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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Attention | 2/5 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T11:04:13.138266+00:00 | kb-cron |
Modern experimental work began with investigations of the "cocktail party problem" by Colin Cherry in 1953. Cherry asked how people at a noisy party can attend to one conversation while ignoring others. He studied this through dichotic listening tasks, in which participants heard two simultaneous streams of speech through headphones and were asked to shadow (repeat) one stream while ignoring the other. These paradigms were extended by Donald Broadbent and others. By the 1990s, psychologists increasingly used positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study attention in the brain. Because this equipment was typically housed in hospitals, psychologists collaborated with neurologists. Psychologist Michael Posner and neurologist Marcus Raichle pioneered imaging studies of selective attention. The adoption of neuroimaging, alongside long-standing techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG), led to extensive research on the neural basis of attention. A growing body of work identified a frontoparietal attention network implicated in the control of attention.
== Components == Attention is constrained by both the number of elements that can be processed and the duration of exposure. Experimental studies of attention began with Wundt’s findings. He suggested the scope of attention limited to about 3–6 items. Decades of research on subitizing (the rapid apprehension of small numerosities) have supported Wundt’s early findings regarding limits on the number of items that can be held in the focus of consciousness. 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 among those elements, potentially enhancing understanding. For example, three items in the focus of consciousness have six possible combinations (3 factorial), four have 24, and six have 720 (6 factorial). Empirical evidence suggests that the scope of attention in early development increases from about two items in the focal point at up to six months of age to five or more items by around five years.
=== Intentionality === A definition of a psychological construct shapes how it is studied. In scientific literature, attention sometimes overlaps with or is confused with intentionality, partly because of ambiguities in their linguistic definitions. Intentionality has been defined as "the power of minds to be about something: to represent or to stand for things, properties and states of affairs". Although attention and intentionality may be described in similar terms, they are distinct constructs. Historically, experimental studies of attention began with Wundt’s work using a 4 x 4 matrix of randomly chosen letters, which informed his theory of attention. Wundt defined attention as “that psychical process, which is operative in the clear perception of the narrow region of the content of consciousness”. His experiments suggested limits to the attentional threshold (about 3–6 letters seen during a 1/10-second exposure). He distinguished between the entrance of content into consciousness (apprehension) and its elevation into the focus of attention (apperception). Wundt’s theory thus emphasized attention as an active, voluntary process unfolding over time. In contrast, neuroscientific research suggests that intentionality can sometimes emerge rapidly and even unconsciously: neuronal correlates of an intentional act have been observed to precede conscious awareness of that intention (see also shared intentionality). From this perspective, intentionality can be described as a mental state (“the mind being about something”), whereas attention is better understood dynamically as the process of elevating a subset of content into clear consciousness and sustaining it. The attention threshold may be viewed as the minimum time needed to clearly apprehend the intended content. Distinguishing these constructs is important for a precise scientific approach to attention.
=== Orienting === Orienting of attention refers to shifting focus across space, time, or modality. This can be driven by external (exogenous) or internal (endogenous) processes. External signals do not operate purely exogenously; they will capture attention and elicit eye movements primarily when they are behaviorally relevant to the observer. Exogenous orienting is typically described as stimulus-driven and automatic. It is often triggered by sudden changes in the periphery and may produce reflexive saccades. Because exogenous cues usually appear in peripheral locations, they are referred to as peripheral cues. Exogenous orienting can occur even when observers know the cue is uninformative: the mere presence of the cue in a location influences responses to subsequent stimuli presented there. Many studies have examined the impact of valid and invalid cues. Typically, brief valid peripheral cues speed responses, but when the interval between cue and target exceeds ~300 ms, this benefit reverses. Posner and Cohen (1984) termed this reversal inhibition of return, in which responses to validly cued locations become slower than to invalid locations. Endogenous orienting is the intentional allocation of attention to a location or object based on goals or instructions. Endogenous cues are often presented centrally (e.g., arrows at fixation) and require interpretation and voluntary redirection of attention. These are therefore termed central cues. Comparisons of exogenous and endogenous orienting have identified several differences:
exogenous orienting is less affected by cognitive load than endogenous orienting; observers can ignore endogenous cues but not exogenous cues; exogenous cues typically have larger, more immediate effects; and expectations about cue validity influence endogenous orienting more strongly than exogenous orienting. Both overlapping and distinct brain networks underlie these forms of orienting. A related distinction is between bottom-up (stimulus-driven) and top-down (goal-directed) attention. Bottom-up attention (often equated with exogenous attention) is driven by stimulus properties such as motion, brightness, or sudden onset and is associated with regions in the parietal lobe, temporal lobe, and brainstem. Experimental evidence supports the idea that the primary visual cortex (V1) constructs a bottom-up saliency map, relayed to the superior colliculus to guide attention and gaze shifts. Top-down attention (also called goal-driven, endogenous, attentional control or executive attention) is mediated primarily by the frontal cortex and basal ganglia. As part of the executive functions, this system is closely related to working memory, conflict resolution, and inhibition.