Rethinking the role of top-down attention in vision: Effects attributable to a lossy representation in peripheral vision

Abstract

According to common wisdom in the field of visual perception, top-down selective attention is required in order to bind features into objects. In this view, even simple tasks, such as dis- tinguishing a rotatedT from a rotated L, require selective attention since they require feature binding. Selective attention, in turn, is commonly conceived as involving volition, intention, and at least implicitly, awareness. There is something non-intuitive about the notion that we might need so expensive (and possibly human) a resource as conscious awareness in order to perform so basic a function as perception. In fact, we can carry out complex senso- rimotor tasks, seemingly in the near absence of awa..