Abstract

This article reviews relevant psychology, physiology, and artificial intelligence literature, in order to present the background for a model of attention and cognition, the Sweeping Model, to be presented in a subsequent paper. Briefly described are the lack of and need for attentional mechanisms in artificial intelligence systems, followed by a description of some characteristics of human attention. Current psychological theories of attention are discussed and criticized. Physiological data about endogenous and exogenous event related potentials and attention are also presented. Finally, perception is examined with reference to its temporally discrete nature, the psychological moment