A critical purpose of human communication is to inform others where to focus their attention, and humans use a wide variety of spatial symbols to accomplish this goal. Over the past several years, we have developed a theory of how spatial symbols control the orientation of attention in space. A key feature of this theory is that it uses spatial frames of reference to explain how the information conveyed by these symbols can influence the spatial distribution of attention. Here, we provide a brief summary of this theory, the evidence taken to support it, and how it has illuminated our understanding of attention control and the methods used to study it.
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