People with high IQ better at blocking out distractions

People with high IQ have a 'picky' brain which is better at blocking out distractions, a new study has found.
Researchers have found that the brains of people with high intelligence quotient (IQ) process sensory information differently.
They are automatically more selective when it comes to perceiving objects in motion and are specifically more likely to suppress larger and less relevant background motion.
"It is not that people with high IQ are simply better at visual perception," said Duje Tadin of the University of Rochester.
"Instead, their visual perception is more discriminating. They excel at seeing small, moving objects but struggle in perceiving large, background-like motions," Tadin said.

The scientists asked people to watch videos showing moving bars on a computer screen. Their task was to state whether the bars were moving to the left or to the right.

The researchers measured how long the video had to run before the individual could correctly perceive the motion.
The results showed that individuals with high IQ can pick up on the movement of small objects faster than low-IQ individuals can. That wasn't unexpected, Tadin said.
The surprise came when tests with larger objects showed just the opposite: individuals with high IQ were slower to see what was right there in front of them.

"There is something about the brains of high-IQ individuals that prevents them from quickly seeing large, background-like motions," Tadin added.
In other words, it isn't a conscious strategy but rather something automatic and fundamentally different about the way their brains work.
That ability to block out distraction could come in very handy in a world filled with more information than we can possibly take in. It helps to explain what makes some brains more efficient than others, researchers said.
An efficient brain "has to be picky," Tadin said.
The study was published in the journal Current Biology.