ABSTRACT
With some surprise, William James noted that the process of attention was rarely discussed by the leading theoreticians of his time in their efforts to explain mental functioning (James, 1890). Then, as now, the importance of understanding this preliminary stage of information processing would seem to be obvious. Although matters have improved considerably since James’ time (e.g., Enns, 1990; Gale & Edwards, 1983; Parasuraman& Davies, 1984), it is still undeniable that what we know, or think we know, about the process of attention, pales in comparison to what we admittedly do not yet understand. One impediment to studying attention has been the problem of determining how to measure this process. Although James may have been correct when he stated that “Everyone knows what attention is” (p. 403), he was unable to make a similarly convincing assertion about how it should be measured. Assessing the process of attention continues to be a difficult task even in the best of situations, but with nonverbal subjects, like animals or human infants, this task is still more difficult. One potential solution to this dilemma is to use the orienting response as an index of attention and information processing.
