Final answer:
An attentional filter helps select the most important stimuli for processing, exemplified by selective attention and inattentional blindness.
Step-by-step explanation:
The type of filter that ensures only the most important stimuli are selected for special processing is known as an attentional filter.
This concept is crucial in understanding how we perceive the world and is embodied in phenomena such as selective attention and inattentional blindness. Selective attention allows us to focus on a particular stimulus while ignoring others, which is essential for tasks like counting the number of passes in a basketball game without noticing a person in a gorilla suit. Inattentional blindness, on the other hand, occurs when we fail to perceive an unexpected stimulus because our attention is focused elsewhere.
Both these phenomena illustrate how our attentional processes are not only limited but also selective in nature, highlighting the brain's tendency to use top-down processing and attentional capture to deal with cognitive load and maintain efficiency.