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What is focal attention for? The What and Why of perceptual selection| old_uid | 114 |
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| title | What is focal attention for? The What and Why of perceptual selection |
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| start_date | 2005/10/28 |
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| schedule | 11h-13h |
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| online | no |
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| summary | Perceptual “focal” attention is synonymous with selection. It is widely accepted that, at least in the case of vision, the reason that perception is selective is that the quantity of information arriving at sensors is beyond the capacity of the visual system to process. While this is certainly true, it is far from being the only reason for selection. There are a number of reasons why selection would still be required even if visual processing capacity were unlimited. One of the theoretically more interesting reasons has to do with the need to sort and link together the many perceptual properties that pertain to the same things in the world. This is the so-called binding problem that has received considerable attention in both the psychological and philosophical literature. I have suggested that one of the primary functions of selective attention is to permit the binding problem to be solved by sorting the information early in the visual stream, prior to the perceived world being conceptualized (i.e., “pre-conceptually”).
Here I will argue that one of the conditions for solving the binding problem in human vision is that (some of) the enduring visual objects that are the bearers of perceptual properties be selected and tracked qua individuals. In this way the properties that are linked (“bound”) are properties of individual token objects, as opposed to being properties that happen to be associated for other reasons (e.g., because they share a common region in the proximal stimulus). This view differs from many widely held assumptions such as those in Treisman’s Feature Integration Theory or in Austen Clark’s Theory of Sentience. I will sketch arguments for the object-based view of how the binding problem is solved, and will discuss a number of empirical phenomena that are consistent with the claim that selection is primarily by individual perceptual objects (or proto-objects). This view raises some philosophical problems regarding the notion of nonconceptual individuation that will be briefly raised. |
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| responsibles | <not specified> |
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