My experience is what I agree to attend to.

William James, The Principles of Psychology, 1890

FIG. 1 SELECTIVE LOOKING TASKWWWBBBUNEXPECTED FIGURECOUNT THE PASSES IN WHITE9 S ON SCREENFIG. 1 FOUR REWARD SCHEDULESVARIABLE RATIOFIXED RATIOVARIABLE INTERVALFIXED INTERVALTIMERESPONSESTICK = REWARDFIG. 1 THE CHANNELFLOWANXIETYBOREDOMA1A2A3SKILLCHALLENGETHE SUN.NEW YORK, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1833.NUMBER 1.PRICE ONE PENNY.ADVERTISEHERE

Selective looking task, after Simons and Chabris, 1999

Cumulative record, after Ferster and Skinner, 1957

The flow channel, after Csikszentmihalyi, 1975

The Sun, New York, first issue, 1833

AE Files is an archive of the mechanics of attention. Each file documents one mechanism: what it is, who described it and the studies that established it.

The files sit in four folders. Limits covers what attention cannot do. Capture covers the reflexes that take it. Market covers the trade in it. Practice covers the conditions under which it holds.

Every file has the same parts. A source card names the primary publication. A summary states the mechanism in plain terms. The exhibits show the studies and their numbers as figures, each with a note. On a desktop the exhibits can be dragged around the folder.

The selection rule is evidence. A mechanism enters the archive when a named study stands behind it and the numbers can be checked against the publication. The figures are schematic drawings made from the published descriptions. None of them reproduces an original image.

The archive belongs to Attention Engineered, a project on running attention as a system with inputs, filters, protected blocks and outputs.

Eight files to date.

AE Files, 2026