Perceptual learning often shows substantial and long-lasting changes in the ability to classify relevant perceptual stimuli due to practice. Specificity to trained stimuli and tasks is a key characteristic of visual perceptual learning, but little is known about whether specificity depends upon the extent of initial training. Using an orientation discrimination task, we demonstrate that specificity follows after extensive training, while the earliest stages of perceptual learning exhibit substantial transfer to a new location and an opposite orientation. Brief training shows the best performance at the point of transfer. These results for orientation-location transfer have both theoretical and practical implications for understanding perceptual expertise.

Multiple attributes of a single object are often processed more easily than attributes of different objects–a phenomenon associated with object attention. Here we investigate the influence of two factors, judgment frames and judgment precision, on dual-object report deficits as an index of object attention. Han, Dosher, & Lu (2003) predicted that consistency of the frame for judgments about two separate objects could reduce or eliminate the expression of object attention limitations. The current studies examine the effects of judgment frames and of task precision in orientation identification and find that dual-object report deficits within one feature are indeed affected modestly by the congruency of the judgments and more substantially by the required precision of judgments. The observed dual-object deficits affected contrast thresholds for incongruent frame conditions and for high precision judgments and reduce psychometric asymptotes. These dual-object deficits reflect a combined effect of multiplicative noise and external noise exclusion in dual-object conditions, both related to the effects of attention on the tuning of perceptual templates. These results have implications for modification of object attention theory, for understanding limitations on concurrent tasks.

One primary function of spatial attention is to exclude external noise [e.g., Psychol. Sci. 11(2) (2000) 139], especially in the region of the target stimulus [J. Vis. 2(4) (2000) 312]. What is not known is the spatial profile of external noise exclusion in the vicinity of the target and how this depends upon attention. The spatial region around an oriented Gabor target was segmented into four concentric rings (R1-R4). Psychometric functions were measured for orientation discrimination with external random Gaussian noise in all combinations of rings (e.g., R1 alone; R1+R2; etc.). Regions with larger impact on performance are weighted more heavily in the perceptual template. In an orientation discrimination task in periphery the effective noise regions aligned closely with the high contrast regions of the target Gabor, with attention reducing the effective noise across the spatial template. The combined effects of external noise regions were well-modeled by a (non-linear) perceptual template model (PTM) [Vis. Res. 38(9) (1998) 1183]. In another experiment in attended fovea, the results were similar to those in periphery, but exhibited additional ability to selectively weight clear spatial regions.

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