atencionales

Atencionales is a term used in Spanish to refer to phenomena, processes, or mechanisms related to attention in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. The term functions primarily as an adjective (atencional) or as a noun in plural form, as in los procesos atencionales or las respuestas atencionales. It commonly appears in compound phrases such as redes atencionales, sistemas atencionales, and procesos atencionales.

The concept of lo atencional encompasses multiple components of attention, including alerting (sustained readiness to respond), orienting (selective attention to sensory stimuli), and executive control (monitoring and resolving conflicts). One influential framework in this area is Posner’s model of attention networks, which identifies three interacting networks supported by distinct neural circuits: the alerting network involving frontal and parietal regions and the locus coeruleus; the orienting network involving the superior parietal lobe and frontal eye fields; and the executive control network involving the anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortex.

Measurement and experimental tasks used to study lo atencional include the Attention Network Test (ANT), which estimates the efficiency of each network, as well as cueing tasks and dichotic listening paradigms. The term atencionales is typically found in Spanish-language texts across psychology, neuroscience, education, and related fields, where it serves as a descriptor for attention-related phenomena rather than as a formal, standalone scientific category.

See also: attention, cognitive neuroscience, Attention Network Test, Posner.