On the status of location in visual attention

The authors propose a distinction between four issues underlying the debate on the status of location in visual selective attention. Three of them con cern the representation within which attention operates. The grouping quest ion focuses on whether or not this representation segments the visual field into perceptual groups. The space-invariance question focuses on whether i t describes objects in spatio-topic or in space-invariant coordinates. Fina lly, the feature-coding question concerns whether or not it contains inform ation about objects' non-spatial features. The last issue focuses on whethe r or not attention can he guided preattentively towards items possessing ce rtain prespecified physical properties other than location, and is referred to as the attentional-guidance question. A critical survey of the literatu re within the proposed framework is presented. Based on its conclusions, th e status of location in current research is outlined, and avenues for furth er research are suggested.