The Unitary/Nonunitary
Nature of
Executive Control
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William James wrote in 1890 that "everyone knows what attention is." More recently, Hal Pashler
offered a different assessment, proclaiming that "no one knows what attention is." The true state of affairs is probably somewhere in between: several accounts of attention exist, yet there are no definitive answers.
One way to think of "attention" is in terms of the executive control
of action and behavior: the successful initiation and performance of
task-relevant (and suppression of task-irrelevant) thoughts and actions.
Recently, proponents of the theory of executive (controlled) attention have
argued that this executive control of human behavior and cognition is
accomplished by a unitary cognitive primitive called executive
attention. Much evidence has been presented supporting a strong relationship between
putative measures of executive attention and a number of situations of real world performance, including reading, learning, and problem solving.
However, the nature of executive attention is under dispute. One
outstanding question is whether executive attention is truly a unitary cognitive primitive, or alternatively, is it a statistical composite comprising several more distinct elements of executive control?
Several putative executive functions (e.g., attentional filtering; mediation of
proactive interference;
attention shifting; updating of working memory; and "inhibition" of prepotent
response) have been identified as being important for successful human
cognition. Could these be the functions comprising attention, or are they manifestations of the same cognitive primitive?
My current work addresses this question.
CLICK
HERE FOR INFORMATION ON PSYCHONOMICS 2004 POSTER #4056
Holden,
R. J., Biesanz, J. C., & Postle, B. R. (November 2004). The
unitary/nonunitary nature of executive control. Poster presented at
Meeting of the Psychonomic Society. (Poster #4056)