Measuring the effect of attention on simple visual search.

Palmer, John; Ames, Cynthia T.; Lindsey, Delwin T.

doi:10.1037/0096-1523.19.1.108

Cited by 281 publications

(448 citation statements)

References 73 publications

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“…Furthermore, one can normalize the threshold ratio by the ratio of set sizes. In particular, Palmer et al (1993) borrowed a measure from studies of light adaptation. The log-log slope is the log of the threshold ratio relative to the log of the set-size ratio.…”

Section: Two Approaches To Measuring Set-size Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Set-size effects for identification versus localization depend on the visual search task.

Busey¹,

Palmer²

2008

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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In both behavior and neuroscience research, it is debated whether the processing of identity and location is closely bound throughout processing. One aspect of this debate is the possibly privileged processing of identity or location. For example, processing identity may have unlimited capacity, while processing location does not. The authors have investigated the possibility of such privileged processing by measuring set-size effects for a variety of identification and localization tasks. In particular, set-size effects in accuracy visual search are measured with either 1 or 2 possible targets. For 1-target tasks, set-size effects are smaller for identification than localization; for 2-target tasks, set-size effects are larger for identification than localization. The observed crossover interaction is inconsistent with a privileged processing hypothesis for either identity or location. Furthermore, this interaction is predicted by an independent channel model based on signal detection theory, in which the details of each decision determine the relative magnitude of the set-size effects. This result is consistent with the similar processing of identity and location, and it refutes the privileged processing hypothesis for either identity or location.

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Section: Two Approaches To Measuring Set-size Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Set-size effects for identification versus localization depend on the visual search task.

Busey¹,

Palmer²

2008

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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“…It can be shown that detection of small probe stimuli is enhanced on and immediately around the attended object [33]. One can even mimic a set size variation by simply telling observers which items to attend to on any given trial [34]. It may be that spatially selective attention serves a useful role in collecting features from just one object at a time and delivering those features to later object recognition processes [35].…”

Section: Trends In Cognitive Sciencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Moving towards solutions to some enduring controversies in visual search

Wolfe

2003

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

244

191

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How do we find a target item in a visual world filled with distractors? A quarter of a century ago, in her influential 'Feature Integration Theory (FIT)', Treisman proposed a two-stage solution to the problem of visual search: a preattentive stage that could process a limited number of basic features in parallel and an attentive stage that could perform more complex acts of recognition, one object at a time. The theory posed a series of problems. What is the nature of that preattentive stage? How do serial and parallel processes interact? How does a search unfold over time? Recent work has shed new light on these issues.Visual search is one of those things we do all day, every day, from finding milk in the refrigerator to locating our car in the car-park. We pay others to do it at airport security checks and in radiology laboratories and, in the past quarter of a century, we have done a great deal of it in our research laboratories. Laboratory search tasks ask the observer to find and/or identify a target item among some number of distractor items. The core empirical fact that needs explanation is that some search tasks are easy and others are difficult (see Fig. 1). We assume that, if we could successfully describe the rules that govern human search behavior, we would be able to improve performance in critical applied search tasks and to offer suggestions to those trying to build machines that might do our search tasks for us. Visual search is also an experimentally tractable way to study selective attention, and it is increasingly clear that any useful theory of visual perception will require an understanding of the role of attention.Treisman's feature integration theory Visual search and the role of attention in search has been much discussed in recent literature (see [1][2][3][4][5] for reviews). This article will concentrate on several issues growing out of Anne Treisman's seminal Feature Integration Theory (FIT) [6]. It would be a great disservice to many other researchers to label FIT as the sole 'big bang' of the visual search universe. However, it does serve well as an organizing principle for a brief review of some interesting and long-running controversies.The original FIT proposed that visual search tasks could be dichotomized into 'preattentive' and 'attentive' categories. Preattentive processing was held to occur in parallel across most or all of the visual field in a single step and to be limited to a small set of basic features like color, size, motion, and orientation. Thus, you could preattentively find a red item among green. Operationally, preattentive search for a target defined by a single basic feature would produce reaction times (RTs) independent of the number of items in the display (set size). Thus, the slope of the function relating RT to set size would be near zero. Other tasks, like a search for a randomly oriented 'T' among 'L's could not be performed preattentively. Attentive processing was presumed to marshal the more extensive perceptual capabilities required to 'bind' features ...

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“…For an ideal observer with no capacity limitation (Palmer et al, 1993), this procedure eliminates statistical uncertainty. However, cuing cannot eliminate capacity limitations in the observer.…”

Section: Statistical Uncertainty Effect Versus Capacity Limitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Statistical uncertainty reflects information loss and decision limits of the observer, not changes of perceptual sensitivity or limits of information-processing capacity of the ideal observer. Statistical uncertainty effects must be considered before drawing any conclusions about attention effects (Palmer, Ames, & Lindsey, 1993;Shaw, 1984;Sperling & Dosher, 1986).…”

Section: Statistical Uncertainty Effect Versus Capacity Limitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial attention: Different mechanisms for central and peripheral temporal precues?

Lü¹,

Dosher²

2000

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

119

204

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The external noise paradigm (Z.-L. Lu & B. A. Dosher, 1998) was applied to investigate mechanisms of spatial attention in location precuing. Observers were precued or simultaneously cued to identify 1 of 4 pseudocharacters embedded in various amounts of external noise. The cues were either central or peripheral. Both central and peripheral precuing significantly reduced threshold in the presence of high external noise (16% and 17.5%). Only peripheral precuing significantly reduced threshold in the presence of low, or no, external noise (11%). A perceptual template model identified different mechanisms of attention for central and peripheral precuing, external noise exclusion for central precuing, and a combination of external noise exclusion and stimulus enhancement (or equivalently, internal additive noise reduction) for peripheral cuing.In a high workload environment, a human operator might need to monitor a large number of information sources simultaneously. Whereas this might be accomplished by saccades, the eye movement system is limited by the relatively long time (about 200 ms) each saccade takes (Hallett, 1986). On the other hand, the existence of a faster spatial attention system was proposed about a century ago (Helmholtz, 186671911;Wundt, 1902), selecting regions of the visual field for further processing without eye movements. This view has been established by the more recent literature

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Measuring the effect of attention on simple visual search.

Cited by 281 publications

References 73 publications

Set-size effects for identification versus localization depend on the visual search task.

Set-size effects for identification versus localization depend on the visual search task.

Moving towards solutions to some enduring controversies in visual search

Spatial attention: Different mechanisms for central and peripheral temporal precues?

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