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This article defends a theory of diffuse attention and distinguishes it from focal attention. My view is motivated by evidence from psychology and neuroscience, which suggests that we can deploy visual selective attention in at least two ways: by focusing on a small number of items, or by diffusing attention over a group of items taken as a whole. I argue that diffuse attention is selective and can be object‐based. It enables a subject to select an object to guide behavior, albeit in a different way than focusing does. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2007.00361.x Byline: PAUL WINK (1), MICHELE DILLON (2), ADRIENNE PRETTYMAN (3) Abstract: We use long-term longitudinal data from a sample (N = 155) of older age mainline Protestants, Catholics, and a small number of conservative Protestants to investigate the relations among church-centered religiousness, spiritual seeking, and authoritarianism. In late adulthood, religiousness was related positively, and spiritual seeking was related negatively, to authoritarianism; these relations held even after excluding conservative Protestants and controlling for education, gender, age cohort, and personal flexibility. We find a similar pattern using measures of religiousness, spiritual seeking, and control variables scored in early adulthood, a time interval of close to 40 years. Author Affiliation: (1)Paul Wink is Professor, Department of Psychology, Wellesley College, Wellesley. (2)Michele Dillon is Professor, Department of Sociology, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824. E-mail:michele.dillon@unh.edu (3)Adrienne Prettyman is a student at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA 02481. Article note: Correspondence should be addressed to Paul Wink, Department of Psychology, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA 02481. E-mail: pwink@wellesley.edu

Perceptual learning involves long‐term changes to perception due to practice or experience. While perceptual learning has been studied for over a century in philosophy and psychology, research into the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying perceptual learning remains an area of ongoing development. This review explores what perceptual learning is and how it occurs, with a focus on areas of controversy. It then turns to several current debates. First, it explores the debate as to whether such learning involves genuine perceptual change at all, rather than a change in action, attention, or decision‐making. Second, it questions the role that higher‐cognitive mechanisms, like attention, might play in perceptual learning. Does perceptual learning require attention, or can it occur through mere exposure in the absence of attention? Third, it examines a debate about what perceptual learning means for the perception–cognition divide. Does it blur the divide or preserve it? This article is categorized under: Philosophy > Psychological CapacitiesPsychology > Perception and PsychophysicsPsychology > Learning How the world appears in perception depends on prior experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]