Behavioral and Brain Sciences最新文献

The field has chosen gate as its preferred metaphor for attention. This commentary will discuss the power and the consequences of this choice. It will make the case that a better metaphor is needed, to liberate our understanding of attention from the constraints imposed by the gate metaphor.

While agreeing with Rosenholtz that the broad concept of visual attention conflates phenomena with explanatory mechanisms, leading to a crisis that demands a paradigm shift, we argue that this issue partially arises from viewing attention within a predominantly perception-focused framework. We propose reframing visual attention as part of an integrated sensorimotor system, emphasizing its role in linking vision and action.

Rosenholtz (2024) dismisses attentional capture, arguing that brief distractions (20-40 ms) are insignificant or intentional. However, we argue that distractions are never intentional nor negligible, and studying them is crucial both theoretically and for real-world applications.

Extensive research using the attentional blink phenomenon illustrates, through behavioural, modelling and cognitive neuroscience approaches, that distinct selection and attention capacity limits exist. Crucially, these effects cannot reflect peripheral visual processes nor distinct task operations across conditions controlling for issues raised by Rosenholtz. Moving away from attention and selection concepts hinder rather than facilitate a mechanistic understanding of vision.

We do not share Rosenholtz's central worry that visual attention is in "crisis". There are many examples of notable progress in understanding how the brain prioritizes and gathers information about the environment where "attention," as a relatively loose concept, has worked well. We also discuss how focusing on a single definition, the field can be led astray.

Recent electrophysiological studies of visual attention have highlighted the importance of visual circuits through evolutionarily conserved brain regions in the midbrain that target processing stages downstream from early visual cortex. These findings support the target article's emphasis on late-stage "task selection" but are also consistent with early-stage modulation of basic visual features and flexible pooling of visual signals.

Paradigm shifts as advocated by Kuhn (1962), should be rarely occurring and based upon true crises. The study of attention, however, is not in crisis requiring a paradigm shift but instead has a firm empirical foundation that can accommodate the findings in visual search cited in the target article.

The similarities between 2D summary statistics and fragmentary 3D vision suggest common principles. Specifically, both 2D and 3D visual processing discard information whenever that information is redundant or inessential for ecologically valid vision in a consistent world. Change blindness and other illusions result from information loss without awareness, when the corresponding consistency assumptions are violated.

I agree that, in some literature, the term "attention" is ill-defined and the constraints of peripheral vision have been overlooked. However, I disagree with omitting the empirical studies that have emphasized the importance of defining, operationalizing, and manipulating different types of attention and have investigated their effects on perception as a function of eccentricity and polar angle in peripheral vision.

This commentary refutes Rosenholtz's claim that visual attention lacks conceptual validity. We contend that attention remains important for elucidating capacity-limited perceptual processing and explaining phenomenological experience. Alternative frameworks centered on tasks and decision boundaries fail to account for perceptual effects that attentional mechanisms can capture. Thus, preserving attention as a theoretical construct is important, providing interpretive frameworks for empirical investigations.