The vast amount of information portrayed by the media is often too much for the human brain to cope given its limited cognitive resources. In face of such situations, we often apply mental shortcuts or heuristics such as the availability heuristics when dealing with the overloading information. The availability heuristic refers to a mental shortcut which determines the future likelihood or probability of the occurrence of an event based on ease of which the event comes to mind. Depending on the amount of media coverage, it can lead to overestimation or underestimation of the probability estimates of an environmental issue. Thus, the lack of media coverage on the problem of IAS can significantly result in an underestimation of impact of IAS and hence the lack of emphasis on it.
In addition, differing levels of emphasis placed on particular aspects of an issue can also result in the lack of emphasis placed on an environmental problem. Often, much emphasis has been placed on the adverse impacts of household pests such as the house crows in spreading of diseases to humans. Overemphasis on issues such as this can hinder the identification of the house crows as an IAS and impede the recognition of the problem of IAS being the primary source of the accompanying adverse impacts on human health.
According to Slovic et al’s (1978) “Getting on with One’s Life” hypothesis, humans are constantly in face prevailing and impending hazards and unless one is able to ignore the many ongoing hazards, his or her life would be in a constant preoccupation with risks that would hinder the normal functioning of one’s life. Given the limited cognitive resources, humans tend therefore to focus only on events that are of high probabilities and ignore those with relatively low probabilities. Again, the lack of media portrayal on the problem of IAS and hence the perceived low probability of occurrence of the IAS problem, have caused the lack of attention placed on the problem of IAS.