While agreeing with Rosenholtz that the broad concept of visual attention conflates phenomena with explanatory mechanisms, leading to a crisis that demands a paradigm shift, we argue that this issue partially arises from viewing attention within a predominantly perception-focused framework. We propose reframing visual attention as part of an integrated sensorimotor system, emphasizing its role in linking vision and action.

Rosenholtz is right that the multiple meanings of attention hinder development of a unified attention theory, but this is not a crisis. Embracing its diversity can advance fields like clinical psychology. However, inattentional blindness challenges attempts to move beyond attention as an explanatory concept. I illustrate this by highlighting attentional set, which demonstrates selective prioritization rather than mere task constraints.

The groundbreaking, anti-homuncular view presented by the author complements conclusions from diverse areas of research, including (a) research on phenomena not concerning attention (e.g., involving anosognosia, scotomata, dreams, and consciousness) and (b) the hypothesis that attention should be construed as an effect (e.g., from the activation of priority signals and task sets) rather than as a cause.

Rosenholtz’s framework reconciles contradictory findings in ensemble perception by attributing perceptual failures to task complexity and peripheral summary-statistic limitations rather than attentional lapses. This perspective also reframes the attentional blink (AB) as a manifestation of temporal crowding rather than a failure of selective attention. Philosophically, this challenges the idea that attention is constitutive of action, suggesting instead that task constraints shape both perception and agency.

We examine “allocentric” neglect from Rosenholtz’s perspective, focusing on visual limitations in the periphery rather than attention. Studies of allocentric neglect report no or limited data on visual field defects and extinction. We propose that if visual input is degraded, patients may fail to detect the left part of the stimulus and complete it perceptually (preattentively) rather than attentionally.

The debate on attention’s validity in cognitive psychology persists. However, attention remains essential beyond peripheral vision constraints, as it is a resource-limited process (Norman & Bobrow, 1975). The outright dismissal of attention proposed in the target article risks conceptual voids without superior alternatives. Instead, refining attention as a theoretical framework offers a pragmatic path for advancing cognitive research.

We do not share Rosenholtz’s central worry that visual attention is in “crisis”. There are many examples of notable progress in understanding how the brain prioritizes and gathers information about the environment where “attention,” as a relatively loose concept, has worked well. We also discuss how focusing on a single definition, the field can be led astray.

Recent electrophysiological studies of visual attention have highlighted the importance of visual circuits through evolutionarily conserved brain regions in the midbrain that target processing stages downstream from early visual cortex. These findings support the target article’s emphasis on late-stage “task selection” but are also consistent with early-stage modulation of basic visual features and flexible pooling of visual signals.

Understanding the limits of visual processing is at the core of understanding visual attention. Rosenholtz proposes task complexity as a potential solution to identify a putative unifying capacity limit. We argue that if task complexity is indeed used to identify a unifying limit, effort must crucially be incorporated to prevent a future crisis in the field of visual attention.

Attention has been used to explain performance deficits in many visual tasks, even though it lacks a clear definition or distinction from visual perception. We agree with Dr. Rosenholtz that perceptual processes may account for many phenomena previously attributed to spatial attention. We further suggest that perceptual processes may underlie the study of temporal attention, namely the “attentional blink.”

The field has chosen gate as its preferred metaphor for attention. This commentary will discuss the power and the consequences of this choice. It will make the case that a better metaphor is needed, to liberate our understanding of attention from the constraints imposed by the gate metaphor.

The similarities between 2D summary statistics and fragmentary 3D vision suggest common principles. Specifically, both 2D and 3D visual processing discard information whenever that information is redundant or inessential for ecologically valid vision in a consistent world. Change blindness and other illusions result from information loss without awareness, when the corresponding consistency assumptions are violated.

The review argues that researchers can and should disregard the examination of eye movement behavior when seeking to understand the role that peripheral vision plays in various tasks. We present specific examples to argue that eye movement behavior has and will continue to aid in confirming and disconfirming hypotheses regarding visual-cognitive information processing in a variety of tasks.

We suggest that the crisis in visual attention is caused by problems prevalent in many other areas of psychology: low-power experiments and questionable research practices. We demonstrate that many attention experiments use sample sizes that are several orders of magnitude too small and argue that it is unreasonable to expect theoretical clarity based on such unreliable empirical data.

Extensive research using the attentional blink phenomenon illustrates, through behavioural, modelling and cognitive neuroscience approaches, that distinct selection and attention capacity limits exist. Crucially, these effects cannot reflect peripheral visual processes nor distinct task operations across conditions controlling for issues raised by Rosenholtz. Moving away from attention and selection concepts hinder rather than facilitate a mechanistic understanding of vision.

Rosenholtz (2024) dismisses attentional capture, arguing that brief distractions (20–40 ms) are insignificant or intentional. However, we argue that distractions are never intentional nor negligible, and studying them is crucial both theoretically and for real-world applications.

Rosenholtz addresses the crisis of proliferating mechanisms for visual attention by redefining the concept in terms of (a) the known limitations of peripheral vision and (b) a proper assessment of task complexity. We argue that abandoning the see → decide → act pipeline model and the myth of a centralized gate or resource eliminates this crisis. In our view, “attention” describes an outcome—the consequence of multiple constraints on perception and action—rather than a reified cause.

Rosenholtz describes “attention theory” as a scientific paradigm in crisis, in the Kuhnian sense. But is attention a theory? Here, I question this premise. Although there can be theories of attentional phenomena, attention is not a theory. Rather, like memory and emotion, attention is a psychological concept that captures a broad class of phenomena, requiring multiple mechanistic explanations.

This commentary refutes Rosenholtz’s claim that visual attention lacks conceptual validity. We contend that attention remains important for elucidating capacity-limited perceptual processing and explaining phenomenological experience. Alternative frameworks centered on tasks and decision boundaries fail to account for perceptual effects that attentional mechanisms can capture. Thus, preserving attention as a theoretical construct is important, providing interpretive frameworks for empirical investigations.

I agree that, in some literature, the term “attention” is ill-defined and the constraints of peripheral vision have been overlooked. However, I disagree with omitting the empirical studies that have emphasized the importance of defining, operationalizing, and manipulating different types of attention and have investigated their effects on perception as a function of eccentricity and polar angle in peripheral vision.