Abstract

Visual attention can be seen as a computational resource that aids perception in any part of the visual field to which it is applied. This resource is limited, however, as it cannot be applied everywhere at the same time, but constitutes an attentional "focus". It has been known since the groundbreaking work of Helmholtz (1896) that attention has mobility and can be willfully deployed in the periphery of the visual field. In the absence of such "effort of will" it tends to return to the region in or near the center of the visual field.

© 1996 Optical Society of America