Abstract
In this article, we challenge the usefulness of “attention” as a unitary construct and/or neural system. We point out that the concept has too many meanings to justify a single term, and that “attention” is used to refer to both the explanandum (the set of phenomena in need of explanation) and the explanans (the set of processes doing the explaining). To illustrate these points, we focus our discussion on visual selective attention. It is argued that selectivity in processing has emerged through evolution as a design feature of a complex multi-channel sensorimotor system, which generates selective phenomena of “attention” as one of many by-products. Instead of the traditional analytic approach to attention, we suggest a synthetic approach that starts with well-understood mechanisms that do not need to be dedicated to attention, and yet account for the selectivity phenomena under investigation. We conclude that what would serve scientific progress best would be to drop the term “attention” as a label for a specific functional or neural system and instead focus on behaviorally relevant selection processes and the many systems that implement them.
Highlights
In this article, we challenge the usefulness of “attention” as a unitary construct and/or neural system
As an alternative to the analytic approach, we provide a brief review of the phylogenetic evolution of the human brain and show how selective attention emerged as just one necessary consequence of the challenges facing animals behaving in the natural world
We conclude that selectivity emerged through evolution as a design feature to enable efficient goal-directed action
Summary
We challenge the usefulness of “attention” as a unitary construct and/or neural system. We conclude that the traditional analytic attempt to lump many diverse empirical observations under one common umbrella called “attention” and to try to explain all of them by referring to one coherent attentional system has failed, and should be replaced by a more synthetic approach This synthetic approach focuses on, and starts with, ecologically relevant mechanisms and processes and tries to account for as many phenomena (“attentional” or not) as possible. We are not the first to raise concerns about problems with the term “attention.” Multiple authors have highlighted the tendency to reify attention, creating circular explanations for empirical results (Anderson, 2011; Di Lollo, 2018) Another common criticism is that multiple processes underlie what is typically labeled as “attention” (Di Lollo, 2018; Hommel & Colzato, 2015). We focus here on attention because we believe that at least some of the related phenomena are best understood in terms of the kinds of interactions between sensory, motor, and cognitive phenomena that are the focus of this special issue
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