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LIT-910: Effortless Attention: A New Perspective in the Cognitive Science of Attention and Action

1 min read

Properties3
StatusUnavailable — unread, registered 2026-10-11 from Crossref and publisher metadata (MIT Press, Bradford Books; Brian Bruya, editor; ISBN 9780262013840). The editor's introduction is listed on PhilArchive and was not opened. A full PDF on a third-party site was seen in search results and not used. Filed because it is the collection that names effortless attention as a problem for effort-based accounts of control; reading the introduction would place it.
Version3
Tagscognition, agency, phenomenology

Graph View

Brian Bruya (ed.) (2010), Effortless Attention: A New Perspective in the Cognitive Science of Attention and Action, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press — doi:10.7551/mitpress/9780262013840.001.0001

Key takeaways

Unread. From the title, the introduction’s title (“Toward a Theory of Attention That Includes Effortless Attention and Action”) and the publisher’s description.

  • The problem it poses. Focused attention is usually modelled as effortful, but in flow and in expert action people report high focus with little or no effort. A theory of attention has to include that case.
  • Why the record wants it. THEORY-070 makes control costly, with an intrinsic cost that rises with intensity. Effortless attention is the phenomenon that account has to meet. The record’s own reading (CLAIM-162) is that the cost is the cost of overriding a competing regime, so it vanishes when nothing has to be overridden.

Standing in the record

Filed on 2026-10-11 with the flow cluster. cognition comes first because attention is its subject; agency is for effortless action; phenomenology is for its first-person reports. Not held in the anthology.

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