Concept based Attention

TL;DR

This paper proposes that human high-level cognition is driven by a form of attention based on abstract concepts, called concept based attention (CbA), which extends traditional attention mechanisms to include abstract perceptions.

Contribution

It introduces the idea of concept based attention (CbA) as a new framework for understanding high-level cognitive processes in humans.

Findings

Concept based attention (CbA) links attention to abstract perceptions.

CbA explains how humans learn and categorize complex information.

The framework suggests new directions for cognitive and AI research.

Abstract

Attention endows animals an ability to concentrate on the most relevant information among a deluge of distractors at any given time, either through volitionally 'top-down' biasing, or driven by automatically 'bottom-up' saliency of stimuli, in favour of advantageous competition in neural modulations for information processing. Nevertheless, instead of being limited to perceive simple features, human and other advanced animals adaptively learn the world into categories and abstract concepts from experiences, imparting the world meanings. This thesis suggests that the high-level cognitive ability of human is more likely driven by attention basing on abstract perceptions, which is defined as concept based attention (CbA).