The influence of selective attention on consciousness

Abstract

In this article we will present evidence that attention modulates awareness, but we have some awareness of unattended stimuli. Specifically, we will argue that attention is needed to solve the binding problem. Without attention, one can be aware of what object attributes are present in the scene, which allows for a surprising level of visual awareness, such as whether a given scene contains an animal or not. However, attention is needed to determine how the object attributes are related or “bound” together, so attention is needed to create coherent mental representations of the objects in the scene.