Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2007.58:1-23. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org by University of Oregon on 12/07/06. For personal use only.

Research on Attention Networks as a Model for the Integration of Psychological Science
Michael I. Posner and Mary K. Rothbart1
Psychology Department, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403-1291; email: mposner@darkwing.uoregon.edu, maryroth@darkwing.uoregon.edu

Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2007. 58:1–23 First published online as a Review in Advance on October 9, 2006 The Annual Review of Psychology is online at http://psych.annualreviews.org This article’s doi: 10.1146/annurev.psych.58.110405.085516 Copyright c 2007 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved 0066-4308/07/0110-0001$20.00
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Key Words attention, candidate genes, orienting, neural networks, temperament

Abstract
As Titchener pointed out more than one hundred years ago, attention is at the center of the psychological enterprise. Attention research investigates how voluntary control and subjective experience arise from and regulate our behavior. In recent years, attention has been one of the fastest growing of all fields within cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. This review examines attention as characterized by linking common neural networks with individual differences in their efficient utilization. The development of attentional networks is partly specified by genes, but is also open to specific experiences through the actions of caregivers and the culture. We believe that the connection between neural networks, genes, and socialization provides a common approach to all aspects of human cognition and emotion. Pursuit of this approach can provide a basis for psychology that unifies social, cultural, differential, experimental, and physiological areas, and allows normal development to serve as a baseline for understanding various forms of pathology. D.O. Hebb proposed this approach 50 years ago in his volume Organization of Behavior and continued with