Our subjective present feels continuous and complete, flowing smoothly from moment to moment. However, cognitive research has shown that this experience is illusionary. In fact, what we see is extrapolated from incomplete perceptual information, as our conscious minds are severely limited in their speed of processing and the amount of data they can sample and process simultaneously and successively. These limitations can have detrimental effects. As any driver known, the speed in which we detect brief but important events on the road, such as a car suddenly breaking, can literally be a matter of life or death.
A main tool that the perceptual system uses to deal with our inherent limitations is selective attention. When we attend to a specific area in our environment, we are more likely to rapidly detect important events in that location. Our ability to attend to certain events while ignoring others is therefore crucial in guiding goal-directed behaviour. However, our understanding of selective attention is still limited. For example, standard models of attention make neurologically implausible assumptions that result in theoretical incoherence. Specifically, attentional selection is assumed to take place at a specific moment in time, discretely dividing perception to processes that are independent from attention and processes that are dependent on attention. This assumption is neurologically implausible as no process in the brain is entirely discrete or instantaneous, and results in theoretical incoherence in how attention is conceptualized (e.g. whether selection should be regarded as cause or effect). This unfortunately derails the efforts of attention researchers in advancing our collective understanding of attention.
Recently, I suggested an alternative framework that explains how selective attention unfolds over time (the “diachronic” account). At the heart of this model is the assumption that selectivity is strongly modulated by brief periods of amplified perceptual processing. Once a potentially important object is detected, amplification to processing builds up rapidly, reaching a peak after 100-200 ms, and then gradually dissipates (“attentional episodes”). The overall objective of the project was to apply this framework to cognitive research on perception, thereby demonstrating the kind of progress that can be made by adopting a diachronic framework of attention. The studies conducted during the project can therefore hopefully result in a new avenue of research on attention, which can substantially improve our understanding of the limitations of perception.
