THE ATTENTION SCHEMA THEORY: APPLICATIONS TO VISUOSPATIAL ATTENTIONAL CONTROL

Abstract

The relationship between attention and subjective awareness is a long-debated issue that remains to be fully resolved. While it has been consistently noted that attention to and subjective awareness of a stimulus tend to co-occur, the causal relationship between these phenomena is unclear. The Attention Schema Theory [AST] proposes a novel explanation, stating that subjective awareness results from the construction of an internal model of the state of attention. This dissertation investigates the core questions addressed by AST, regarding the relationship between attention and subjective awareness, using three complementary methodological lenses. Chapter Two describes six behavioral experiments, leveraging a cued attention paradigm to better understand the attentional behavior of human subjects across various metrics and attentional states. Chapter Three expands on the behavioral results of Chapter Two using neuroimaging. Finally, Chapter Four describes a computational model for investigating attentional control, formalizing the predictions discussed in the previous chapters. Together, the experiments described in this document lend support to the notion that endogenous attentional control is achieved, at least in part, through the use of an internal model of attention. Several suggestions are made regarding the specific mechanisms that may be involved.