Srinivasan Narayanan
Centre for Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences, University of Allahabad, Allahabad 211002, India.
Prog Brain Res. 2008;168:65-75. doi: 10.1016/S0079-6123(07)68006-6.
Research on attention has been closely linked with possible advances in the study of consciousness. Various theories and models have been proposed for attention in the past 50 years. Behavioural, computational, and neuroscientific approaches have been successful in improving our understanding of attentional processes. Given the current status of attention research, what can we say about the relationship between attention and consciousness? This paper discusses the possible relationships between attention and consciousness. Findings from cognitive science and neuroscience relevant to the elucidation of this relationship are discussed. Recent findings from phenomena that have a bearing on this relationship such as inattentional amnesia, change blindness, attentional blink, perceptual stabilization, and afterimages are described. The implications of the results of these phenomena for attention and awareness are also discussed. It is proposed that top-down attention is not a unitary phenomena and such a characterization may provide a way to interpret some of the results from these findings.
对注意力的研究与意识研究的可能进展紧密相连。在过去的50年里，人们针对注意力提出了各种理论和模型。行为学、计算学和神经科学方法在增进我们对注意力过程的理解方面取得了成功。鉴于当前注意力研究的现状，我们能就注意力与意识之间的关系说些什么呢？本文探讨了注意力与意识之间可能存在的关系。文中讨论了认知科学和神经科学中与阐明这种关系相关的研究发现。描述了近期与这种关系相关的现象的研究结果，如疏忽性失忆、变化盲视、注意瞬脱、知觉稳定和后像。还讨论了这些现象的结果对注意力和意识的影响。有人提出，自上而下的注意力并非单一现象，这种描述或许能为解释这些研究结果中的一些提供一种途径。
