Tracing the template: Investigating the representation of perceptual relevance

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Adaptive perception requires the prioritization of relevant over irrelevant information. When we are looking for a specific book of which we only remember the color of its cover, we can limit our search to mainly that color. The mental representation of what we are looking for is called the attentional template (also target template, search template, attentional set; e.g., Folk et al., 1992). An attentional template is a flexible representation reflecting current selection preferences, as derived from continuously changing task demands and prior selection history. Even though attentional templates are essential for shaping and controlling perception and action in everyday life, surprisingly little is known about their nature. For example, when you look for your car keys, do you look for their shape, their color, or both? In case of the latter, are shape and color integrated in a single representation, or are they independently represented? Can you look for your wallet at the same time, without affecting your key-template? Furthermore, it is often assumed that visual attention is guided by visual templates, but it is perfectly possible that non-visual types of representation (e.g., semantic codes) are also involved. Finally, the nature of the template may change fundamentally in the course of learning, as a result of selection history.AimThe aim of our joint research proposal is to answer the fundamental question of what kind of representation the attentional template is, in terms of function (how it affects our behaviour), physiology (how it is implemented in the brain), and time (how it is affected by learning/selection history). How we flexibly set up new attentional preferences remains one of the great mysteries in cognitive neuroscience, and any reference to templates involves some residual appeal to a homunculus. Although we will not be able to completely banish this homunculus in our research, ourultimate aim is to do the next best thing, to seek fundamental new insights into the nature of this homunculus. To this end, in several other projects we have focused on questions like the number of templates that can be maintained simultaneously, the dynamics of controlling the template, and the influence of different memory systems. In this collaboration we focus on the fundamental question of representation: What is the nature of the attentional template? Specifically, what types of preference can it hold, how do these change as a function of experience, and what are the neural codes underlying these representations? A thorough understanding of the representational properties of attentional templates is a major step on the way towards a neuro cognitive model of attention which will eventually replace the homunculus with a scientific theory of goal-directed perception and action.