Iconic memory and attention in the overflow debate

Abstract

The overflow debate concerns this following question: does conscious iconic memory have a higher capacity than attention does? In recent years, Ned Block has been invoking empirical works to support the positive answer to this question. The view is called the “rich view” or the “Overflow view”. One central thread of this discussion concerns the nature of iconic memory: for example how rich they are and whether they are conscious. The first section discusses a potential misunderstanding of “visible persistence” in this literature. The second section discusses varieties of attention relevant to this debate. The final section discusses the most prominent alternative interpretation of the Sperling paradigm—the postdiction interpretation—and explains how it can be made compatible with a weaker version of the rich or overflow view.

Keywords:

• iconic memory
• attention
• consciousness
• overflow
• postdiction
• modulation

Public Interest Statement

We often hear this from parents: “pay attention, otherwise you wouldn’t get what teachers’ are saying!” This kind of daily remarks indicates the close connections between attention and consciousness. But does it imply that attention is necessary to and/or sufficient for consciousness? And if so, are these implications warranted? These are questions that can be studied with empirical methods. The relevant scientific investigations are not only theoretically interesting for psychology, neuroscience and cognitive sciences more generally, but also practically relevant since it might have educational applications that can help us improve the relevant pedagogical principles.

Competing Interest

The author declares no competing interests.

Additional information

Funding

Funding. The author received no direct funding for this research.

Notes on contributors

Tony Cheng

Tony Cheng is finishing a dissertation on the connections between object cognition and self-consciousness at University College London. Before this, he has been focusing on attention and related topics. The current paper is a result from the attention project, which he will keep pursuing later in the career. He is also conducting part-time projects with Patrick Haggard’s Action and Body Lab at Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, with the Psychology Department at Birkbeck College, University of London, and with the CenSes Lab led by Colin Blakemore, Institute of Philosophy, University of London. During his visit to University of California, Berkeley, in 2014, he was involved in works with Alison Gopnik’s Cognitive Development Lab and Martin Banks’s Visual Space Perception Lab. His other academic interests include cognitive development, multisensory integration, the Molyneux’s Question and traditional questions in philosophy of mind and perception.