Cousineau, Denis
Professor
Department of Psychology.
University of Montreal
Canada
Biography
Cousineau, Denis is an Associate Professor Contact : T elephone 613-562-5800 # 7910 at University of Montreal, Department of Psychology, Canada.
Research Interest
What is attention? What is salient? Can we learn to control our attention? These questions are central to my research program. Attention is typically seen as a projector light moving from one object to another. According to other schools, attention may be focused or diffuse, depending on the salience of the targets versus distractors. Finally, according to a third view, the attention can not be diffuse, but can be assisted by a pre-treatment phase performed quickly on the entire field of vision. The attentional system is a low level system (close to perception). However, it is an important system because it allows for selection when several sources of information compete for our cognitive resources. In addition, this system imposes a serial treatment on what we know to be a parallel architecture (the brain). The knowledge of the attentional system will thus make it possible to better understand other selective systems (such as planning) and serial systems (such as the production of language).
