Orienting of Attention
Abstract
Bartlett viewed thinking as a high level skill exhibiting ballistic properties that he called its “point of no return”. This paper explores one aspect of cognition through the use of a simple model task in which human subjects are asked to commit attention to a position in visual space other than fixation. This instruction is executed by orienting a covert (attentional) mechanism that seems sufficiently time locked to external events that its trajectory can be traced across the visual field in terms of momentary changes in the efficiency of detecting stimuli. A comparison of results obtained with alert monkeys, brain injured and normal human subjects shows the relationship of this covert system to saccadic eye movements and to various brain systems controlling perception and motion. In accordance with Bartlett's insight, the possibility is explored that similar principles apply to orienting of attention toward sensory input and orienting to the semantic structures used in thinking.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Top-down attentional control is volitional and under the control of the observer at any given point in time.
“This so-called top-down (also called endogenous or goal-directed) attentional control is thought to be volitional and under the control of the observer at any given point in time (Posner, 1980; Treisman & Gelade, 1980; Theeuwes, 2010; Wolfe, 2007; Yantis, 2000).”
From Selection history: How reward modulates selectivity of visual attention. (2018) · cites this paper as Posner, 1980
No citation lists for this paper
No citation lists for this paper yet — checked again daily.
References 44 · Cited by 9,670
- Authors
- Posner, M. I.
- Affiliations
- University of Oregon (US)
- Corresponding author
- Posner, Michael I.
- ORCID
- Posner, Michael I.
- Venue
- Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 1980-02
- Volume
- 32
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 3-25
- ISSN
- 0033-555X (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2122896223
- Cited by
- 9,670
- References
- 44
- Citations by year
- 2026: 218 · 2025: 346 · 2024: 311 · 2023: 308 · 2022: 321 · 2021: 393 · 2020: 396 · 2019: 402 · 2018: 380 · 2017: 385 · 2016: 369 · 2015: 437 · 2014: 449 · 2013: 392 · 2012: 364
- FWCI
- 9.29
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Visual Attention and Saliency Detection
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Keywords
- attentional orienting, covert attention, saccades, visual attention, point of no return, Bartlett, brain injury, monkeys, perception, motion perception, semantic structure, cognitive control
- MeSH terms
- Attention, Humans, Orientation, Saccades, Visual Perception
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
