Learning Behavior Specialist (LBS) 1 Practice Exam

The main idea is that attention can be drawn automatically toward stimuli that are especially salient for a given condition. In ADHD, movement or novelty often stands out, so a person may naturally zero in on those cues even when they’re not relevant to the task. This tendency to attend to disorder-relevant, highly salient stimuli is called an attentional bias. It helps explain why distractors like a passing movement or a sudden new stimulus can capture focus and disrupt performance. Other terms don’t capture this automatic, disorder-linked pull toward salient cues: relevant information refers to what’s important for the task, general attentional focus is a broad ability to concentrate without implying a bias toward specific salient stimuli, and stimulus preference concerns what someone likes rather than how attention is automatically drawn to certain stimuli.