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The following ten articles were selected for their diversity in their scope of attention and applications. I have provided my review of each of the articles below.

Annual Research Review: Transdiagnostic neuroscience of child and adolescent mental disorders – differentiating decision making in attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorder, depression, and anxiety

This article focuses on attention within the scope of decision-making. Attention is further examined in decision-making within the scope of other disorders. These disorders include the following: ADHD, Conduct disorder, depression and anxiety. In their traditional model of decision-making, the authors argue that when individuals have issues that cause dysregulation in their normal self-referential processes, it can lead them to have disruptions in their decision-making performance; this is because of lapses of attention. For ADHD, the authors argue that individuals with ADHD are more prone to spontaneous lapses in attention. (Sonuga‐Barke et al., 2016)

In general, this article makes use of the concept of attention with regard to decision-making. It focuses on the observance of lapses of attention as a means of defining what particular facet of attention they are interested in. This article lends itself well to those who focus on attention from a clinical perspective.

Cognitive characterization of adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder by domains: a systematic review

This article focuses on ADHD and, in particular, focuses on the different domains of ADHD that are experienced by adults with ADHD. Due to the nature of this article being a systematic review, it can give us an overview of how different articles focus on other domains. In the article, the authors define the cognitive domains as “(1) attention, (2) executive functions (including working memory or similar theoretical constructs), (3) learning and memory, (4) Language, (5) social cognition, and (6) arithmetic.” (Onandia-Hinchado et al., 2021, p. 897) This article gives a broad overview with regard to attention, with them saying that most ADHD studies find a worse attentional performance for those with ADHD than those without. Later in the article, they give more specificity to what specific attentional performance could look like. Some of these definitions of attention include attention as attentional modalities (alertness, selective and sustained attention), or as inattention with there being an absence of attention, as well as in terms of divided attention.

This article, in general, does a good job of looking at a more precise idea of what attention is when it comes to those with ADHD. The article also covers different ways of measuring attention, including self-reports, test performance and experimental measures on tasks. This article would be most interesting to those who would like to look at attention through a clinical lens.

A comprehensive review of attention tests: can we assess what we exactly do not understand?

This article places more emphasis on the tests that researchers can use to measure attention rather than what specifically they see attention as. Still, in general, the authors have provided a suitable definition of attention as (see page 2) “a cognitive process matching data from the environment to the needs of the organism.” And “being able to focus on one thing and ignore other stimuli.” This article does a good job of offering explanations of the different aspects of attention, such as tonic alertness, phasic alertness, selective attention and sustained attention. The authors also explain attention based on how it functions, such as bottom-up processing versus top-down processing. The article goes on to summarize 20 different attention tests, going into detail on the assessed attention domain, the type of assessment, the age range of the test and the estimated completion time. (Nasiri et al., 2023)

In general, this article does a good job addressing the idea of attention as not being constrained to one specific definition but goes on to list the different aspects of attention as well as the different tests that currently exist to measure attention. This article provides a good overview of attention in a general domain. This article would be of interest to those who would like to look at ways to measure attention in experiments.

Attention in Psychology, Neuroscience, and Machine Learning

This article focuses on two key ideas. The first of which is to let researchers who study machine learning to understand how attention is understood and studied in psychology and neuroscience, and the second idea is to inform those who focus on biological attention on how attention is defined in artificial systems. In the section that focuses on attention in neuroscience and psychology, attention is broken up into eight different subgroupings. The groupings are as follows: Attention as Arousal, Alertness or vigilance, Sensory attention, visual-spatial attention, visual feature attention, computational models of visual attention, attention in other sensory modalities, attention and executive control and attention and memory. This article also goes into good detail about how attention can be and is incorporated into computer science. (Lindsay, 2020)

In general, this article provides a good summary of the current theories and definitions of what attention is in psychology as well as machine learning. This article would be useful for those who would like to look at a broader scope of what attention can look like in other settings, such as neuroscience and machine learning.

A comparative review of the psychophysiology of attention in children with and without attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

In this article, there is a particular focus of attention with regard to the filter paradigm of attention. Further, the article looks at what differences exist in the psychophysiology of attention for those who have ADHD and those who do not. The article gives a good summary via a table on page 44 on the current framework of paradigms of attention in ADHD. (Karakaş, 2022)

In general, this article focuses more on a clinical psychology view of attention with a specific emphasis on ADHD. I would recommend this article to those interested in a clinical psychology perspective.

Attention: a descriptive taxonomy

This article uses approaches from biology that look to define attention in the scope of a taxonomy, similar to what you might see when classifying animals or plants. This article is comprehensive in the way that it breaks down the various areas of attention and applications of attention. (Kaldas, 2022)

In general, I would recommend this article to those coming from a biology background or to those who would like to look at a very detailed and comprehensive way of structuring what we think is attention. This article also provides an atypical approach to classifying attention, which might be of interest to readers.

No one knows what attention is

This article points out the flaws in how attention is used in research as an overarching umbrella term. The authors of this article point out that the broadness of this umbrella approach has caused gaps in what we understand attention to be. The authors instead propose that using an approach that focuses on the processes and mechanisms of attention would better serve research in cognitive psychology. (Hommel et al., 2019)

I would recommend this article to those who would like to focus on attention as more of a bottom-up definitional process in which the definition is derived from what it is describing rather than a top-down focus in which the focus of the definition would start with the broadness of “attention” and move more specific from there.

Current Issues in the Diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and Conduct Disorder.

This article focuses mostly on how the three disorders (ADHD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and Conduct disorder) have been diagnosed. Of interest is the section on the historical view of how attention was considered in the diagnostic criteria for ADHD. (Frick & Nigg, 2012)

While this article may not be the most relevant for those who are keenly interested in attention more broadly, I did include this article because it does provide an interesting perspective that is most relevant for clinical psychologists since it looks at the DSM and the diagnosis of these disorders.

Data‑driven profiles of attention‑deficit/hyperactivity disorder using objective and ecological measures of attention, distractibility, and hyperactivity.

This article focuses on a study in which the authors applied ecological and performance-based measures to assess ADHD. They measured inattention, impulsivity and hyperactivity. This study was conducted to add more validity to research on ADHD. (Fernández-Martín et al., 2023)

This study is an interesting case that highlights how more typical cognitive psychology approaches to measuring attention can be applied to clinical scenarios in which more of the work has been focused on observations and self-reports.

Attention as a patchwork concept

This article focuses on attention in a conceptual way rather than an application-based context. It makes use of the broad attentional definitions that exist over domains and proposes a way to categorize them in such a way that benefits researchers who use attention in their work. The article proposes attention as a way to guide thinking about concepts in psychology. (Taylor, 2023)

I think this article does a good job of critiquing attention for how broad it can be and how attention does not always line up in terms of how definitions look across domains. This article provides a positive spin on these issues and how it can still be a useful way for researchers to think about how concepts can be applied in more specific contexts within different domains.

References