family has to say to its children is: "You'll never make it into this world alive. If alive, then deformed." A mother's loving attention creates and destroys; a father's loving disattention creates and destroys.

—Richard Eder, "Plumbing the depths with Brodkey," Los Angeles Times, September 25, 1988

attention economics

attentional blink

continuous partial attention

I society

polyattentiveness

Sociology (General)