Humans and other higher animals must select relevant information from the huge amount of data provided by the senses at every moment. The Bloughs' research project seeks to clarify how this selective process, "attention," works in the case of visual information. They chose the pigeon as their subject because it has extremely good vision, unlike most small and inexpensive animals studied by biologists and psychologists. The pigeon is an excellent animal model in which to explore how the brain is able to interpret the visual world. Although most of our understanding of perception and attention comes from studying humans, that understanding is limited in a number of ways. Biological processes have always been understood most deeply by comparing and contrasting them in different species. Learning and motivation play a major role in attention, and researchers can vary and control these factors in animal subjects. Attention may be simpler and easier to understand in pigeons than in humans; humans use complex strategies and thought processes that may obscure relatively simple mechanisms. Above all, by using an animal subject, the Bloughs hope eventually to contribute to the complete understanding of mental processes that will come only from relating behavioral results directly to evidence from physiological experiments in the same species. This understanding of neural processes is a major goal of science and a necessary background for the treatment of behavioral and mental disorders.
