Attention in Vision

Perception, Communication and Action

A.H.C. van der Heijden

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN: 9781841693484
• eBook ISBN: 9781135424916
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Cognitive Psychology & Cognition
• Index: Psychology

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.

Part I Considerations

1 The problem and the approach

1.0 Introduction

This work is primarily concerned with the problem of how people use their visual perception in the performance of tasks. The tasks with which this work is first and foremost concerned are simple laboratory tasks, in which subjects have to name objects or attributes of objects, or have to read letters or words; that is, tasks in which people report about what they see (Part II), and tasks in which subjects have to make a saccadic eye movement, or have to hit an object at a position; that is, tasks in which subjects do something with regard to what they see (Part III).¹ Via an analysis of internal task performance in this type of tasks, I hope to find out what kind of machines human beings basically are.

To reach my main aim, the characterisation of Man a Machine, I need more than what is offered by contemporary information processing psychology. ² The reason is that in the past task performance has been approached from different directions by different psychologies that all have something of relevance to tell. Of special interest and importance for me are early ‘subjective’ introspective experimental psychology, with its centres of gravity in Germany and the USA, the psychology preceding and wiped out by behaviourism, and, of course, contemporary ‘objective’ information processing psychology, with participants and schools in Europe and North America, the psychology that followed and wiped out behaviourism. The two psychologies agree in the conviction that in task performance the involvement of attention is of crucial importance.

In Section 1.1, I briefly introduce early introspective psychology and contemporary information processing psychology. I argue that these two psychologies neatly complement each other because they refer from different points of view to the same state of affairs; introspective psychology describes the states and contents of the mind, and information processing psychology infers the structure and processes of the mind. My conclusion is that the combination of these two psychologies allows a more complete view on how people use their visual perception for task performance than either psychology alone.

Sections 1.2 and 1.3 are concerned with specifying what is presently the main problem in an account of how people use their visual perception in the performance of tasks. Section 1.2 is concerned with William James’s (1890/ 1950) The Principles of Psychology. James rejected the ‘sensationalism’ of mainstream introspective psychology and theorised in terms of ‘objects’. He emphasised the distinction between ‘thought’ and ‘object thought of ’; that is, he recognised that ‘intentionality’ is an essential characteristic of the mind. Specifying ‘intentionality’ in information processing terms and introducing the resulting ‘intentionality’ in the theorising of the information processing approach, can be regarded as my main aim in this book.

In Section 1.3, the visual perception and attention branch of the information processing approach is briefly introduced. It is argued that in the theorising in this branch two components can be recognised, an unproblematic component, concerned with perception and attention, and a problematic component, postulating a ‘subject’ as an agent. Specifying this ‘subject’ in information processing terms and introducing the resulting ‘subject’ in the theorising in the information processing approach can be regarded as my main aim in this book.

In Section 1.4, the two main aims specified in the foregoing sections – the aim with regard to ‘intentionality’ (Section 1.2) and the aim with regard to the ‘subject’ (Section 1.3) – are related and combined. The central aim in this book is to replace the ‘subject’ in the information processing theories by one or another form of James’s (1890/1950) ‘intentionality’.

1.1 Two psychologies

James (1890/1950) starts The Principles of Psychology by proclaiming:

Psychology is the Science of Mental Life, both of its phenomena and their conditions. The phenomena are such things as we call feelings, desires, cognitions, reasonings, decisions, and the like . . . (p. 1)

and he declares further on:

Introspective Observation is what we have to rely on first and foremost and always. The word introspection need hardly be explained – it means, of course, the looking into our own minds and reporting what we there discover. (p. 185)

James was not an enthusiastic experimentalist – a method that, in his view, ‘taxes patience to the utmost, and could hardly have arisen in a country whose natives could be bored’ (p. 192). Nevertheless, he knew perfectly well what was going on in the laboratories of the early German experimental psychologists such as Wundt and Münsterberg and Müller. In their experiments these investigators studied, for instance, visual perception as subjectively experienced. Introspection was the method, and the data, obtained under well-controlled conditions, consisted of descriptions of experienced phenomena or of what was seen and felt. As is well known, this psychology flourished between about 1880 and 1920 and thereafter virtually completely disappeared from the psychological scene. The introspective method yielded only unreliable data and the theoretical controversies remained unresolved – so, at least, the story goes.

Present-day information processing psychology can proclaim:

Psychology is the Science of the Mind, both of its operations and their conditions. The operations are such processes as we call perceiving, selecting, attending, storing, retrieving, remembering and the like . . .

and can further declare that

Analysis of behavioural data is what we have to rely on first and foremost and always. The expression analysis-of-behavioural-data need hardly be explained – it means, of course, the looking at reaction times and percentages correct and the figuring out what those data tell us about the operations of the mind.

And, just like the grand old men such as Broadbent, Haber, and Sperling, who started the information processing approach in the 1960s, all current information processing psychologists are experimental psychologists. They firmly believe that “What generous divination, and that superiority in virtue which . . . give a man the best insight into nature, have failed to do, their spying and scraping, their deadly tenacity and almost diabolic cunning, will doubtless some day bring about” (James, 1890/1950, p. 193). This approach started around 1960 and is still flourishing. The behavioural experiments deliver reliable data and theoretical progress is steadily made – so, at least, the story goes.

This brief introduction makes clear that there are two psychologies that both possibly have something of relevance to tell about how people use their visual perception in the performance of tasks. Because in studies concerned with vision the introspective psychologists tried to describe what they saw and the subjects in the information processing experiments try to report what they see, both psychologies investigate, in one way or another, how people use their visual perception in the performance of tasks. Moreover, in their studies exploring vision, the two psychologies were often concerned with the same topics and even often used the same tasks. For instance, at the start of the information processing approach Von Helmholtz’s (1871, 1894) visual attention tasks were reinvented and reintroduced by Sperling (1960) and Averbach and Coriell (1961) and are still used nowadays; see Van der Heijden (1992) for details. Kuelpe’s (1904) visual set experiments were reintroduced by Harris and Haber (1963) and subsequently thoroughly elaborated and analysed; see Haber (1966) for an overview. And the visual backward masking paradigm of Exner (1868) and the metacontrast paradigm of Stigler (1910) were reintroduced by Sperling (1960) and Averbach and Coriell (1961) and are still, as I write, often used; see Neumann (1990b) for details.

As already indicated, however, the two psychologies differ vastly in their presuppositions with regard to a viable and productive psychology; in their presuppositions about the proper data (features of mind versus features of behaviour), about the proper method (subjective introspection versus objective response registration), and about the ultimate goal of their scientific enterprise – the characterisation of states and contents of the mind versus the characterisation of the structure and the processes of the mind.³ Moreover, as I have already said, early introspective psychology fully failed and disappeared completely from the scene while information processing psychology currently flourishes. Therefore, a question that we need to consider first is: Do we, information processing psychologists or cognitive psychologists, nowadays still need some of the data and some of the insights of the rejected introspective past? This question deserves two answers, one for introspective psychology in general and one for James’s (1890/1950) idiosyncratic version of introspective psychology.

With regard to introspective psychology in general, my view is that selected bits and pieces can certainly improve and enhance the theorising in the information processing approach (see also Van der Heijden, 1992). In general, my conviction is that a combination of, at the first sight, different stories with regard to one and the same state of affairs can often provide a much better starting point for understanding that state of affairs than either individual story alone. And, in my view, this is particularly true for the combination of early systematic introspective psychology and contemporary information processing psychology. Here I can only briefly indicate why, in my view, this combination can be a ‘winning couple’; the rest of this book also serves to further substantiate this point.

In my view, early systematic introspective psychology and current information processing psychology neatly complement each other in a theoretically highly desirable way.

• Early introspective psychology is concerned with aspects of the subjective question of what it is to be a human being. This psychology looks from the inside at the inside. This approach is good at description of the contents and states of mind; these are the givens that are accessible to introspection. This psychology, however, has virtually nothing to say about internal processes or functions; this is because these processes or functions are Unanschauliche/impalpable givens that mainly elude systematic introspection (see, e.g., Boring, 1950, p. 451). When introspective psychology reigned, there were attempts to investigate processes and processing times with reaction time methods, but these were soon generally regarded as complete failures (see Boring, 1950, p. 149).
• Information processing psychology is concerned with aspects of the objective question of what a human being is. This approach looks from the outside at the outside. This approach is good at inferring internal structures and processes or functions from features of behavioural data; these are the information processing operations or functions that produce these data features. This psychology, however, has virtually nothing to say about the contents of states; states and changes of states are not sufficiently constrained by the behavioural data, the reaction times, and the percentages correct, that are used (see, e.g., Van der Heijden, 1996b, for an extensive discussion of this issue).⁴

So, it seems that only a proper combination of early introspective psychology and current objective psychology can yield a complete psychology that sheds light on both states and contents, and structures and processes. A proper combination of the two approaches can provide an information processing psychology enhanced with introspected states and contents and/ or an introspective psychology enhanced with inferred structures and functions. And, of course, to really shed light on my problem, the problem of how people use their visual perception in the performance of tasks, I need a psychology that is as complete and as enhanced as possible.

A first, provisional, answer to the question of whether we, information processing psychologists or cognitive psychologists, nowadays still need aspects of James’s introspective psychology we can, for the moment, fortunately take from James (1890/1950) himself; again, the rest of this work serves to further substantiate this point. For James

The conception of consciousness as a purely cognitive form of being . . . is thoroughly anti-psychological . . . Every actually existing consciousness seems to itself at any rate to be a fighter for ends, of which many, but for its presence, would not be ends at all. Its powers of cognition are mainly subservient to these ends, discerning which facts further them and which do not. (p. 141)

So, by introducing the relevant aspects of James’s introspective psychology, it is possible to transform the ‘anti-psychological’ information processing psychology or ‘cognitive psychology’ into a psychological psychology. By injecting the relevant aspects of James’s views into the current theorising of the information processing approach, ‘interests’ and ‘ends’ are introduced on the theoretical scene. And, it will be clear, for my problem, the problem of how people use their visual perception in the performance of tasks, a ‘fighter for ends’ with ‘interests’ comes in very handy.

In general, my conviction is that experimental psychology – the proper combination of early subjective psychology and current information processing psychology – has much more to tell about important questions with regard to the human mind and human behaviour than is generally known or surmised.⁵ That this combination has something of relevance and importance surmised. to tell, I hope to make clear in the process of answering the question of how people use their visual perception in the performance of t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Foreword
• Prologue
• Part I: Considerations
• Part II: Report tasks
• Part III: Act tasks
• Epilogue
• References