A purely location-based theory of attention allocation cannot account for attention to non-spatial properties such as pitch versus timbre.

Although the psychological debates about salience maps are ongoing, an argument against pure spotlight views can also be made on more traditional, phenomenological grounds. A pure spotlight theory, according to which attention is always allocated on the basis of location, seems unable to account for the sort of case that Hermann von Helmholtz and William James were concerned with (see section 1.5). There is, as their example suggests, a difference between attending to the pitch of a note and a