Principles of Visual Attention:: Linking Mind and Brain
Claus Bundesen and Thomas Habekost
Abstract
The nature of attention is one of the oldest and most central problems in psychology. A huge amount of research has been produced on this subject in the last half century, especially on attention in the visual modality, but a general explanation has remained elusive. Many still view attention research as a field that is fundamentally fragmented. This book takes a different perspective and presents a unified theory of visual attention: the TVA model. The TVA model explains the many aspects of visual attention by just two mechanisms for selection of information: filtering and pigeonholing. These ... More
The nature of attention is one of the oldest and most central problems in psychology. A huge amount of research has been produced on this subject in the last half century, especially on attention in the visual modality, but a general explanation has remained elusive. Many still view attention research as a field that is fundamentally fragmented. This book takes a different perspective and presents a unified theory of visual attention: the TVA model. The TVA model explains the many aspects of visual attention by just two mechanisms for selection of information: filtering and pigeonholing. These mechanisms are described in a set of simple equations, which allow TVA to mathematically model a large number of classical results in the attention literature. The theory explains psychological and neuroscientific findings by the same equations; TVA is a complete theory of visual attention, linking mind and brain. The book contains a detailed review of the most important research done on attention in vision, spanning cognitive psychology, brain imaging, patient studies, and recordings from single cells in the visual cortex. The book explains the TVA model and shows how it accounts for attentional effects observed across all the research areas described.
Keywords:
visual attention,
TVA model,
filtering,
pigeonholing,
mind,
brain,
vision,
cognitive psychology,
brain imaging,
visual cortex
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2008 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198570707 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2012 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198570707.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Claus Bundesen, author
Professor of Cognitive Psychology, Department of Psychology,
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Thomas Habekost, author
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, University of
Copenhagen, Denmark
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