Characterizing the Limits of Human Visual Awareness

Huang, Liqiang; Treisman, Anne; Pashler, Harold

doi:10.1126/science.1143515

Cited by 120 publications

(114 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…This would suggest that although advance location information is the preferred selection feature for most people most of the time, selection can potentially occur directly by color even when location varies. This possibility is in agreement with the Boolean map theory recently proposed by see also Huang, Treisman, & Pashler, 2007). According to this theory, participants can choose either to select one feature of one dimension or to select multiple locations at the same time.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 74%

Precuing benefits for color and location in a visual search task

Vierck

Miller

2008

Perception & Psychophysics

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Selection in multiple-item displays has been shown to benefit immensely from advance knowledge of target location (e.g., Henderson, 1991), leading to the suggestion that location is completely dominant in visual selective attention (e.g., Tsal & Lavie, 1993). Recently, direct selection by color has been reported in displays in which location does not vary (Vierck & Miller, 2005). The present experiment investigated the possibility of independent selection by color in a task with multiple-item displays and location precues in order to see whether color is also used for selection even when target location does vary and supposedly dominant location precues can be used. Precues provided independent information about the location and color of a target, and each type of precue could be either valid or invalid. The precues were followed by brief displays of six letters in six different colors, and participants had to discriminate the case of a prespecified target letter (e.g., R vs. r). Performance was much better when location cues were valid than when they were invalid, confirming the large advantage associated with valid advance location information. Performance was also better with valid advance color information, however, both when location cues were valid and when they were invalid. But these color benefits were dependent on the closeness of the colored letter to the cued location. Our results thus suggest that selection by color in a multiple-item display, where location and color information are independent from each other and equalized, is mediated by location information.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 74%

Precuing benefits for color and location in a visual search task

Vierck

Miller

2008

Perception & Psychophysics

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“…A new model of low-level vision has been presented by Huang et al to study why we often fail to notice features of a display that are not relevant to the immediate task [64], [65]. This theory carefully divides visual search into two stages: selection and access.…”

Section: Boolean Map Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Attention and Visual Memory in Visualization and Computer Graphics

Healey

Enns

2012

IEEE Trans. Visual. Comput. Graphics

291

179

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Abstract-A fundamental goal of visualization is to produce images of data that support visual analysis, exploration, and discovery of novel insights. An important consideration during visualization design is the role of human visual perception. How we "see" details in an image can directly impact a viewer's ef ciency and effectiveness. This article surveys research on attention and visual perception, with a speci c focus on results that have direct relevance to visualization and visual analytics. We discuss theories of low-level visual perception, then show how these ndings form a foundation for more recent work on visual memory and visual attention. We conclude with a brief overview of how knowledge of visual attention and visual memory is being applied in visualization and graphics. We also discuss how challenges in visualization are motivating research in psychophysics.

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“…The 2AFC deficit was observed even when the testing displays for the 2AFC and the same-different tasks were largely equated (Experiment 1b) and fully equated (followup Experiment to 1b), therefore the deficit must originate from the particular task demands imposed by the 2AFC format rather than from bottom-up, stimulus differences. That is, the elevated demand of attending and matching two, rather than one, test probes to a memory item can lead to a larger decrease in memory sensitivity (Huang, Treisman, & Pashler, 2007). Thus, the additional probe information provided in the 2AFC procedure that otherwise would have helped participants (Migo et al, 2009) led to more harm than good in testing of visual WM.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Method matters: Systematic effects of testing procedure on visual working memory sensitivity

Makovski¹,

Watson²,

Koutstaal³

et al. 2010

PsycEXTRA Dataset

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Visual working memory (WM) is traditionally considered a robust form of visual representation that survives changes in object motion, observer's position, and other visual transients. This study presents data that are inconsistent with the traditional view. We show that memory sensitivity is dramatically influenced by small variations in the testing procedure, supporting the idea that representations in visual WM are susceptible to interference from testing. In this study, participants were shown an array of colors to remember. After a short retention interval, memory for one of the items was tested with either a same-different task or a 2-alternative-forced-choice (2AFC) task. Memory sensitivity was much lower in the 2AFC task than in the same-different task. This difference was found regardless of encoding similarity or whether visual WM required a fine memory resolution or a coarse resolution. The 2AFC disadvantage was reduced when participants were informed shortly before testing which item would be probed. The 2AFC disadvantage diminished in perceptual tasks and was not found in tasks probing visual long-term memory. These results support memory models that acknowledge the labile nature of visual WM, and have implications for the format of visual WM and its assessment.

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Characterizing the Limits of Human Visual Awareness

Cited by 120 publications

References 14 publications

Precuing benefits for color and location in a visual search task

Precuing benefits for color and location in a visual search task

Attention and Visual Memory in Visualization and Computer Graphics

Method matters: Systematic effects of testing procedure on visual working memory sensitivity

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