Attention in Vision is an important work which aims to identify, address and solve some major problems and issues in the psychology of visual perception, attention and intentional control. The central aim is to investigate how people use their visual perception in the performance of tasks and to explore how the intentional control of action is achieved. Through an extensive review of the philosophy of psychology, the history of ideas and theories of intentional control, and an analysis of various tasks, a new theory is developed which argues that there is an important difference between report tasks and act tasks. The first section of the book introduces the issues of visual perception in a historical context and outlines van der Heijden's theory. The theory is developed in the second and third sections by analysing the findings from some of the main experimental paradigms of cognitive psychology and applying the theory to act tasks. Finally, the epilogue skilfully draws together the theory into an explanation of different historical and theoretical perspectives in psychology. This book will be invaluable to researchers and high-level undergraduates in the field of visual perception and attention.

Vision is not an end in itself. Instead, it has evolved to assure survival in a dynamic environment. Vision - as well as the other senses - evolved from the necessity to act in this environment. Therefore, perceptual processes and action planning are much more interlocked than evident at first sight. This special issue examines the basic processes of space perception and how these processes interact with action planning and motor control. The tasks under consideration range from the simple localization of a single object to the coordination of a series of events in natural scenes. The contributions were written by various experts in the field, ranging from experimental psychologists, neurophysiologists to computational modellers and philosophers. Each contribution introduces new concepts and ideas that explain how visual space is being established and represented. The overarching question is whether vision and action are based on a single spatial map or on different, interacting spatial representations.

When this title was originally published in 1981, the information processing approach to perception and memory was dominant in experimental psychology, and the research reported here had major implications for future development. After exploring the shortcomings of earlier work in this field, the author develops a new model which he shows to be capable of accounting for a variety of experimental data connected with human information processing, visual perception and attention. The central theme which is discussed is how we select relevant and discard irrelevant information. The basic assumption is that all incoming information is identified, that is, it reaches and activates the appropriate lexical entries. A piece of identified information is described as a unit consisting of three distinguishable codes: a visual code, a lexical or semantic code and a motor or action code. Identified information decays fast, so selective attention operates by selecting those units which have to be saved from this rapid decay. In a sense, therefore, the human information processor is described as struggling against forgetting.

Vision is not an end in itself. Instead, it has evolved to assure survival in a dynamic environment. Vision - as well as the other senses - evolved from the necessity to act in this environment. Therefore, perceptual processes and action planning are much more interlocked than evident at first sight. This special issue examines the basic processes of space perception and how these processes interact with action planning and motor control. The tasks under consideration range from the simple localization of a single object to the coordination of a series of events in natural scenes. The contributions were written by various experts in the field, ranging from experimental psychologists, neurophysiologists to computational modellers and philosophers. Each contribution introduces new concepts and ideas that explain how visual space is being established and represented. The overarching question is whether vision and action are based on a single spatial map or on different, interacting spatial representations.

When this title was originally published in 1981, the information processing approach to perception and memory was dominant in experimental psychology, and the research reported here had major implications for future development. After exploring the shortcomings of earlier work in this field, the author develops a new model which he shows to be capable of accounting for a variety of experimental data connected with human information processing, visual perception and attention. The central theme which is discussed is how we select relevant and discard irrelevant information. The basic assumption is that all incoming information is identified, that is, it reaches and activates the appropriate lexical entries. A piece of identified information is described as a unit consisting of three distinguishable codes: a visual code, a lexical or semantic code and a motor or action code. Identified information decays fast, so selective attention operates by selecting those units which have to be saved from this rapid decay. In a sense, therefore, the human information processor is described as struggling against forgetting.

Contents:
Prologue. Part I: Considerations. The Problem and the Approach. Types of Tasks and Instructions. The Internal Representation of the Instruction. Part II: Report Tasks. An Intentional Machine. Paradigms with Accuracy as the Dependent Variable. Paradigms with Latency as the Dependent Variable. Part III: Act Tasks. Towards an Effective Visual Position. The Cognitive Control of Saccadic Eye Movements. Act Tasks and Report Tasks. Epilogue.