MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences - Cryptome

At the same time, selectivities in multiple mental
domains must surely be integrated to give coherent, purposive
behaviour (Duncan 1996). It has often been proposed
that some mental “executive” takes overall responsibility for
coordinating mental activity (e.g., Baddeley 1986); for
example, for ensuring that appropriate goals, actions, and
perceptual inputs are all selected together. At least as attractive,
perhaps, is an approach through self-organization. By
analogy with “relaxation” models of many mental processes
(McClelland and Rumelhart 1981), selected material in any
one mental domain (e.g., active goals, perceptual inputs,
material from memory) may support selection of related
material in other domains. The description of top-down control
given earlier, for example, implies that goals control
perceptual selection; equally, however, active goals can
always be overturned by novel perceptual input, as when a
telephone rings or a friend passes by in the street. Whichever
approach is taken, a central aspect of “attention” is this
question of overall mental coordination.
See also CONSCIOUSNESS, NEUROBIOLOGY OF; EYE
MOVEMENTS AND VISUAL ATTENTION; INTROSPECTION;
MEMORY; NEURAL NETWORKS; SELF-KNOWLEDGE; TOP-
DOWN PROCESSING IN VISION
—John Duncan
References
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visual attention. Annual Review of Neuroscience 18: 193–
222.
Duncan, J. (1996). Cooperating brain systems in selective perception
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578.
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onset in capturing attention. Perception and Psychophysics 43:
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Attention in the Animal Brain 41
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Further Readings
Allport, D. A. (1989). Visual attention. In M. I. Posner, Ed., Foundations
of Cognitive Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp.
631–682.
Norman, D. A., and T. Shallice. (1986). Attention to action: willed
and automatic control of behavior. In R. J. Davidson, G. E.
Schwartz, and D. Shapiro, Eds., Consciousness and self-regulation.
Advances in research and theory, vol. 4. New York: Plenum,
pp. 1–18.
Pashler, H. (1997). The Psychology of Attention. Cambridge, MA:
MIT press.
Posner, M. I., and S. E. Petersen. (1990). The attention system of
the human brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience 13: 25–42.
Attention in the Animal Brain
In most contexts ATTENTION refers to our ability to concentrate
our perceptual experience on a selected portion of the
available sensory information, and, in doing so, to achieve a
clear and vivid impression of the environment. To evaluate
something that seems as fundamentally introspective as
attention, cognitive science research usually uses a measure
of behavioral performance that is correlated with attention.
To examine brain mechanisms of attention, the correlations
are extended another level by measuring the activity of neurons
during different ‘attentive’ behaviors. Although this
article focuses exclusively on attentive processes in the
visual system, attentive processing occurs within each sensory
system (see AUDITORY ATTENTION) and more generally
in most aspects of cognitive brain function. Our understanding
of the neuronal correlates of attention comes principally
from the study of the influence of attentive acts on visual
processing as observed in animals. The selective aspects of
attention are apparent in both of vision’s principal functions,
identifying objects and navigating with respect to objects
and surfaces.
Attention is a dynamic process added on top of the passive
elements of selection provided by the architecture of