A multi-faceted study of attention

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This proposal continues my study of the systems responsible for attention and those responsible for higher level processing such as the recognition of meaning and "objectness." This grant application focuses on the interaction from two directions. First, how does the allocation of attention (or lack of it) affect our ability to process meaning? Although the longstanding view has been that recognizing a word's meaning is somehow automatic and can be accomplished in the absence of attention, recent work from my lab is challenging this view. The second, and largely neglected, issue is whether processes involved in the computation of semantics and object formation have consequences for the operation of attention. Does the scope and activation of attention depend on the products of processing? Finally, I also present a novel line of research aimed at investigating reliability and individual differences in attentional processing. These questions are investigated in the context of established paradigms and procedures (e.g., selection, exogenous and endogenous cueing, semantic priming, dual-task, visual search). My contribution is to take these established paradigms and combine them in novel ways to ask questions that have not been previously addressed. Pilot work in these areas suggests that the answers to these questions will force us to re-evaluate the underpinnings of a number of current theoretical accounts of the effects of attention on higher level processes, and will further our understanding of the nature of attentional processing.