Visual attention: The past 25 years

Abstract

This review focuses on covert attention and how it alters early vision. I explain why attention is considered a selective process, the constructs of covert attention, spatial endogenous and exogenous attention, and feature-based attention. I explain how in the last 25 years research on attention has characterized the effects of covert attention on spatial filters and how attention influences the selection of stimuli of interest. This review includes the effects of spatial attention on discriminability and appearance in tasks mediated by contrast sensitivity and spatial resolution; the effects of feature-based attention on basic visual processes, and a comparison of the effects of spatial and feature-based attention. The emphasis of this review is on psychophysical studies, but relevant electrophysiological and neuroimaging studies and models regarding how and where neuronal responses are modulated are also discussed.

Automaticity and cognitive control in the learned predictiveness effect.

“…Our ability to successfully navigate this environment depends on selecting and responding to the most relevant aspects of what lies before us. Indeed, our capacity to process information is severely limited (Allport, 1989;Broadbent, 1958;Carrasco, 2011), suggesting that the way in which we prioritise signals is a critical mechanism driving detailed perception and goaldriven action. Given this limited capacity, it is broadly held that signals compete in order to achieve detailed analysis (Desimone & Duncan, 1995;Knudsen, 2007;Rescorla & Wagner, 1972).…”

“…The general ideas put forward in this opening paragraph are pervasive in Psychology, taken as fundamental aspects of broad areas of research such as attention (Beck & Kastner, 2009;Desimone & Duncan, 1995;Pashler, 1998), learning McLaren et al, 2014), decision making (Evans, 2008), and perception (Carrasco, 2011). This thesis deals with the interaction between two potent influences on one's behaviour, namely learning and attention.…”

“…More recently, attention has been associated with a wide-ranging number of more specific cognitive phenomena, leading to the less poetic insistence that, "no one knows what attention is" (Pashler, 1998, p. 1). Nonetheless, it is broadly held that the critical purpose of attention is stimulus selection in the face of our limited capacity for the detailed analysis of sensory information (Carrasco, 2011;Desimone & Duncan, 1995).…”

“…A critical theoretical division is the difference between top-down and bottom-up mechanisms of selection (e.g., Carrasco, 2011;Desimone & Duncan, 1995). Top-down, or endogenous attentional control, also known as goal-driven attention, reflects a bias in selection originating from the goals and intentions of an observer.…”

“…Rather, it is widely argued that behaviour reflects the dynamic interplay between top-down and bottom-up control (Carrasco, 2011;Desimone & Duncan, 1995;Knudsen, 2007;Pashler, Johnston, & Ruthruff, 2001). Indeed, it is this interplay that forms the basis for the influential framework of attentional control put forward by Desimone and Duncan (1995), namely the biased competition theory of selective attention.…”