Human perception of visual scenes has distinct initiative and purpose characteristics. Human beings can quickly extract information of their interest from massive visual input, giving priority to processing. This selective perception is visual attention. With the rise of artificial intelligence, studying the mechanism of human visual attention and establishing the computational model of visual attention has become a new research hotspot. What is the essence of visual attention? What are the basic units of visual attention? What are the factors that affect visual attention? The in-depth analysis of cognitive philosophy in visual attention helps to understand the mechanism of visual attention and to establish an effective artificial intelligence model. The fact shows that the performance of the computer simulation model can be improved by taking full account of the influence of high-level factors such as task, expectation, memory, knowledge and experience in modeling.