Perceptual tuning and conscious attention: Systems of input regulation in visual information processing

Carr, Thomas H.; Bacharach, Verne R.

doi:10.1016/0010-0277(76)90020-2

Cited by 119 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…This appears to be true regardless of whether the target stimuli are foveal or peripheral (Posner et al, 1978, Note 4) and, in this study, supports a process similar to the "perceptual tuning" proposed by Carr and Bacharach (1976). Combining the probability manipulations of the cost-benefit paradigm with a simple detection task proved very effective in producing ROC curves for both facilitation and inhibition in the current study.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

“…Increases in sensitivity at attended spatial locations imply very early voluntary control of selective processes. Carr and Bacharach (1976) conducted an extensive review of the literature relevant to sensory input regulation and concluded that voluntary control can be exercised at a very early point along the processing pathway. They referred to that early input selection as a process of "perceptual tuning," a notion conceptually similar to stimulus set.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Enhancement of perceptual sensitivity as the result of selectively attending to spatial locations

Bashinski

Bacharach

1980

Perception & Psychophysics

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441

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The present experiment employed a visual signal-detection task within a cost-benefit (inhibitionfacilitation) paradigm to examine the effects of selective attention on perceptual sensitivity. A central cue directed the subjects' attention to either a right or a left spatial location where a detection task was performed. The cue was either a high/low or neutral-validity indicator of the position in which an event was likely to occur. A rating-scale response scheme in conjunction with the subjects' target signallocational judgments allowed for the construction of ROC curves for each condition. Significant benefits were found for all subjects, supporting the hypothesis that selective attention can enhance perceptual sensitivity. Deallocation of attention resulted in an inhibition of sensitivity in unattended spatial locations. Subjects were consistently most sensitive in the right spatial location. There were no significant differences in overall response bias among the three conditions or in spatial locations. The results support theories of attention, such as "perceptual tuning," that suggest very early selective control.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhancement of perceptual sensitivity as the result of selectively attending to spatial locations

Bashinski

Bacharach

1980

Perception & Psychophysics

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441

296

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“…The utility of information at one structural level for responding on the forced-ehoice task led the subjects to selectively process that informa-tion at the expense of information at a different level. It is apparent that the perceptual processing and organization of information can be facilitated by providing implicit information about a stimulus dimension such as structural level (Kinchla et al, 1983) as well as conceptual information such as a name or category (Carr & Bacharach, 1976;Potter, 1975), specific physical features of the relevant stimulus (Egeth & Smith, 1967;Pachella, 1975), or spatial location (Downing, 1988;Posner et aI., 1978).…”

Section: Information Tradeottsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, several researchers have noted that the nature of the selective process may involve a number of perceptual and cognitive mechanisms or processes (Carr & Bacharach, 1976;Kinchla, 1980;Kinchla et al, 1983;Pachella, 1975). Such processes may include the selective extraction and organization of information on the basis of spatial frequency channels (e.g., Breitmeyer & Ganz, 1976), or the selective organization of features in forming a perceptual/memory representation (Banks & Prinzmetal, 1976;Haber 1966;Harris & Haber, 1963;Pachella, 1975).…”

Section: Information Tradeottsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The more the selected information is analyzed and organized, the more it becomes available to consciousness while the nonselected information becomes less available (Carr & Bacharach, 1976). One might conceptualize this as the selectivity processes developing a momentum in which the information from the emphasized level benefits from continuously more processing.…”

Section: Cue Effects: Modulating the Extent Of Tradeoffsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Information tradeoffs in complex stimulus structure: Local and global levels in naturalistic scenes

Venturino

Gagnon

1992

Perception & Psychophysics

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An information tradeoff is an increased processing or utilization of information from one stirnulus source at the expense of processing or utilization of information from a different source. An experiment was conducted to determine whether information tradeoffs occurred when subjects attended selectively to one of two different structural levels of naturalistic scenes. The subjects' attentional focus was directed to either the global or local structure of a scene (i.e., the scene or an object in the scene, respectively) either before or after presentation of a scene. They then had to use the information obtained from a lOO·msec exposure of the scene to choose between two forced-choice alternatives that described one of the levels. The nature of the alternatives was such that both alternatives adequately characterized one of the structural levels on the basis of physical and semantic relations within the scene. Results showed that the subjects were significantly slower and less accurate when their attentional focus and the forced-choice alternatives were at different levels of stimulus structure than when they were at the same level, providing evidence of an information tradeoff when different types of information from a scene were used. When processing information from a particular structural level, information from the other level either was less available or was not used efficiently. Furthermore, the information tradeoffs were more severe in the precue than in the postcue condition, indicating differences in the efficiency of the selectivity process. The results are interpreted with respect to the role of selective attention in processing complex stimuli such as naturalistic scenes.The notion of selectivity in attention necessarily implies an information loss, in which some aspects of the stimulus environment are selected, processed, and transmitted at the expense of other aspects (Haber & Hershenson, 1980; Kinchla, 1980). This selectivity is an inevitable consequence of the limits of the human information processing system and functions to allow extraction of a coherent, meaningful flow of information from the myriad of environmental signals and stimulation impinging on a perceiver (Broadbent, 1958;Kahneman, 1973). A notable effect of selectivity is an information tradeoff, in which

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Independence from Context Information Provided by Spatial Signature Learning in a Natural Object Localization Task

Giraudet

Roumes

1999

Modeling and Using Context

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Perceptual tuning and conscious attention: Systems of input regulation in visual information processing

Cited by 119 publications

References 68 publications

Enhancement of perceptual sensitivity as the result of selectively attending to spatial locations

Enhancement of perceptual sensitivity as the result of selectively attending to spatial locations

Information tradeoffs in complex stimulus structure: Local and global levels in naturalistic scenes

Independence from Context Information Provided by Spatial Signature Learning in a Natural Object Localization Task

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