Reading focus
Syllabus: How Do We Direct Attention and Control Thought?
Reconsider voluntary and stimulus-driven orienting in light of selection history. The aim is to separate sources of priority that may coincide in the same task.
A question to consider. After repeatedly searching for red, a person keeps selecting red despite an instruction to search for green. Which comparison would distinguish recent selection history from current goals and physical salience?
Why this reading
A familiar distinction can conceal an explanatory gap. Awh and colleagues show why selection based on current goals, physical salience, and past experience should be distinguished, even when all three influence the same response.
Before you read
Physical salience is an item's conspicuousness relative to its surroundings. Selection history concerns the consequences of previously attending or responding to something, including its association with reward. A priority map represents competition among possible targets; it is a proposed organizing framework, not a literal picture visible in the brain.
Read for
- Identify cases where prior selection or reward favors an item that conflicts with the observer's current goal.
- Examine why keeping the display constant does not isolate voluntary control when task goals and recent experience also change together.
- Ask what the three-source framework explains and what its unresolved questions leave open about mechanisms and capacity.
Consider afterwards
- A formerly rewarded color attracts attention after the instructions make it irrelevant. How would you separate its reward history from its visual distinctiveness and simple repetition?
Editorial context
The paper challenges a two-category taxonomy; it does not deny voluntary attention or claim that three independent brain systems have been established. Its argument rests on selected findings, particularly visual selection. The proposed categories can interact, and the authors acknowledge difficult boundaries around emotional significance and learning.