Abstract
Attention is indispensable to our learning, performance, relationships, health, and daily life, and yet laboratory studies of attention have only scratched the surface of these lived varieties of attention. In this article, we begin with William James' theory of derived involuntary attention, which has largely been ignored in laboratory research. We then show that there is a gap in our attention vocabulary and the theory that underpins it, which depend on an incomplete voluntary/involuntary dichotomy. The negative effects of this dichotomy stretch beyond laboratory research to clinical diagnosis, influencing how we understand so-called attention deficits. To fill the gap between voluntary and involuntary, we introduce a third kind of attention—fluid attention (also called postvoluntary attention), which is goal-directed and selective, like voluntary attention, but also effortless and drawn to its source, like involuntary attention. Fluid attention is a rediscovery of James' derived involuntary attention. A distinguishing feature of fluid attention is its motivational component, which, we show, neurophysiologically also reveals a gap in the neurocognitive literature on attention. Recognizing fluid attention as fundamentally motivational allows ADHD to be redefined as a motivational rather than an attentional deficit, which we go on to show has significant implications for both special and regular education.
Highlights
This article is a first attempt at introducing the notion of postvoluntary attention into the Englishlanguage cognitive science literature
Dosenbach et al (2008) updated the Corbetta and Shulman model, separating off attentional set, or set-maintenance, from top-down control. They say that the frontoparietal network [dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), inferior parietal lobule (IPL), dorsal frontal cortex (DFC), intraparietal sulcus (IPS), precuneus, and middle cingulate cortex (MCC)] is recruited for adaptive control— that is, top-down responses that “initiate attentional control in response to cues. . . and process performance feedback on a trial-by-trial basis to adjust control settings” (p. 102)
There is little unity in the specifics of attention research, there is general unity that there is a top-down aspect of attention anchored in a frontoparietal network (DFC, superior parietal lobe, frontal eye field, and intraparietal sulcus) and a bottom-up aspect of attention anchored in a more ventral parietal network, both or either of which implicate the anterior insula / frontal operculum in certain tasks
Summary
This article is a first attempt at introducing the notion of postvoluntary attention into the Englishlanguage cognitive science literature. The term originates in the Russian-language work of Nikolaj Dobrynin, only one article of which has been translated into English to date (Dobrynin, 1968). Our aim is not just to explain Dobrynin’s idea but to adopt it, showing how there is a gap in current theory without it and how adopting the idea in future research programs can improve both theory and concrete applications. We introduce the synonym: fluid attention as a more descriptive alternative
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