Comment on Theeuwes’s Characterization of Visual Selection

Abstract

Theeuwes (2018, this issue) argues that the classic dichotomy describing the factors that guide attention (bottom-up and top-down) is inadequate and should be replaced by a trichotomy (bottom-up, top-down, and selection history). In contrast, I argue that top-down is a broad category that comfortably includes selection history. While one can certainly choose to subdivide broad categories, there is no obvious stopping point for such an endeavor; how long can it be before this trichotomy turns into a “quadchotomy”?

Keywords

• Attention
• Capture
• Visual search