The mechanisms of sensory sensitivity: A response to commentaries on Ward (2019)

A recent framework has been proposed for understanding individual differences in sensory sensitivity in terms of whether increased neural responsiveness to sensory stimuli reflects increased responses to sensory signals or increased neural noise. This has different implications for behavioral performance. In this commentary, we discuss some related concepts including responsivity and perceptual expertise. We consider in more detail the role of attention including exogenous factors (altered bottom-up salience) and endogenous ones (indiscriminately assigning higher attentional priority), and the role that emotion may play in this process.