Definition of Selective Attention•A selective attention mechanism is a neural mechanism that can be controlled by instruction and that can select specific kinds of stimuli or neural signals for specific kinds of neural processing.•An instruction is a (arbitrary) stimulus that becomes associated with specific kinds of neural signal or specific kinds of neural processing through conditioning/training.input stimulior neural signalsselective attentionmechanismsselected neuralprocessingattentioncontrol signalmotorcontrol signalsSelective AttentionPrinciples of Selective Attention•The capacity of the selected neural processing may or may not exceed the amount or complexity of the selected input.•Selective attention is required for optimal performance in almost all tasks, independent of any capacity limitations in the selected neural processing.•The flexibility and/or precision of a selective attention mechanism may be limited.•In all tasks, performance is limited to some extent by the requirements of the task and by the input stimuli and/or input neural signals.•In some tasks performance is also limited by the flexibility and/or precision of the selective attention mechanisms, in other tasks by limited capacity or precision in the selected neural processing, and in other tasks by some
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