attentional rubbernecking

It sounds like one my blathering over-caffeinated phrase machinations but this is an actual term coined by scientists who have noted that people who see erotic or violent images tend to not remember what they see next.

“We observed that people fail to detect visual images that appeared one-fifth of a second after emotional images, whereas they can detect those images with little problem after viewing neutral images,” said Vanderbilt University psychologist David Zald.