Visual Attention and Action

Abstract

Until recently, there has been relatively little interest in relationships between attention and action. When modern research into attention began in the 1950s, the dominating approach was to analyze attention within the information-processing framework, and information processing was conceptualized mainly in terms of what happens to stimulus information after it has entered the human processing system (e. g., Broadbent, 1958, 1971; Neisser, 1967). Attentional processes were viewed as modifying the flow of information by selecting part of the incoming information for processing. Most of the theoretical discussions since the 1960s have centered around the question of where in the processing sequence this selection takes place. This has usually been phrased as the problem of whether selective attention operates ``early,'' i. e., prior to complete stimulus analysis, or ``late,'' after the information in the stimulus has been fully identified (e. g. Deutsch Deutsch, 1963; Treisman Geffen, 1967). Common to both theoretical positions has been the conviction that not all incoming information can be dealt with simultaneously by the system because processing capacity is limited. Hence, selection was thought to be necessary. Attention was thus conceptualized as related to the analysis and internal representation of incoming information rather than to the control of action.