Attention is what enables us to process information about the world around us. We can only be aware of things around us if we pay attention to them. We can think of attention as a spotlight that we shine on things in the world around us to make them stand out. When something "stands out," we notice it, bringing it into our awareness, and then process or interpret it. Attention can change rapidly, switching from one thing to another. It can be steered by our intentions ("top-down"), as when we look for a particular face in a crowd, or it can be steered by features of objects in the world ("bottom-up"), as when our attention is grabbed by a police car's flashing lights in our rearview mirror. Preattentive processes help us decide what to pay attention to and what to filter out and ignore. Attention filters and feeds information about the world around us into our minds.