Final answer:
Cognitive distraction involves having your mind preoccupied with thoughts or activities other than the task at hand, like when looking too long at a billboard. Our brains use heuristics, mental shortcuts, which can lead to fallacies of diversion and inattentional blindness, causing us to miss important stimuli while focused on something else.
Step-by-step explanation:
Cognitive distraction refers to when your mind is not fully concentrated on the task at hand, and instead, is preoccupied with different thoughts or activities. An example of a cognitive distraction is looking too long at a billboard while driving. When you divert your attention to read or engage with the billboard, you are no longer focusing on driving, which can be dangerous and lead to accidents.
Our brains have a tendency to rely on heuristics, which are mental shortcuts that help us make decisions quickly. While heuristics can sometimes lead to cognitive ease, they can also result in fallacies of diversion, where attention is moved away from what is crucial. This is particularly evident in situations of inattentional blindness, where we fail to perceive an unexpected stimulus that is in plain sight because our attention is focused elsewhere.
Heuristics and learning are significant themes in understanding how we can either benefit from or be hindered by cognitive distractions, depending on whether they are helping us automate regular tasks or causing us to miss important information in our environment.