Attention-Setting and Human Mental Function

This article provides an introduction to experimental research on top-down human attention in complex scenes, written for cognitive scientists in general. We emphasize the major effects of goals and intention on mental function, measured with behavioral experiments. We describe top-down attention as...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Thomas Sanocki, Jong Han Lee
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2022-06-01
Series:Journal of Imaging
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2313-433X/8/6/159
Description
Summary:This article provides an introduction to experimental research on top-down human attention in complex scenes, written for cognitive scientists in general. We emphasize the major effects of goals and intention on mental function, measured with behavioral experiments. We describe top-down attention as an open category of mental actions that initiates particular task sets, which are assembled from a wide range of mental processes. We call this <i>attention-setting</i>. Experiments on visual search, task switching, and temporal attention are described and extended to the important human time scale of seconds.
ISSN:2313-433X