Within and beyond an integrated framework of attentional capture: A perspective from cognitive-affective neuroscience

ABSTRACT

The integrative framework proposed by Luck and colleagues [Luck, S. J., Gaspelin, N., Folk, C. L., Remington, R. W., & Theeuwes, J. (2021). Progress toward resolving the attentional capture debate. Visual Cognition, 29(1), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/13506285.2020.1848949] represents major progress in the field of attention research, and remaining areas of disagreement provide an opportunity to test hypotheses by drawing on other research traditions. From the perspective of research in cognitive-affective neuroscience, we first suggest ways in which recent analytic innovations in human neuroimaging can be used to test hypotheses proposed by Folk and Remington about how biases within distinct brain systems may be integrated within a control state. We then shift focus and extend recent critiques of the generalizability of vision-centred frameworks of emotional guidance of attention to the integrative framework, citing evidence that vision-based frameworks of attentional capture do not necessarily extend to other sensory modalities.

KEYWORDS:

• Attention
• learning
• emotion
• brain imaging
• multisensory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research; Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada [grant number RGPIN-2020-05354].