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

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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.