Attention

Abstract

A retrospective survey of attention research from 1990 back to 1890 gives us, not the uncovering of startlingly new principles of attention, but rather the refinement in both conceptualization and laboratory measurement of the ideas set forth vividly by William James. Were he a witness to our times, he would undoubtedly applaud the renaissance of attention over the past three decades, and he would surely exhibit as much interest in the findings emerging from neuroscience laboratories as he would in the findings emerging from psychological laboratories.