models of attention

[Paul Kube]

On the topics of recent discussions about connectionist models of
attention, and about the relation between connectionist modelling and
neurological facts:

In a recent paper (Nature, 30 November 1989, pp. 543-545), Luck,
Hillyard, Mangun and Gazzaniga report that split-brain patients are
twice as good as normals on Triesman-type conjunctive feature visual
search tasks when the stimulus array is distributed across both
hemifields, but no better than normals when the array is restricted to
one hemifield.  This suggests that commissurotomy permits a "splitting
of attention" that is impossible with connected hemispheres, and that
remains impossible within each hemisphere.

I'd be interested to know if any of the models of attention under
discussion predict this.

	--Paul Kube
	kube at cs.ucsd.edu