Attentional Selection: Top-Down, Bottom-Up and History-Based Biases (Elements in Perception)

By: Jan Theeuwes and Michel Failing

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Synopsis: In this Element, a framework is proposed in which it is assumed that visual selection is the result of the interaction between top-down, bottom-up and selection-history factors. The Element discusses top-down attentional engagement and suppression, bottom-up selection by abrupt onsets and static singletons as well as lingering biases due to selection-history entailing priming, reward and statistical learning. We present an integrated framework in which biased competition among these three factors drives attention in a winner-take-all-fashion. We speculate which brain areas are likely to be involved and how signals representing these three factors feed into the priority map which ultimately determines selection.