What Is Attention?——The Perspective of the Theory of"Selection for Action"
Attention is one of the core issues in cognitive science.The traditional"capacity limitation hypothesis"is difficult to explain the nature of attention.Depending on the collaboration of psychology,neuroscience and philoso-phy,action-based attentional explanation is becoming more and more perfect.The theory of"Selection for Ac-tion"points out that attention is a kind of select activity for action.It is not only a process of mental information se-lection,but also a necessary component of action,both as a result of cognitive integration and as a corresponding neural guidance activity in the brain.The relevant explanation not only goes beyond the simple understanding of at-tention as perceptual processing in the past,but also clarifies and solves the problem of mental activity through structural analysis.Attention is a basic feature of cognition and an important cornerstone of cognitive science.The successful explanation of attention will provide a key to the mystery of human natural cognition.