purpose hidden resources (such asM-capacity orI-capacity) used by them to
change performance. Yet executive processes and hidden resources must be
distinguished, because substantive executive processes are mostly acquired,
whereas the hidden general resources (mental attentional capacities, content-
learning and structural-learning capabilities, etc.) have to be innate.
MA3. The third mental-attention resource is a capacity (which we callI-
operator) for central attentional inhibition of schemes, or mental-attentional
interruption. This is used by the dominant cluster of compatible executive
schemes to inhibit schemes that are irrelevant or misleading for the goals be-
ing pursued. The searchlight analogy for mental attention (Crick, 1994) is
made possible by mental-attentional automatic interruption of the schemes
that at each moment are not being boosted withM-capacity, that is, not se-
lected for attention at this moment (call these schemesH′). Automatic inter-
ruption (by theI-operator) is symbolized in Fig. 8.1 by the expressionI(H′).
The developmental growth ofI-capacity occurs, we believe, concurrently
with the growth ofM-capacity. The control of mental-attentional inhibition
may take place in the ventrolateral (e.g., BA 44, 45, 47) and dorsolateral (BA
9, 46) prefrontal cortex (Durston et al., 2002; Mitchell, Macrae, & Gilchrist,
2002; Szameitat et al., 2002) in coordination with theM-capacity control.
The dorsal anterior cingulate and the ventromedial PFC, which Luria (1973)
emphasized, may intervene in mobilizing bothM-capacity and interruption
I-capacity, by bringing in the appropriate affective goals and converting them
into cognitive goals (Albright et al., 2001).
MA4. The fourth and last constituent of mental attention serves to cre-
ate the closure of the beam of attention. This is an endogenous capacity of the
organism that ( jointly with the principle of schemes’ overdetermination dis-
cussed below) dynamically integrates, into a single minimally complex per-
formance totality, the whole cluster of dominant compatible schemes at the
point when performance takes place (this often is called the binding prob-
lem). This performance-closure dynamism (possibly caused in the cortex by
automatic lateral inhibitory processes) is what neo-Gestalt psychologists and
others (e.g., Piaget) called internal or autochthonous field processes (e.g., the
MinimumPrinciple of perception, the S-R Compatibility principle of per-
formance, etc.). We callF-operator this performance-closure dynamism that
causes perception, imagery, thinking, language, motor activity, etc., to be in-
tegrated and minimally complex in an adaptive way. In this dynamic en-
deavor theF-operator works in tandem with a psychological and neural prin-
ciple that we call principle of schematic overdetermination of performance
(SOP; Pascual-Leone, 1995, 1997). This construct (derivable from Piaget’s
principle of schemes’ assimilation and also from the summation principle for
neuronal firing) can be formulated for schemes in the following manner. Per-
208 PASCUAL-LEONE AND JOHNSON