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141-454: 'FINST' abbreviates ‘FINgers of INSTantiation’. Pylyshyn describes visual indexing theory in terms of this analogy. Imagine, he proposes, placing your fingers on five separate objects in a scene. As those objects move about, your fingers stay in respective contact with each of them, allowing you to continually track their whereabouts and positions relative to one another. While you may not be able to discern in this way any detailed information about

282-428: A FINST, the index provides the visual system with rapid and preferential access to the object for further processing of features such as colour, texture and shape. While in this sense FINSTs provide the means for higher-level processing to occur, FINSTs themselves are "opaque to the properties of the objects to which they refer." FINSTs do not directly convey any information about an indexed object, beyond its position at

423-406: A bottom-up saliency map, which is received by the superior colliculus in the midbrain area to guide attention or gaze shifts. The second aspect is called top-down processing, also known as goal-driven, endogenous attention, attentional control or executive attention. This aspect of our attentional orienting is under the control of the person who is attending. It is mediated primarily by

564-405: A broader kind of intentionality. There are three alternative kinds of directedness / intentionality one might posit for moods. In the case of outward directedness, moods might be directed at either the world as a whole, a changing series of objects in the world, or unbound emotion properties projected by people onto things in the world. In the case of inward directedness, moods are directed at

705-716: A bus mean the bus is full—the rings on the bell are independent of the fullness of the bus—we could have assigned something else (just as arbitrary) to signify that the bus is full. There are also objective and subjective mental representations. Objective representations are closest to tracking theories—where the brain simply tracks what is in the environment. Subjective representations can vary person-to-person. The relationship between these two types of representation can vary. Eliminativists think that subjective representations do not exist. Reductivists think subjective representations are reducible to objective. Non-reductivists think that subjective representations are real and distinct. In

846-596: A causal role in what gets represented:. Structural representations are also important. These types of representations are basically mental maps that we have in our minds that correspond exactly to those objects in the world (the intentional content). According to Morgan, structural representations are not the same as mental representations—there is nothing mental about them: plants can have structural representations. There are also internal representations. These types of representations include those that involve future decisions, episodic memories, or any type of projection into

987-725: A certain object or scene, fMRI can determine the engaged brain regions (primary visual cortex for visual imagery; hippocampus for episodic memory). Such patterns provide a glimpse into neural encoding of mental states, and act as bridges between neural activity and subjective experience. Advocates for cognitive science consider fMRI research critical to exposing how mental representations are spread and overlapped. These methods have demonstrated that conceptual representations, such as "tools" versus "animals," are not limited to discrete brain regions but rather span networks encompassing associative, motor, and sensory regions. This illustrates how mental models combine semantic and perceptual aspects to provide

1128-520: A common neural architecture, in that they control both covert and overt attentional systems. For example, if individuals attend to the right hand corner field of view, movement of the eyes in that direction may have to be actively suppressed. Covert attention has been argued to reflect the existence of processes "programming explicit ocular movement". However, this has been questioned on the grounds that N2 , "a neural measure of covert attentional allocation—does not always precede eye movements". However,

1269-624: A complex social community with multiple relationships. Many Indigenous children in the Americas predominantly learn by observing and pitching in. There are several studies to support that the use of keen attention towards learning is much more common in Indigenous Communities of North and Central America than in a middle-class European-American setting. This is a direct result of the Learning by Observing and Pitching In model. Keen attention

1410-417: A different enumeration method is employed in these low-quantity cases. In 1949, Kaufman, Lord, Reese and Volkmann coined the term 'subitizing' to describe the phenomenon. In 2023 a study of single neuron recordings in the medial temporal lobe of neurosurgical patients judging numbers reported evidence of two separate neural mechanisms with a boundary in neuronal coding around number 4 that correlates with

1551-470: A given instant. "Thus, on initial contact, objects are not interpreted as belonging to a certain type or having certain properties; in other words, objects are initially detected without being conceptualised." Like the fingers described above, FINSTs' role in visual perception is purely an indexical one. Visual indexing theory was created partly in response to what Pylyshyn viewed as limitations of traditional theories of perception and cognition — in particular,

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1692-416: A high rate of successful target tracking, researchers have shown that subjects can: Two defining properties of FINSTs are their plurality, and their capacity to track indexed objects as they move around a visually cluttered scene. "Thus multiple-item tracking studies provide strong support for one of the more counterintuitive predictions of FINST theory — namely, that the identity of items can be maintained by

1833-494: A high tendency to be especially keen observers. This learning by observing and pitching-in model requires active levels of attention management. The child is present while caretakers engage in daily activities and responsibilities such as: weaving, farming, and other skills necessary for survival. Being present allows the child to focus their attention on the actions being performed by their parents, elders, and/or older siblings. In order to learn in this way, keen attention and focus

1974-462: A high tendency to be especially wide, keen observers. This points to a strong cultural difference in attention management. Attention may be differentiated into "overt" versus "covert" orienting. Overt orienting is the act of selectively attending to an item or location over others by moving the eyes to point in that direction. Overt orienting can be directly observed in the form of eye movements. Although overt eye movements are quite common, there

2115-528: A limited-capacity mechanism that operates after the spatially parallel processes of feature detection and grouping but before the serial processes of spatial attention." In other words, by a mechanism such as a FINST. A key assumption of visual indexing theory is that once an item entering the visual field has been indexed, that index provides the subject with rapid subsequent access to the object, which bypasses any higher level cognitive processes. In order to test this hypothesis, Burkell and Pylyshyn (1997) designed

2256-468: A message while carrying on a meaningful conversation. This relies on the reflexive response due to "overlearning" the skill of morse code reception/detection/transcription so that it is an autonomous function requiring no specific attention to perform. This overtraining of the brain comes as the "practice of a skill [surpasses] 100% accuracy," allowing the activity to become autonomic, while your mind has room to process other actions simultaneously. Based on

2397-439: A more complex and dynamic view of cognition. Furthermore, by showing how experiences gradually alter mental representations, fMRI research has advanced our understanding of brain plasticity. fMRI offers a glimpse into the brain underpinnings of thought and organization by mapping these processes. Multi-Voxel Pattern Analysis is a data processing method that is used to analyze multiple sets of patterns simultaneously. This analysis

2538-501: A much more abstract level, possess a syntax and semantics very much like those of natural languages. For the Portuguese logician and cognitive scientist Luis M. Augusto, at this abstract, formal level, the syntax of thought is the set of symbol rules (i.e., operations, processes, etc. on and with symbol structures) and the semantics of thought is the set of symbol structures (concepts and propositions). Content (i.e., thought) emerges from

2679-399: A much more crude fashion (i.e., low-resolution). This fringe extends out to a specified area, and the cut-off is called the margin. The second model is called the zoom-lens model and was first introduced in 1986. This model inherits all properties of the spotlight model (i.e., the focus, the fringe, and the margin), but it has the added property of changing in size. This size-change mechanism

2820-455: A particular individual regardless of what properties the individual happens to have at any instant of time." Pylyshyn argues that FINSTs' detachment from the descriptions of the objects they reference overcomes this problem. Three main types of experiments provide data that support visual indexing theory. Multiple tracking studies demonstrate that more than one object can be tracked within the visual field simultaneously, subitizing studies suggest

2961-418: A problem, or look at a picture and scientists track the brain activity related to that task. For example, if you look at a picture of a face, certain areas of your brain will light up in a predictable way. Researchers can then study these patterns and "decode" the brain activity to figure out what you’re seeing or thinking. So, restricted decoding is pretty focused. The brain activity is tied to one thing, like

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3102-480: A reference. A deeper problem for this view, according to Pylyshyn, is that it cannot account for objects' continuity over time. "An individual remains the same individual when it moves about or when it changes any (or even all) of its visible properties." If we refer to objects solely in terms of their conceptual descriptions, it is not clear how the visual system maintains an object's identity when those descriptions change. "The visual system needs to be able to pick out

3243-409: A reflection of underlying neurological processes. For example, one study tested if fMRI could accurately measure the mental representations that are triggered when viewing a simple image. Participants' were shown 1,200 images of natural objects and printed letters while brain activity was recorded from multiple regions of visual cortex (V1-4), lateral occipital complex). Using deep neural networks (DNNs),

3384-450: A scene, but a key characteristic is that it can only be deployed to one location at a time. In 1986, Eriksen and St. James conducted a series of experiments which suggested that the spotlight of attention comes equipped with a zoom-lens. The zoom-lens allows the size of the area of attentional focus to be expanded (but due to a fixed limit on available attentional resources, only at the expense of processing efficiency). According to Pylyshyn,

3525-403: A screen, each of which has one of two colours, and one of two orientations. Three of these items are designated as the subset by late onset (appearing after the others). The subset contains the target item and two distractors. The key independent variable in this experiment is the nature of the subset selected. In some cases, the subset comprises a feature search set — i.e. the target differs from

3666-434: A series of experiments to see whether subjects could effectively index a subset of items on a display, such that a search task could be undertaken with respect to only the selected items. Experimental setup Burkell and Pylyshyn's experiments took advantage of a well-documented distinction between two types of visual search : The experimental setup is similar to a typical conjunction search task: 15 items are presented on

3807-504: A solution to the hard problem of consciousness. In contrast to this, weak representationalism does not aim to provide a theory of consciousness, nor does it offer a solution to the hard problem of consciousness. Strong representationalism can be further broken down into restricted and unrestricted versions. The restricted version deals only with certain kinds of phenomenal states e.g. visual perception. Most representationalists endorse an unrestricted version of representationalism. According to

3948-451: A specific object or task. The goal is to figure out how the brain represents specific things (like seeing a face or recognizing a word) when you're actively engaging with something. For example, with fMRI scans, researchers can track brain activity while people look at different objects or images. They can use this data to predict what the person is seeing based on the neural patterns, since those patterns are relatively consistent when someone

4089-505: A state to its intentional content would provide a solution to the hard problem of consciousness once a physicalist account of intentionality is worked out. When arguing against the unrestricted version of representationalism people will often bring up phenomenal mental states that appear to lack intentional content. The unrestricted version seeks to account for all phenomenal states. Thus, for it to be true, all states with phenomenal character must have intentional content to which that character

4230-457: A visual input that consists of the physical form of the letter, letter category, and the phonetic representation. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is a powerful tool in cognitive science for exploring the neural correlates of mental representations. “A powerful feature of event-related fMRI is that the experimenter can choose to combine the data from completed scans in many different ways.” Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

4371-401: Is a distinction that can be made between two types of eye movements; reflexive and controlled. Reflexive movements are commanded by the superior colliculus of the midbrain . These movements are fast and are activated by the sudden appearance of stimuli. In contrast, controlled eye movements are commanded by areas in the frontal lobe . These movements are slow and voluntary. Covert orienting

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4512-410: Is a hypothetical internal cognitive symbol that represents external reality or its abstractions . Mental representation is the mental imagery of things that are not actually present to the senses. In contemporary philosophy , specifically in fields of metaphysics such as philosophy of mind and ontology , a mental representation is one of the prevailing ways of explaining and describing

4653-480: Is a lack of measurement surrounding distributions of temporal and spatial attention. Only a concentrated amount of attention on how effective one is completing the task and how long they take is being analyzed making a more redundant analysis on overall cognition of being able to process multiple stimuli through perception. Attention is best described as the sustained focus of cognitive resources on information while filtering or ignoring extraneous information. Attention

4794-440: Is a mental state (“the power of the mind to be about something”, arising even unconsciously), the description of the construct of attention should be understood in the dynamical sense as the ability to elevate the clear perception of the narrow region of the content of consciousness and to keep in mind this state for a time. The attention threshold would be the period of minimum time needed for employing perception to clearly apprehend

4935-427: Is a necessary precondition for higher level perceptual processing. Pylyshyn suggests that what FINSTs operate upon in a direct sense is 'feature clusters' on the retina, though a precise set of criteria for FINST allocation has not been defined. "The question of how FINSTs are assigned in the first instance remains open, although it seems reasonable that they are assigned primarily in a stimulus-driven manner, perhaps by

5076-567: Is a powerful tool in cognitive science for exploring the neural correlates of mental representations. For instance, if participants are instructed to visualize a certain object or scene, fMRI can determine the engaged brain regions (primary visual cortex for visual imagery; hippocampus for episodic memory). By recording patterns of brain activity, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can be used to quantify and decode different kinds of mental representations. Certain ideas, perceptions, or mental images may be associated with these patterns, which are

5217-467: Is a single pool of attentional resources that can be freely divided among multiple tasks. This model seems oversimplified, however, due to the different modalities (e.g., visual, auditory, verbal) that are perceived. When the two simultaneous tasks use the same modality, such as listening to a radio station and writing a paper, it is much more difficult to concentrate on both because the tasks are likely to interfere with each other. The specific modality model

5358-529: Is a very basic function that often is a precursor to all other neurological/cognitive functions. As is frequently the case, clinical models of attention differ from investigation models. One of the most used models for the evaluation of attention in patients with very different neurologic pathologies is the model of Sohlberg and Mateer. This hierarchic model is based in the recovering of attention processes of brain damage patients after coma . Five different kinds of activities of growing difficulty are described in

5499-424: Is a wide debate on what kinds of representations exist. There are several philosophers who bring about different aspects of the debate. Such philosophers include Alex Morgan, Gualtiero Piccinini, and Uriah Kriegel. There are "job description" representations. That is representations that represent something—have intentionality , have a special relation—the represented object does not need to exist, and content plays

5640-409: Is also commonly used in cognitive psychology, to examine brain imaging data when paired with fMRI. This testing essentially allows researchers to analyze whether a particular mental representation is active within a particular brain region. With fMRI activation, the visual perception of the brain can be analyzed and decoded. In certain regions of the brain, such as the retinotopic region, researchers have

5781-472: Is an initial pre-attentive parallel phase of perceptual segmentation and analysis that encompasses all of the visual items present in a scene. At this phase, descriptions of the objects in a visual scene are generated into structural units; the outcome of this parallel phase is a multiple-spatial-scale structured representation. Selective attention intervenes after this stage to select information that will be entered into visual short-term memory." The contrast of

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5922-539: Is based on performance of doing two tasks simultaneously, usually that involves driving while performing another task, such as texting, eating, or even speaking to passengers in the vehicle, or with a friend over a cellphone. This research reveals that the human attentional system has limits for what it can process: driving performance is worse while engaged in other tasks; drivers make more mistakes, brake harder and later, get into more accidents, veer into other lanes, and/or are less aware of their surroundings when engaged in

6063-440: Is because they are typically presented at the center of a display, where an observer's eyes are likely to be fixated. Central cues, such as an arrow or digit presented at fixation, tell observers to attend to a specific location. When examining differences between exogenous and endogenous orienting, some researchers suggest that there are four differences between the two kinds of cues: There exist both overlaps and differences in

6204-572: Is both a requirement and result of learning by observing and pitching-in. Incorporating the children in the community gives them the opportunity to keenly observe and contribute to activities that were not directed towards them. It can be seen from different Indigenous communities and cultures, such as the Mayans of San Pedro , that children can simultaneously attend to multiple events. Most Maya children have learned to pay attention to several events at once in order to make useful observations. One example

6345-415: Is debated. Representationalism (also known as indirect realism ) is the view that representations are the main way we access external reality. The representational theory of mind attempts to explain the nature of ideas , concepts and other mental content in contemporary philosophy of mind , cognitive science and experimental psychology . In contrast to theories of naïve or direct realism ,

6486-434: Is driven by the properties of the objects themselves. Some processes, such as motion or a sudden loud noise, can attract our attention in a pre-conscious, or non-volitional way. We attend to them whether we want to or not. These aspects of attention are thought to involve parietal and temporal cortices, as well as the brainstem . More recent experimental evidence support the idea that the primary visual cortex creates

6627-436: Is enhanced firing. If a neuron has a different response to a stimulus when an animal is not attending to a stimulus, versus when the animal does attend to the stimulus, then the neuron's response will be enhanced even if the physical characteristics of the stimulus remain the same. In a 2007 review, Professor Eric Knudsen describes a more general model which identifies four core processes of attention, with working memory at

6768-545: Is exposed to the same thing (like a particular image or object). Unrestricted decoding is a bit more relaxed. Instead of focusing on a task, researchers look at brain activity when people aren’t doing anything in particular, for example when you’re resting or thinking freely. This approach is more about understanding general mental states or abstract thoughts that aren't linked to a specific task or stimulus. For example, someone might just be asked to relax and think about whatever comes to mind. Researchers would then try to decode

6909-403: Is investigating the diagnostic symptoms associated with traumatic brain injury and its effects on attention. Attention also varies across cultures. The relationships between attention and consciousness are complex enough that they have warranted philosophical exploration. Such exploration is both ancient and continually relevant, as it can have effects in fields ranging from mental health and

7050-541: Is linked to eye movement circuitry that sets up a slower saccade to that location. There are studies that suggest the mechanisms of overt and covert orienting may not be controlled separately and independently as previously believed. Central mechanisms that may control covert orienting, such as the parietal lobe , also receive input from subcortical centres involved in overt orienting. In support of this, general theories of attention actively assume bottom-up (reflexive) processes and top-down (voluntary) processes converge on

7191-488: Is present in the ways in which children of indigenous backgrounds interact both with their surroundings and with other individuals. Simultaneous attention requires focus on multiple simultaneous activities or occurrences. This differs from multitasking, which is characterized by alternating attention and focus between multiple activities, or halting one activity before switching to the next. Simultaneous attention involves uninterrupted attention to several activities occurring at

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7332-944: Is reduced. Phenomenal states without intentional content therefore serve as a counterexample to the unrestricted version. If the state has no intentional content its phenomenal character will not be reducible to that state's intentional content, for it has none to begin with. A common example of this kind of state are moods. Moods are states with phenomenal character that are generally thought to not be directed at anything in particular. Moods are thought to lack directedness, unlike emotions, which are typically thought to be directed at particular things. People conclude that because moods are undirected they are also nonintentional i.e. they lack intentionality or aboutness. Because they are not directed at anything they are not about anything. Because they lack intentionality they will lack any intentional content. Lacking intentional content their phenomenal character will not be reducible to intentional content, refuting

7473-600: Is required. Eventually the child is expected to be able to perform these skills themselves. In the domain of computer vision , efforts have been made to model the mechanism of human attention, especially the bottom-up intentional mechanism and its semantic significance in classification of video contents. Both spatial attention and temporal attention have been incorporated in such classification efforts. Mental representation A mental representation (or cognitive representation ), in philosophy of mind , cognitive psychology , neuroscience , and cognitive science ,

7614-471: Is simultaneous attention which involves uninterrupted attention to several activities occurring at the same time. Another cultural practice that may relate to simultaneous attention strategies is coordination within a group. San Pedro toddlers and caregivers frequently coordinated their activities with other members of a group in multiway engagements rather than in a dyadic fashion. Research concludes that children with close ties to Indigenous American roots have

7755-448: Is the act of mentally shifting one's focus without moving one's eyes. Simply, it is changes in attention that are not attributable to overt eye movements. Covert orienting has the potential to affect the output of perceptual processes by governing attention to particular items or locations (for example, the activity of a V4 neuron whose receptive field lies on an attended stimuli will be enhanced by covert attention) but does not influence

7896-494: Is the concentration of awareness on some phenomenon to the exclusion of other stimuli. It is the selective concentration on discrete information, either subjectively or objectively . William James (1890) wrote that "Attention is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence." Attention has also been described as

8037-452: Is the intentional allocation of attentional resources to a predetermined location or space. Simply stated, endogenous orienting occurs when attention is oriented according to an observer's goals or desires, allowing the focus of attention to be manipulated by the demands of a task. In order to have an effect, endogenous cues must be processed by the observer and acted upon purposefully. These cues are frequently referred to as central cues . This

8178-402: Is the spotlight model. The term "spotlight" was inspired by the work of William James , who described attention as having a focus, a margin, and a fringe. The focus is an area that extracts information from the visual scene with a high-resolution, the geometric center of which being where visual attention is directed. Surrounding the focus is the fringe of attention, which extracts information in

8319-402: Is thought to operate as a two-stage process. In the first stage, attention is distributed uniformly over the external visual scene and processing of information is performed in parallel. In the second stage, attention is concentrated to a specific area of the visual scene (i.e., it is focused), and processing is performed in a serial fashion. The first of these models to appear in the literature

8460-428: Is through something called neural decoding, where they try to figure out what’s going on in the brain by analyzing patterns of brain activity. There are two main ways to approach this: restricted decoding and unrestricted decoding. Here’s how they differ: Restricted decoding is when scientists focus on brain activity tied to a specific task or stimulus. Basically, it’s when you do something like recognize an object, solve

8601-578: Is within the subitizing range, each additional item on the display adds around 40–120ms to the total response time. Beyond the subitizing range, each additional item adds 250–350ms to the total response time (so that when the number of items presented is plotted against reaction time, an 'elbow' shaped curve results.) Researchers generally take this to be evidence of there being (at least) two different enumeration methods at work — one for small numbers, and another for larger numbers. Trick and Pylyshyn (1993) argue that "subitizing can be explained only by virtue of

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8742-542: The allocation of limited cognitive processing resources. Attention is manifested by an attentional bottleneck , in terms of the amount of data the brain can process each second; for example, in human vision , less than 1% of the visual input data stream of 1MByte/sec can enter the bottleneck, leading to inattentional blindness . Attention remains a crucial area of investigation within education , psychology , neuroscience , cognitive neuroscience , and neuropsychology . Areas of active investigation involve determining

8883-455: The frontal cortex and basal ganglia as one of the executive functions . Research has shown that it is related to other aspects of the executive functions, such as working memory , and conflict resolution and inhibition. A "hugely influential" theory regarding selective attention is the perceptual load theory , which states that there are two mechanisms that affect attention: cognitive and perceptual. The perceptual mechanism considers

9024-406: The ability of people to learn new information when there were multiple tasks to be performed, or to probe the limits of our perception (c.f. Donald Broadbent ). There is also older literature on people's performance on multiple tasks performed simultaneously, such as driving a car while tuning a radio or driving while being on the phone. The vast majority of current research on human multitasking

9165-465: The ability of the newer techniques to measure precisely localized activity inside the brain generated renewed interest by a wider community of researchers. A growing body of such neuroimaging research has identified a frontoparietal attention network which appears to be responsible for control of attention. A definition of a psychological construct forms a research approach to its study. In scientific works, attention often coincides and substitutes

9306-463: The ability to predict features of the visual perception, such as lines or patterns, the awareness of the individual, features that weren’t originally analyzed, as well as the identifying perceived images of an individual. After thorough research, studies have shown that patterns of imagery and perception are more seen in the ventral temporal cortex, than they are in the retinotopic region of the brain. These results show that without new information entering

9447-475: The activation of locally distinct properties of the stimulus-particularly by new features entering the visual field." FINSTs are subject to resource constraints. Up to around five FINSTs can be allocated at any given time, and these provide the visual system information about the relative locations of FINSTed objects with respect to one another. Once an object has been individuated, its FINST then continues to index that particular feature cluster as it moves across

9588-517: The areas of the brain that are responsible for endogenous and exogenous orientating. Another approach to this discussion has been covered under the topic heading of "bottom-up" versus "top-down" orientations to attention. Researchers of this school have described two different aspects of how the mind focuses attention to items present in the environment. The first aspect is called bottom-up processing, also known as stimulus-driven attention or exogenous attention. These describe attentional processing which

9729-417: The authors were then able to “recreate” the original images, based only on the brain data. These reconstructed images were remarkably similar to the original, preserving important elements like texture, shape, and color. A new group of participants was able to correctly identify the original image based on the reconstructed image 95 percent of the time. For instance, if participants are instructed to visualize

9870-428: The behavioural transition from subitizing to estimation, supporting the old observation of Jevons. Experimental setup In a typical experiment, subjects are briefly shown (for around 100ms) a screen containing a number of randomly arranged objects. The subjects' task is to report the number of items shown, which can range between one and several hundred per trial. Results When the number of items to be enumerated

10011-425: The brain patterns to figure out what’s going on in their head, whether they're feeling happy, sad, or even daydreaming. Since the brain is in a more free-flowing state, the patterns are a lot less predictable, and scientists often use fancy tools like machine learning to help interpret the data. In other words, unrestricted decoding is about trying to figure out what's happening in the brain when it's not responding to

10152-436: The brain, it has the ability to reactivate certain patterns of neural activity that have been active before. With this analysis, researchers are able to understand the process in which the brain decodes information and identify ways in which this information is represented. When scientists study the brain, they want to understand how our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions are represented in brain activity. One way they do this

10293-738: The center: Neurally, at different hierarchical levels spatial maps can enhance or inhibit activity in sensory areas, and induce orienting behaviors like eye movement. In many cases attention produces changes in the EEG . Many animals, including humans, produce gamma waves (40–60 Hz) when focusing attention on a particular object or activity. Another commonly used model for the attention system has been put forth by researchers such as Michael Posner . He divides attention into three functional components: alerting, orienting, and executive attention that can also interact and influence each other. Children appear to develop patterns of attention related to

10434-442: The classical view of mental representation , we perceive objects according to the conceptual descriptions they fall under. It is these descriptions, and not the raw content of our visual perceptions, that allow us to construct meaningful representations of the world around us, and determine appropriate courses of action. In Pylyshyn's words, "it is not the bright spot in the sky that determines which way we set out when we are lost, but

10575-429: The combined research of Vygotsky and Luria have determined a large part of the contemporary understanding and definition of attention as it is understood at the start of the 21st-century. Multitasking can be defined as the attempt to perform two or more tasks simultaneously; however, research shows that when multitasking, people make more mistakes or perform their tasks more slowly. Attention must be divided among all of

10716-493: The component tasks to perform them. In divided attention, individuals attend or give attention to multiple sources of information at once or perform more than one task at the same time. Older research involved looking at the limits of people performing simultaneous tasks like reading stories, while listening and writing something else, or listening to two separate messages through different ears (i.e., dichotic listening ). Generally, classical research into attention investigated

10857-415: The conversation based upon the needs of the driver. For example, if traffic intensifies, a passenger may stop talking to allow the driver to navigate the increasingly difficult roadway; a conversation partner over a phone would not be aware of the change in environment. There have been multiple theories regarding divided attention. One, conceived by cognitive scientist Daniel Kahneman , explains that there

10998-416: The cue will not relay reliable, accurate information about where a target is going to occur. This means that the mere presence of an exogenous cue will affect the response to other stimuli that are subsequently presented in the cue's previous location. Several studies have investigated the influence of valid and invalid cues. They concluded that valid peripheral cues benefit performance, for instance when

11139-403: The cultural practices of their families, communities, and the institutions in which they participate. In 1955, Jules Henry suggested that there are societal differences in sensitivity to signals from many ongoing sources that call for the awareness of several levels of attention simultaneously. He tied his speculation to ethnographic observations of communities in which children are involved in

11280-412: The definition of attention, it would be correct to consider the origin of this notion to review the meaning of the term given to it when the experimental study on attention was initiated. It is thought that the experimental approach began with famous experiments with a 4 x 4 matrix of sixteen randomly chosen letters – the experimental paradigm that informed Wundt 's theory of attention. Wundt interpreted

11421-426: The descriptive model of visual representation to be incomplete. One issue is that the theory does not account for demonstrative, or indexical references. "For example, in the presence of a visual stimulus, we can think thoughts such as `that is red' where the term `that' refers to something we have picked out in our field of view without reference to what category it falls under or what properties it may have." Relatedly,

11562-409: The development of these technological innovations, neuroscientists became interested in this type of research that combines sophisticated experimental paradigms from cognitive psychology with these new brain imaging techniques. Although the older technique of electroencephalography (EEG) had long been used to study the brain activity underlying selective attention by cognitive psychophysiologists ,

11703-496: The elevation into the focus of attention - apperception." Wundt's theory of attention postulated one of the main features of this notion that attention is an active, voluntary process realized during a certain time. In contrast, neuroscience research shows that intentionality may emerge instantly, even unconsciously; research reported to register neuronal correlates of an intentional act that preceded this conscious act (also see shared intentionality ). Therefore, while intentionality

11844-447: The existence of a mechanism that allows small numbers of objects to be efficiently enumerated, and subset selection studies show that certain elements of a visual scene can be processed independently of other items. In all three cases, FINSTs provide an explanation of the phenomenon observed. Multiple object tracking describes the ability of human subjects to simultaneously track the movement of up to five target objects as they move across

11985-424: The experimental outcome introducing the meaning of attention as "that psychical process, which is operative in the clear perception of the narrow region of the content of consciousness." These experiments showed the physical limits of attention threshold, which were 3-6 letters observing the matrix during 1/10 s of their exposition. "We shall call the entrance into the large region of consciousness - apprehension, and

12126-482: The fact that we see it (or represent it) as the North Star". The method by which we come to match a percept to its appropriate description has been the subject of ongoing investigation (for example the way in which parts of objects are combined to represent their whole), but there is a general consensus that descriptions are fundamental in this way to visual perception. Like the spotlight model of attention, Pylyshyn takes

12267-435: The field of cognitive psychology, mental representations refer to  patterns of neural activity that encode abstract concepts or representational “copies” of sensory information from the outside world. For example, our iconic memory can store a brief sensory copy of visual information, lasting a fraction of a second. This allows the brain to process visual details about a brief visual event, like another car driving past on

12408-407: The future. In Gualtiero Piccinini 's forthcoming work, he discusses topics on natural and nonnatural mental representations. He relies on the natural definition of mental representations given by Grice (1957) where P entails that P . e.g. Those spots mean measles, entails that the patient has measles. Then there are nonnatural representations: P does not entail P . e.g. The 3 rings on the bell of

12549-665: The highway.. Other mental representations are more abstract, like goals, conceptual representations, or verbal labels (“car”). In order for cognitive psychologists to understand how humans process information within the brain, they created the Posner’s letter matching task experiment to learn how individuals process visual information by measuring their reaction time when viewing pairs of letters. This experiment revealed that some representations have different reaction times meaning that some take more time to activate using stimulus like “a”.  Stimulus “a” can be represented in multiple ways by

12690-421: The implementation of thinking and action" There are two types of representationalism, strong and weak. Strong representationalism attempts to reduce phenomenal character to intentional content. On the other hand, weak representationalism claims only that phenomenal character supervenes on intentional content. Strong representationalism aims to provide a theory about the nature of phenomenal character, and offers

12831-577: The individual's limited-capacity attentional resources. Other variables play a part in our ability to pay attention to and concentrate on many tasks at once. These include, but are not limited to, anxiety, arousal, task difficulty, and skills. Simultaneous attention is a type of attention, classified by attending to multiple events at the same time. Simultaneous attention is demonstrated by children in Indigenous communities, who learn through this type of attention to their surroundings. Simultaneous attention

12972-449: The information he requires and on the process of choosing an algorithm for response actions, which involves the intensification of sensory and intellectual activities”. In cognitive psychology there are at least two models which describe how visual attention operates. These models may be considered metaphors which are used to describe internal processes and to generate hypotheses that are falsifiable . Generally speaking, visual attention

13113-410: The information that is processed by the senses. Researchers often use "filtering" tasks to study the role of covert attention of selecting information. These tasks often require participants to observe a number of stimuli, but attend to only one. The current view is that visual covert attention is a mechanism for quickly scanning the field of view for interesting locations. This shift in covert attention

13254-403: The intentional content supplied to the mood state is not capable of sufficiently capturing the phenomenal aspects of the mood states. In the case of inward directedness, the phenomenology of the mood does not seem tied to the state of one's body, and even if one's mood is reflected by the overall state of one's body that person will not necessarily be aware of it, demonstrating the insufficiency of

13395-420: The intentional content to adequately capture the phenomenal aspects of the mood. In the case of outward directedness, the phenomenology of the mood and its intentional content does not seem to share the corresponding relation they should given that the phenomenal character is supposed to reduce to the intentional content. Hybrid directedness, if it can even get off the ground, faces the same objection. There

13536-548: The items themselves, the presence of your fingers provides a reference via which you can access such information at any time, without having to relocate the objects within the scene. Furthermore, the objects' continuity over time is inherently maintained — you know the object referenced by your pinky finger at time t is the same object as that referenced by your pinky at t −1 , regardless of any spatial transformations it has undergone, because your finger has remained in continuous contact with it. Visual indexing theory holds that

13677-456: The limits of a human ability to concentrate awareness on a task. Latvian prof. Sandra Mihailova and prof. Igor Val Danilov drew an essential conclusion from the Wundtian approach to the study of attention: the scope of attention is related to cognitive development. As the mind grasps more details about an event, it also increases the number of reasonable combinations within that event, enhancing

13818-553: The meaningful co-occurrence of both sets of symbols. For instance, "8 x 9" is a meaningful co-occurrence, whereas "CAT x §" is not; "x" is a symbol rule called for by symbol structures such as "8" and "9", but not by "CAT" and "§". Canadian philosopher P. Thagard noted in his work "Introduction to Cognitive Science", that "most cognitive scientists agree that knowledge in the human mind consists of mental representations" and that "cognitive science asserts: that people have mental procedures that operate by means of mental representations for

13959-481: The model; connecting with the activities those patients could do as their recovering process advanced. This model has been shown to be very useful in evaluating attention in very different pathologies, correlates strongly with daily difficulties and is especially helpful in designing stimulation programs such as attention process training, a rehabilitation program for neurological patients of the same authors. Most experiments show that one neural correlate of attention

14100-403: The music that arouses them. In response to this objection, a proponent of representationalism might reject the undirected non-intentionality of moods, and attempt to identify some intentional content they might plausibly be thought to possess. The proponent of representationalism might also reject the narrow conception of intentionality as being directed at a particular thing, arguing instead for

14241-410: The nature of ideas and concepts . Mental representations (or mental imagery) enable representing things that have never been experienced as well as things that do not exist. Our brains and mental imageries allow us to imagine things have either never happened or are impossible and do not exist. Although visual imagery is more likely to be recalled, mental imagery may involve representations in any of

14382-553: The non-target objects. All of the objects then proceed to move randomly around the screen for between 7 and 15 seconds. The subject's task it to identify, once the objects have stopped moving, which objects were the targets. Successful completion of the task thus requires subjects to continually track each of the target objects as they move, and ignore the distractors. Results Under such experimental conditions, it has been repeatedly found that subjects can track multiple moving objects simultaneously. In addition to consistently observing

14523-446: The notion of intentionality due to the extent of semantic uncertainty in the linguistic explanations of these notions' definitions. Intentionality has in turn been defined as "the power of minds to be about something: to represent or to stand for things, properties and states of affairs". Although these two psychological constructs (attention and intentionality) appear to be defined by similar terms, they are different notions. To clarify

14664-581: The objects that result from this initial grouping." In the twentieth century, the pioneering research of Lev Vygotsky and Alexander Luria led to the three-part model of neuropsychology defining the working brain as being represented by three co-active processes listed as Attention, Memory, and Activation. A.R. Luria published his well-known book The Working Brain in 1973 as a concise adjunct volume to his previous 1962 book Higher Cortical Functions in Man . In this volume, Luria summarized his three-part global theory of

14805-455: The only items present". Furthermore, the subsetted objects' particular positions within the display made no difference to subjects' ability to search across them — even when they were distally located. Watson and Humphreys (1997) reported similar findings. These results are consistent with the predictions of visual indexing theory: FINSTs provide a possible mechanism by which the subsets were prioritised. Attention Attention or focus ,

14946-473: The overall state of a person's body. In the case of hybrid, directedness moods are directed at some combination of inward and outward things. Even if one can identify some possible intentional content for moods we might still question whether that content is able to sufficiently capture the phenomenal character of the mood states they are a part of. Amy Kind contends that in the case of all the previously mentioned kinds of directedness (outward, inward, and hybrid)

15087-497: The peripheral cues are brief flashes at the relevant location before the onset of a visual stimulus. Psychologists Michael Posner and Yoav Cohen (1984) noted a reversal of this benefit takes place when the interval between the onset of the cue and the onset of the target is longer than about 300 ms. The phenomenon of valid cues producing longer reaction times than invalid cues is called inhibition of return . Endogenous (from Greek endo , meaning "within" or "internally") orienting

15228-423: The previously discussed tasks. There has been little difference found between speaking on a hands-free cell phone or a hand-held cell phone, which suggests that it is the strain of attentional system that causes problems, rather than what the driver is doing with his or her hands. While speaking with a passenger is as cognitively demanding as speaking with a friend over the phone, passengers are able to change

15369-489: The primary role of the perceptual load theory, assumptions regarding its functionality surrounding that attentional resources are that of limited capacity which signify the need for all of the attentional resources to be used. This performance, however, is halted when put hand in hand with accuracy and reaction time (RT). This limitation arises through the measurement of literature when obtaining outcomes for scores. This affects both cognitive and perceptual attention because there

15510-414: The probability of better understanding its features and particularity. For example, three items in the focal point of consciousness have six possible combinations (3 factorial), and four items have 24 (4 factorial) combinations. This number of combinations becomes significantly prominent in the case of a focal point with six items with 720 possible combinations (6 factorial). Empirical evidence suggests that

15651-491: The representational doctrine. Though emotions are typically considered as having directedness and intentionality this idea has also been called into question. One might point to emotions a person all of a sudden experiences that do not appear to be directed at or about anything in particular. Emotions elicited by listening to music are another potential example of undirected, nonintentional emotions. Emotions aroused in this way do not seem to necessarily be about anything, including

15792-420: The representational theory of mind postulates the actual existence of mental representations which act as intermediaries between the observing subject and the objects , processes or other entities observed in the external world. These intermediaries stand for or represent to the mind the objects of that world. The original or "classical" representational theory probably can be traced back to Thomas Hobbes and

15933-489: The researchers acknowledge, "it may be impossible to definitively rule out the possibility that some kind of shift of covert attention precedes every shift of overt attention". Orienting attention is vital and can be controlled through external (exogenous) or internal (endogenous) processes. However, comparing these two processes is challenging because external signals do not operate completely exogenously, but will only summon attention and eye movements if they are important to

16074-509: The retina. "Thus distal features which are currently projected onto the retina can be indexed through the FINST mechanism in a way that is transparent to their retinal location." By continually tracking an objects' whereabouts as it moves about, FINSTs perform the additional function of maintaining the continuity of objects over time. Under visual indexing theory, an object cannot be attended to until it has first been indexed. Once it has been allocated

16215-607: The same location into forming objects." Treismans's theory is based on a two-stage process to help solve the binding problem of attention. These two stages are the preattentive stage and the focused attention stage. Through sequencing these steps, parallel and serial search is better exhibited through the formation of conjunctions of objects. Conjunctive searches, according to Treismans, are done through both stages in order to create selective and focused attention on an object, though Duncan and Humphrey would disagree. Duncan and Humphrey's AET understanding of attention maintained that "there

16356-562: The same time. Another cultural practice that may relate to simultaneous attention strategies is coordination within a group. Indigenous heritage toddlers and caregivers in San Pedro were observed to frequently coordinate their activities with other members of a group in ways parallel to a model of simultaneous attention, whereas middle-class European-descent families in the U.S. would move back and forth between events. Research concludes that children with close ties to Indigenous American roots have

16497-407: The scope of attention in young children develops from two items in the focal point at age up to six months to five or more items in the focal point at age about five years. As follows from the most recent studies in relation to teaching activities in school , “attention” should be understood as “the state of concentration of an individual’s consciousness on the process of selecting by his own psyche

16638-436: The scope of intention. From this perspective, a scientific approach to attention is relevant when it considers the difference between these two concepts (first of all, between their statical and dynamical statuses). The growing body of literature shows empirical evidence that attention is conditioned by the number of elements and the duration of exposition. Decades of research on subitizing have supported Wundt's findings about

16779-420: The sensory modalities, such as hearing, smell, or taste. Stephen Kosslyn proposes that images are used to help solve certain types of problems. We are able to visualize the objects in question and mentally represent the images to solve it. Mental representations also allow people to experience things right in front of them—however, the process of how the brain interprets and stores the representational content

16920-410: The source of the sensory cues and signals that generate attention, the effects of these sensory cues and signals on the tuning properties of sensory neurons , and the relationship between attention and other behavioral and cognitive processes, which may include working memory and psychological vigilance . A relatively new body of research, which expands upon earlier research within psychopathology,

17061-462: The spotlight model of attention, and the descriptive view of visual representation. The traditional view of visual perception holds that attention is fundamental to visual processing. In terms of an analogy offered by Posner, Snyder and Davidson (1980): "Attention can be likened to a spotlight that enhances the efficiency of detection of events within its beam". This spotlight can be controlled volitionally, or drawn involuntarily to salient elements of

17202-483: The spotlight/zoom-lens model cannot tell the complete story of visual perception. He argues that a pre-attentive mechanism is needed to individuate objects upon which a spotlight of attention could be directed in the first place. Furthermore, results of multiple object tracking studies (discussed below) are "incompatible with the proposal that items are accessed by moving around a single spotlight of attention." Visual indexing theory addresses these limitations. According to

17343-461: The stimuli. Studies regarding this showed that the ability to process stimuli decreased with age, meaning that younger people were able to perceive more stimuli and fully process them, but were likely to process both relevant and irrelevant information, while older people could process fewer stimuli, but usually processed only relevant information. Some people can process multiple stimuli, e.g. trained Morse code operators have been able to copy 100% of

17484-454: The study of disorders of consciousness to artificial intelligence and its domains of research. Prior to the founding of psychology as a scientific discipline, attention was studied in the field of philosophy . Thus, many of the discoveries in the field of attention were made by philosophers. Psychologist John B. Watson calls Juan Luis Vives the father of modern psychology because, in his book De Anima et Vita ( The Soul and Life ), he

17625-400: The subject's ability to perceive or ignore stimuli, both task-related and non task-related. Studies show that if there are many stimuli present (especially if they are task-related), it is much easier to ignore the non-task related stimuli, but if there are few stimuli the mind will perceive the irrelevant stimuli as well as the relevant. The cognitive mechanism refers to the actual processing of

17766-514: The subject. Exogenous (from Greek exo , meaning "outside", and genein , meaning "to produce") orienting is frequently described as being under control of a stimulus. Exogenous orienting is considered to be reflexive and automatic and is caused by a sudden change in the periphery. This often results in a reflexive saccade. Since exogenous cues are typically presented in the periphery, they are referred to as peripheral cues . Exogenous orienting can even be observed when individuals are aware that

17907-417: The subsetted items only. Results Burkell and Pylyshyn found that subjects were indeed quicker to identify the target object in the subset feature search condition than they were in the subset conjunction search condition, suggesting that the subsetted objects were successfully prioritised. In other words, the subsets "could, in a number of important ways, be accessed by the visual system as though they were

18048-485: The theory has problems accounting for how we are able to pick out a single token among several objects of the same type. For example, I may refer to a particular can of soup on a supermarket shelf sitting among a number of identical cans that answer to the same description. In both cases, a spatiotemporal reference is required in order to pick out the object within the scene, independently of any description that object may fall under. FINSTs, Pylyshyn suggests, provide just such

18189-493: The two distractors in one dimension only. In other cases, the subset is equivalent to a conjunction search, with the target differing from the distractors in both dimensions. Because the total display contains items that differ from the target in both dimensions, if subjects are quicker to respond to the feature search subsets, this would suggest they had taken advantage of the "pop out" method of target identification. This in turn would mean that they had applied their visual search to

18330-458: The two theories placed a new emphasis on the separation of visual attention tasks alone and those mediated by supplementary cognitive processes. As Rastophopoulos summarizes the debate: "Against Treisman's FIT, which posits spatial attention as a necessary condition for detection of objects, Humphreys argues that visual elements are encoded and bound together in an initial parallel phase without focal attention, and that attention serves to select among

18471-399: The unrestricted version, for any state with phenomenal character that state's phenomenal character reduces to its intentional content. Only this unrestricted version of representationalism is able to provide a general theory about the nature of phenomenal character, as well as offer a potential solution to the hard problem of consciousness. The successful reduction of the phenomenal character of

18612-560: The visual field, usually in the presence of identical moving distractor objects of equal or greater number. The phenomenon was first demonstrated by Pylyshyn and Storm in 1988, and their results have been widely replicated (see Pylyshyn, 2007 for a summary.) Experimental setup In a typical experiment, a number of identical objects (up to 10) are initially shown on a screen. Some subset of these objects (up to five) are then designated as targets — usually by flashing or changing colour momentarily — before returning to being indistinguishable from

18753-494: The visual perceptual system works in an analogous way. FINSTs behave like the fingers in the above scenario, pointing to and tracking the location of various objects in visual space. Like fingers, FINSTs are: FINSTs operate pre-attentively — that is, before attention is drawn or directed to an object in the visual field. Their primary task is to individuate certain salient features in a scene, conceptually distinguishing these from other stimuli. Under visual indexing theory, FINSTing

18894-631: The visual scene, since this fixed resource will be distributed over a larger area. It is thought that the focus of attention can subtend a minimum of 1° of visual angle , however the maximum size has not yet been determined. A significant debate emerged in the last decade of the 20th century in which Treisman's 1993 Feature Integration Theory (FIT) was compared to Duncan and Humphrey's 1989 attentional engagement theory (AET). FIT posits that "objects are retrieved from scenes by means of selective spatial attention that picks out objects' features, forms feature maps, and integrates those features that are found at

19035-563: The visual system even when the items are visually indiscriminable from their neighbors and when their locations are constantly changing." Subitizing refers to the rapid and accurate enumeration of small numbers of items. Numerous studies (dating back to Jevons in 1871) have demonstrated that subjects can very quickly and accurately report the quantity of objects randomly presented on a display, when they number fewer than around five. While larger quantities require subjects to count or estimate — at great expense of time and accuracy — it seems that

19176-416: The working brain as being composed of three constantly co-active processes which he described as the; (1) Attention system, (2) Mnestic (memory) system, and (3) Cortical activation system. The two books together are considered by Homskaya's account as "among Luria's major works in neuropsychology, most fully reflecting all the aspects (theoretical, clinical, experimental) of this new discipline." The product of

19317-514: Was a dominant theme in classical empiricism in general. According to this version of the theory, the mental representations were images (often called "ideas") of the objects or states of affairs represented. For modern adherents, such as Jerry Fodor and Steven Pinker , the representational system consists rather of an internal language of thought (i.e., mentalese). The contents of thoughts are represented in symbolic structures (the formulas of mentalese) which, analogously to natural languages but on

19458-419: Was generally only available in hospitals, psychologists sought cooperation with neurologists. Psychologist Michael Posner (then already renowned for his influential work on visual selective attention) and neurologist Marcus Raichle pioneered brain imaging studies of selective attention. Their results soon sparked interest from the neuroscience community, which until then had been focused on monkey brains. With

19599-432: Was inspired by the zoom lens one might find on a camera, and any change in size can be described by a trade-off in the efficiency of processing. The zoom-lens of attention can be described in terms of an inverse trade-off between the size of focus and the efficiency of processing: because attention resources are assumed to be fixed, then it follows that the larger the focus is, the slower processing will be of that region of

19740-422: Was the first to recognize the importance of empirical investigation. In his work on memory, Vives found that the more closely one attends to stimuli, the better they will be retained. By the 1990s, psychologists began using positron emission tomography (PET) and later functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to image the brain while monitoring tasks involving attention. Considering this expensive equipment

19881-426: Was theorized by Cognitive Psychologists David Navon and Daniel Gopher in 1979. However, more recent research using well controlled dual-task paradigms points at the importance of tasks. As an alternative, resource theory has been proposed as a more accurate metaphor for explaining divided attention on complex tasks. Resource theory states that as each complex task is automatized, performing that task requires less of

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