Background: The purpose of the current study was to determine the effect of personal and occupational environment on selective attention and executive function. For this reason we compared selective attention and executive function between the military forces and artists and ordinary people (non-military- non-artist).
Materials and methods: In a descriptive analytical study 120 subjects were selected randomly from 3 groups. Data were collected by d2 test for evaluating selective attention and Tower Of London test for assessing executive function. Descriptive statistics, the ANOVA test, and Bonferroni multiple comparison tests were used for data analysis.
Results: The results showed that the selective attention in military forces was higher than both artists and ordinary people. This discrepancy was statistically significant. Executive function, the same as selective attention had significant difference and it was higher in military forces in comparison with two other groups study.
Conclusion: It seems that these psychological characteristics fall under the influence of personal and occupational environment. The result of this study showed that military disciplines may have a relationship with improvement in selective attention and executive function status.