The diachronic account of attentional selectivity

Abstract

Many models of attention assume that attentional selection takes place at a specific moment in time that demarcates the critical transition from pre-attentive to attentive processing of sensory input. We argue that this intuitively appealing standard account of attentional selectivity is not only inaccurate, but has led to substantial conceptual confusion. As an alternative, we offer a 'diachronic' framework that describes attentional selectivity as a process that unfolds over time. Key to this view is the concept of attentional episodes, brief periods of intense attentional amplification of sensory representations that regulate access to working memory and response-related processes. We describe how attentional episodes are linked to earlier attentional mechanisms and to recurrent processing at the neural level. We review studies that establish the existence of attentional episodes, delineate the factors that determine if and when they are triggered, and discuss the costs associated with processing multiple events within a single episode. Finally, we argue that this framework offers new solutions to old problems in attention research that have never been resolved. It can provide a unified and conceptually coherent account of the network of cognitive and neural processes that produce the goal-directed selectivity in perceptual processing that is commonly referred to as 'attention'.

Categorization templates modulate selective attention.

“…When the target was followed by a posttarget distractor (PTD) that matched the target category (i.e., digit), observers very often reported the identity of the PTD instead of the target. Such distractor intrusion errors have been found in numerous previous studies (see Zivony & Eimer, 2021a, for review). Critically, when compared with trials where the PTD was a letter (irrelevant PTD condition), a PTD digit also reduced the accuracy of target reports on trials where this digit was not one of the options in the response screen (unavailable intruder condition; Figure 1C and 1D).…”

“…So far, our results have shown that matching PTDs interfered more strongly with target reports than nonmatching PTDs, even though both types of distractors belonged to the same alphanumeric category. We interpreted this interference from posttarget distractors as evidence that these distractors receive enhanced attentional processing, which increases their ability to compete with targets for encoding in WM (see also Zivony & Eimer, 2020, 2021a, 2021b). However, the presence of such behavioral interference effects provides only indirect evidence that arbitrarily assigned categorization templates produce attentional modulations of perceptual processing.…”

“…Because the target always appeared 200 or 300 ms after the preTD, and with equal probability in the left or right RSVP stream, we did not expect any overlap between the preTD-locked waveform and the target-locked waveform. To quantify any N2pcs produced by the preTDs, we measured the amplitude in a single 100 ms time window of the contralateral-ipsilateral difference wave, between 200 and 300 ms after the preTD (as is common in many N2pc experiments, e.g., Berggren & Eimer, 2019; Callahan-Flintoft et al, 2018; Luck, 2014; Kiss et al, 2008; Zivony & Eimer, 2020, 2021).…”

“…How can the effects of categorization templates on attentional processing demonstrated in this study be integrated into a more general conceptual and neurocomputational framework for selective visual attention? Recently, we postulated the unified diachronic account of selective attention (henceforth: the diachronic account; Zivony & Eimer, 2021a). This account emphasizes the fact that attentional selection does not take place at one specific temporally discrete point, but that selectivity is a process that unfolds gradually in real time.…”

“…After decades of research, we now know a great deal about the profound role of search templates in promoting perceptual processing 2 (see Huynh Cong & Kerzel, 2021, for a review). Events that match the search template automatically guide attention and engage downstream attentional processes (e.g., Folk et al, 1992; Zivony & Lamy, 2018), thereby greatly increasing the probability that task-relevant events will be encoded in WM (see Zivony & Eimer, 2021a, for review).…”