Beyond selective attention - The role of different attentional modes for visual cognition

我们如何选择注意力的目标决定了我们意识的内容，从而塑造了我们是谁。目前的视觉注意模型认为注意是一个选择性的过程，通过这个过程，对个人有意义的或感知上显著的信息被增强，而无关的信息被抑制。我实验室的研究集中在这样一个假设上，即这些传统的注意力模型是不完整的，因为它们忽略了注意力的其他一些基本特征，即它的动态和流动的性质，这可能允许以一种更分散的方式来处理信息。虽然这种注意力的概念预示着人们直观地区分集中注意力和努力注意力，而不是更广泛、轻松和分散的注意力模式，但几乎没有实证研究来确定什么是分散注意力，以及它在功能和神经解剖学上与选择性注意有何不同。事实上，以前的研究只关注选择性注意的好处，认为分散注意是一种缺乏焦点的现象，但拟议的研究将表明分散注意具有积极的特征，如增加注意带宽。因此，拟议研究的总体目标是通过一系列考虑个体差异的行为和神经成像研究，在这两种注意力模式之间建立概念上的区别。

How we select the targets of our attention determines the contents of our consciousness and thus shapes who we are. Current models of visual attention frame attention as a selective process by which personally meaningful or perceptually salient information is enhanced while irrelevant information is suppressed. Research in my lab is centered around the assumption that these traditional models of attention are incomplete, as they neglect some other essential features of attention, namely its dynamic and fluid nature that may allow for a more diffuse way of attending to information. While this notion of attention bodes well with people's intuitive distinction between focused and effortful attention contrasted with a more broadly distributed, relaxed and diffuse mode of attention, there is little empirical work establishing what diffuse attention is and how it may differ functionally and neuroanatomically from selective attention. In fact, previous research has exclusively focused on the benefits of selective attention and has considered diffuse attention as a lack of focus, but the proposed research will show that diffuse attention has positive characteristics, such as an increased attentional bandwidth. Thus, the overall goal of the proposed research is to establish a conceptual distinction between these two modes of attention through a series of behavioural and neuroimaging studies that take individual differences into account.