Modularity and attention: Is the binding problem real?

Abstract

Van der Heijden rejects the feature integration theory of visual attention (Treisman, 1988, 1993; Treisman & Gelade, 1980) and proposes instead a theory relating modularity in the visual system to selection for action. His positive proposals about the relations between visual processing, intention, and selection for action are interesting, but I do not believe they are incompatible with my theory. In this paper I will focus on and question his arguments about the binding problem and the role of attention in visual perception. Van der Heijden attacks two claims that are fundamental to my theory: (1) the idea that modularity gives rise to a “binding problem” (the need to specify which of the features present characterize any particular object), and (2) the more general idea that there are limits to capacity at the level of perceptual processing. I will argue that he is wrong to reject the two claims, that the binding problem is a real one, for his model as for others, and that his account is more similar to mine than he appears to realize.