Everything about Pre-attentive processing

🧭 Start here: a 6-step reading path

1. Read the overview: Pre-attentive processingA 5-minute orientation
2. Skim a recent paper: Impact of Age on Construction Workers’ Preattentive and Attentive Visual Processing for Hazard DetectionInfluential work since 2022
3. Pick up a classic book: Cartesian meditationsThe most-reprinted book on the subject
4. Read the landmark paper: Superior pre-attentive auditory processing in musiciansCited 300 times
5. Go sideways: Salience (neuroscience)A closely related topic
6. Go sideways: Mismatch negativityA closely related topic

🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)

• Superior pre-attentive auditory processing in musicians

  Stefan Koelsch, Erich Schröger, Mari Tervaniemi · 1999 · NeuroReport · 300 citations

• Amygdala activation in maltreated children during pre-attentive emotional processing

  Eamon J. McCrory, Stéphane A. De Brito, Philip A. Kelly · 2013 · British Journal of Psychiatry · 204 citations

• Stimulus Saliency Modulates Pre-Attentive Processing Speed in Human Visual Cortex

  Thomas Töllner, Michael Zehetleitner, Klaus Gramann · 2011 · PLoS ONE · 111 citations

• Temporal regularity effects on pre-attentive and attentive processing of deviance

  Michael Schwartze, Kathrin Rothermich, Maren Schmidt-Kassow · 2011 · Biological Psychology · 109 citations

• Pre-Attentive Auditory Processing in Ultra-High-Risk for Schizophrenia with Magnetoencephalography

  Kyung Soon Shin, June Sic Kim, Do-Hyung Kang · 2009 · Biological Psychiatry · 77 citations

• Beat Processing Is Pre-Attentive for Metrically Simple Rhythms with Clear Accents: An ERP Study

  Fleur L. Bouwer, Titia L. Van Zuijen, Henkjan Honing · 2014 · PLoS ONE · 76 citations

• Pre-attentive auditory processing of lexicality

  T Jacobsen · 2004 · Brain and Language · 68 citations

• Pre-attentive processing of auditory patterns in dyslexic human subjects

  Gerd Schulte-Körne, Wolfgang Deimel, Jürgen Bartling · 1999 · Neuroscience Letters · 64 citations

🆕 Influential since 2022

• Impact of Age on Construction Workers’ Preattentive and Attentive Visual Processing for Hazard Detection

  Jie Li, Yewei Ouyang, Xiaowei Luo · 2024 · Journal of Management in Engineering · 9 citations

• Processing of acoustic and phonological information of lexical tones at pre-attentive and attentive stages

  Yicheng Rong, Yi Weng, Gang Peng · 2023 · Language, Cognition and Neuroscience · 7 citations

• Pre-attentive speech signal processing with adaptive routing for emotion recognition

  Huiyun Zhang, Zilong Pang, Puyang Zhao · 2026 · Biomedical Signal Processing and Control · 7 citations

• Native language experience shapes pre‐attentive foreign tone processing and guides rapid memory trace build‐up: An ERP study

  Sabine Gosselke Berthelsen, Merle Horne, Yury Shtyrov · 2022 · Psychophysiology · 7 citations

• Rapid pre-attentive processing of a famous speaker: Electrophysiological effects of Angela Merkel's voice

  Paula Rinke, Tatjana Schmidt, Kjartan Beier · 2022 · Neuropsychologia · 6 citations

📚 Books worth reading

• Cartesian meditationsEdmund Husserl, Dorion Cairns · 1960
• PsychologyMichael Maher · 1890
• Game DesignMarc Saltzman · 1999
• Treaty Occupationay ToxicologySuelen Queiroz · 2010
• The Conspirators HierarchyJohn Coleman · 1992
• Raising Reading Achievement in Middle and High SchoolsElaine K. McEwan · 2001
• Sex and uncertainty in the body of ChristSusannah Cornwall · 2010
• Motor learning and performanceRichard A. Schmidt · 1991

Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.

🔗 Related topics

• Salience (neuroscience) Salience (also called saliency, from Latin saliō meaning "leap, spring") is the property by which something stands out. Salient events are an attentional…
• Mismatch negativity The mismatch negativity (MMN) or mismatch field (MMF) is a component of the event-related potential (ERP) to an odd stimulus in a sequence of stimuli.…
• Visual masking Visual masking is a phenomenon of visual perception. It occurs when the visibility of one image, called a target, is reduced by the presence of another…
• Biased competition theory Biased competition theory advocates the idea that each object in the visual field competes for cortical representation and cognitive processing. This theory…
• Oddball paradigm The oddball paradigm is an experimental design used within psychology research. The oddball paradigm relies on the brain's sensitivity to rare deviant…
• Sensory processing Sensory processing is the process that organizes and distinguishes sensation (sensory information) from one's own body and the environment, thus making…
• Visual capture In psychology, visual capture is the dominance of vision over other sense modalities in creating a percept. In this process, the visual senses influence…
• Dichotic listening Dichotic listening is a psychological test commonly used to investigate selective attention and the lateralization of brain function within the auditory…