Chapter 3

Glossary

Capture The ability of one source of information to take processing priority from another. For example the sudden onset of novel information within a modality such as an apple falling may interrupt ongoing attentional processing.

Conjunction A term from feature integration theory of attention that describes a target defined by at least two separable features, such as a red O amongst green O’s and red T’s.

Early selection Selective attention that operates on the physical information available from early perceptual analysis.

Endogenous attention Attention that is controlled by the intention of a participant.

Exogenous attention Attention that is drawn automatically to a stimulus without the intention of the participant. Processing by exogenous attention cannot be ignored.

Modality The processing system specific to one of the senses, such as vision, hearing or touch.

Pop-out An object will pop out from a display if it is detected in parallel and is different from all other items in the display.

Saccade The movement of the eyes during which information uptake is suppressed. Between saccades the eye makes fixations during which there is information uptake at the fixated area.

Shadowing Used in a dichotic listening task in which participants must repeat aloud the to-be-attended message and ignore the other message.

Subliminal Below the threshold for conscious awareness or confident report.

Summary

The discussion in this chapter parallels that in the previous chapter, first considering exogenous (bottom-up or stimulus-driven) influences on attention, then endogenous (top-down or goal-driven) influences, and then the interaction between them. Such interacting processes can provide a framework to explain how biased competition can determine the allocation of attention. Attention may be drawn to salient external stimuli, but that allocation can be biased not only by internal (goal directed) processes, but by the interaction between the response to external stimuli and (for example) internal emotional reactions to those stimuli.

The rather grandly-titled ‘unified model of vision and attention’ (Lambert et al. 2018; Lambert et al., 2020) suggests that the two process (exogenous/endogenous) view of attentional shifting can be aligned with dual-stream (dorsal/ventral) models of vision. According to the model, the dorsal stream is the input pathway for rapid exogenous orienting to perceptually salient stimuli, and the ventral stream is the input pathway for symbolically (meaning) driven, endogenous orienting. It makes a lot of sense for attention and perception to use the same pathways as in the human brain, both resources and space being limited.