Dichotomy, Trichotomy, or a Spectrum: Time to Reconsider Attentional Guidance Terminology

摘要

The distinct categories of ‘‘bottom-up’’ and ‘‘top-down’’ control of attention have been centralto the majority of theories of visual attention for several decades (e.g., Jonides, 1981; Posner andPetersen, 1990; Wolfe, 1994; Kim and Cave, 1999; Itti and Koch, 2000). Given the widespread useof these terms, it is interesting that a closer look at the literature reveals that researchers differin the ways they delineate the boundaries between the classes of attentional control. A recentdiscussion by Egeth (2018) and Gaspelin and Luck (2018), commenting on Theeuwes (2018),illustrates particularly well that researchers may interpret the concept of “top-down” control ofattention differently.In this opinion piece, we briefly describe and update the different taxonomies of attentionalcontrol. We elaborate on a recent view by Benoni (2018) and propose an alternative model, a“relevance spectrum,” to represent the various sources of attentional deployment. We end with adiscussion on the problem of unstandardized terminology and a call to reconsider the necessity ofthe terms “top-down” and “bottom-up” in the lexicon of attentional guidance.