Abstract
Solving the puzzle of visual attention: towards the "homunculus" disintegration? Research on visual attention, that has revealed the diverse nature of selection mechanisms, has given rise to different theoretical approaches, some of which understand attention as a supramodal control system, encountering the so-called "homunculus problem". Selection-for-action theories imply an alternative view without such trouble, conceiving attention like an emergent phenomenon from selective bias of the own visual system for the programming and execution of action. From among the numerous issues to be solved with regard to visual attention, we review a few that seem to be clarifying: the locus of selection controversy, the excitatory/inhibitory nature of attention, and the discussion about the representation units that are selected. Research on attention in temporal dimension seems promising. Altogether, the experimental results suggest a fragmentation of the homunculus or, perhaps, the first passage towards its final disintegration.
