What is known as the learning to ignore non-meaningful events in one's environment?

Learned irrelevance refers to a phenomenon where an individual learns to disregard certain stimuli in their environment that do not have any significant consequence or meaning. This process is crucial for focusing attention on more relevant and important cues while filtering out distractions that might interfere with learning or behavior.

For example, in training a dog, if certain noises or sights are repeatedly presented without any positive or negative reinforcement, the dog will eventually become indifferent to those stimuli. This allows the dog to focus more on commands and cues that are essential for learning and responding appropriately in various situations.

This concept contrasts with the other options. Adaptive behavior generally pertains to actions that individuals engage in as a response to their environment to ensure survival or success, rather than ignoring stimuli. Conditioned reflex involves automatic responses to specific stimuli based on conditioning, which is about associating one stimulus with a particular response rather than ignoring it. Passive learning, although related to learning processes, does not specifically focus on the disregard for non-meaningful stimuli but rather denotes a more general form of absorption of information without active engagement. Thus, learned irrelevance is the most appropriate term for the process described in the question.