ABSTRACT
The research fields of reaction processes and attention aim to describe the interplay of elementary mental processes. They belong to those classical topics of experimental psychology that have witnessed considerable fluctuations in currency. Although very much alive in Wundt’s Leipzig laboratory in the 1880s, they suffered from an almost total neglect from the 1920s to the late 1940s but had a strong revival during the 1950s. Following a “golden age” during the 1960s, interest waned during the 1980s but has risen again in recent years. Such swings are invariably related to methodology and to theoretical concepts and outside questions. Here, it may suffice to note that the golden age was strongly fostered by applied issues and new theoretical tools. A growing distrust about the ecological value of the small and simple paradigm (Allport, 1980a) was among the reasons for the decline in the 1980s. In addition, the theoretical tools of the 1950s proved to be limited. Each of these elements, that is, the applied roots, the empirical approach, and the theoretical tools of the 1950s are discussed by way of general introduction. The more recent comeback may be due to the advent of neural network models and to the recent advances in brain-imaging techniques. Research on brain and behavior needs behavioral paradigms, and those on elementary mental processes may be a promising sparring partner; this justifies a brief statement about the level of analysis on which research on attention and reaction processes is thought to be based.
