Aspects of Attention and Adaptive Memory

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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 "object-ness," via memory retrieval.  This grant application focuses on the interaction from two directions.  First, how does the allocation of attention (or lack thereof) affect our ability to process meaning?  Although the longstanding view has been that recognizing the meaning of many stimuli (e.g., words) is automatic, and can be accomplished in the absence of attention, more recent work is challenging this view.  I will continue to ask whether it is necessary for a stimulus to be the focus of attention in order for us to be able to apprehend its identity and evaluate it, and I will also examine whether there are particular cases in which much of this information can be uncovered without the application of focal attention.