Spatial attention and eye movements

The space around us is highly crowded: even when performing a simple task like making a cup of coffee, there are generally a huge number of distracting elements in our environment that could interfere with the performance of this particular task. Although very few people will be able to arrange their kitchen such that there are no distracting elements, even the most tidy people with clean kitchens will face a challenging task: making coffee involves multiple elements that are relevant during different moments in the process. To keep performance on track, information relevant to the current goal and intention needs to be selected, while irrelevant information needs to be filtered out. This selection of a spatial element in the face of competition for selection by other elements has been termed “spatial attention.” As we will outline in this chapter, spatial attention is a multifaceted concept which involves various different components and functions. Although spatial attention is perhaps one of the most ill-defined terms in experimental psychology, the aim of the current chapter is to provide some understanding about what spatial attention entails and how deficits in spatial attention can tell us something about its underlying mechanisms. The description of the consequences of deficits in spatial attention will illustrate how crucial spatial attention is for our daily functioning.