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Attention is a function of the nervous system,1 a periodic process,2, and as such is an indicant of complex interactions among the reticular formation, hypothalamus, cerebral cortex and hippocampus. In the context of the perceptual act, attending is a process which determines the intensity and extensity with which internal and external cues are sampled and made available to influence various types and levels of perceptual and cognitive functions. This successive sampling of new information, which the organism acquires in the process of attending and perceiving, in conjunction with past samples, creates expectancies of future perceptual events and also serves to structure presently experienced percepts.3 Attention not only selectively samples data from external and internal events but also integrates the adaptation of internal variables to change in external variables and selectively energizes4 and facilitates motor accommodations. Attention is a selective mechanism, which resolves various perceptual tendencies and is a process of biological selection or dominance, in subserving adaptation through accommodating inner-need tensions and actions to stimuli received from the external milieu.
Weiss states,5 “The ego as subject is experienced in various modes which can be indicated in terms made familiar by grammar. The active ego cathexis is experienced in the ego's planning, thinking, acting, and, in its most elementary form, in the phenomenon of attention.”
Various studies,2,6,7 using divergent methodologies, indicate that a simple mathematical model is adequate to conceptualize the data obtained by these methodologies. This mathematical model is based on the hypothesis that the process underlying behavior is additive.