The neural-specificity theory of visual selective attention evaluated: a commentary on Harter and Aine.
This paper evaluates Harter and Aine's (1984) 'neural-specificity theory' of visual attention which is based on a series of studies conducted by Harter and his colleagues on selective-attention effects on visual event-related potentials. Attended stimuli evoke slow 'selection negativities' interpreted by Harter and Aine as indicating selective pre-stimulus facilitation of the feature-detector systems. This interpretation, which is central to their theory, is challenged in the present paper on several grounds. It is concluded that Harter's selection negativities can be taken to support other theories that Harter and Aine have criticized, in particular the 'attentional-trace theory' of selective attention proposed by Näätänen (1982). On the other hand, there are some other data, obtained by several other groups, which support Harter and Aine's theory but those data, involving visual spatial attention, are not consistent with the respective data of Harter and his colleagues.
D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual; D006801:Humans; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009433:Neural Inhibition; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology; D014795:Visual Pathways / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*