85-351 What is Attention?
9 units, Carnegie Mellon University
For over a century, scientists have claimed that no one knows what attention is yet the past halfcentury has seen over 40 thousand publications with attention in the title. What gives The primary goals of this course are first to show that we know what attention is and second, to demonstrate how to construct an important type of explanation in cognitive science. We investigate classics in the field and engage cutting edge research, in psychology, neuroscience, and even philosophy. One project will be cleaning house theory and concepts. At the same time, in identifying the functional nature of attention, we unify different levels of analysis to construct a comprehensive account of what attention is, linking behavior, algorithms and neuroscience. We use this account to tackle various issues different targets and forms of attention, attention and memory, the difference between attention and priming, attentions relation to behavior, attention and consciousness, executive control, attentions dependence on reward and learning, the developmental biology of attention, disorders of attention, attention and expertise, attention and implicit bias among other topics. Attention forms the foundation of our understanding of many other areas arguably, it forms the foundation of life. The course will be based on drafts of the forthcoming second edition of the instructors book, Attention Routledge, 2014. We will also, hopefully, have guest lecturers from outside of CMU.
Prerequisites: 85-219 or 85-211
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