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What attention is. The priority structure account.

Sebastian Watzl1

  • 1Faculty of Humanities, Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.

Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews. Cognitive Science
|October 28, 2022
PubMed
Summary

Attention organizes information to enhance its utility for an organism, integrating cognitive and motivational states. This priority structure account offers a unified, interdisciplinary framework for understanding attention in psychology and neuroscience.

Keywords:
attentionidentificationinterdiciplinarityprioritypsychological explanation

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Science
  • Neuroscience
  • Philosophy of Mind

Background:

  • William James's assertion that 'everyone knows what attention is' highlights its intuitive yet theoretically elusive nature.
  • Traditional approaches in psychology and neuroscience have not fully established attention as a core theoretical concept.
  • A need exists for a unified framework to define attention's role in cognition and its evolutionary basis.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To propose a methodology for studying attention inspired by David Marr's levels of analysis, specifically the Computational Level.
  • To develop a unified answer to what attention is, its function in the mind, and its adaptive significance.
  • To introduce the 'priority structure account' of attention.

Main Methods:

  • Applying Marr's Computational Level of analysis to the study of attention.
  • Developing a methodology optimized across first-person experience, explanatory power in psychology and neuroscience, and interdisciplinary relevance.
  • Identifying attention by four key features that organize information for organismal utility.

Main Results:

  • Attention is defined as the process that organizes current information to increase its usefulness for the organism.
  • The priority structure account integrates informational and motivational states within a cognitive system.
  • Attention facilitates the integration of an organism's informational state with its current motivational state.

Conclusions:

  • The priority structure account provides a unified and explanatorily powerful framework for attention.
  • This approach enhances understanding across psychology, neuroscience, and other disciplines.
  • Attention serves a crucial role in making cognitive systems more adaptive by organizing information effectively.