Fig. 2. Taxonomy of Selective Attention.

Taxonomy of selective attention. Varieties of selective attention in the visual modality. Selective processing of visual stimuli can occur either endogenously, in which particular goals, rules or motivations determine which of multiple stimuli is selectively processed, or exogenously, in which salient, external events determine selection (top and bottom rows). Selection can also occur across spatial and feature domains; stimuli can be selected based on their location or on their component visual features (e.g. color or shape). The examples shown depict visual displays that require a subject to attend to a particular location (top left) or to a particular object (top right) during endogenous attention, or in which attention is exogenously drawn to a location (flashed white circle, bottom left) or to a unique object (red bar among green, bottom right).