Visual routines for extracting magnitude relations

Michal, Audrey L.; Uttal, David H.; Shah, Priti; Franconeri, Steven

doi:10.3758/s13423-016-1047-0

Cited by 25 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…In support of this idea, we recently found that interpretations of magnitude relations depended on which item people attended to first (Michal et al, 2016). Participants were asked to verify whether a two-bar graph matched a statement such as, “Are there more blueberries than oranges?,” and visual routines that mimicked the linguistic order within the question led to faster responses.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 76%

“…People tend to process graph relations using systematic visual routines, particularly when coordinating data with text (e.g., Michal et al, 2016). Here we show that people exhibited idiosyncratic but highly consistent feature preferences (“anchor points”) to guide visual routines when judging graph relations, even when there was no verbal component to the task.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Past evidence shows that visual routines occur during graph comprehension (e.g., Michal, Uttal, Shah, & Franconeri, 2016), but converging evidence is needed to show that these routines are instrumental for extracting specific relations. For example, when judging the size configuration of the bars in the top graph of Fig.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Because Michal et al (2016) asked participants to verify a specific framing of a visual relation (e.g., blue bar larger than orange bar? ), participants may have been primed to attend to the graph using a sentence-order visual routine.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Visual routines are associated with specific graph interpretations

Michal

Franconeri

2017

Cogn. Research

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We argue that people compare values in graphs with a visual routine – attending to data values in an ordered pattern over time. Do these visual routines exist to manage capacity limitations in how many values can be encoded at once, or do they actually affect the relations that are extracted? We measured eye movements while people judged configurations of a two-bar graph based on size only (“[short tall] or [tall short]?”) and contrast only (“[light dark] or [dark light]?”). Participants exhibited visual routines in which they systematically attended to a specific feature (or “anchor point”) in the graph; in the size task, most participants inspected the taller bar first, and in the contrast task, most participants attended to the darker bar first. Participants then judged configurations that varied in both size and contrast (e.g., [short-light tall-dark]); however, only one dimension was task-relevant (varied between subjects). During this orthogonal task, participants overwhelmingly relied on the same anchor point used in the single-dimension version, but only for the task-relevant dimension (e.g., taller bar for the size-relevant task). These results suggest that visual routines are associated with specific graph interpretations. Responses were also faster when task-relevant and task-irrelevant anchor points appeared on the same object (congruent) than on different objects (incongruent). This interference from the task-irrelevant dimension suggests that top-down control may be necessary to extract relevant relations from graphs. The effect of visual routines on graph comprehension has implications for both science, technology, engineering, and mathematics pedagogy and graph design.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s41235-017-0059-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 76%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Visual routines are associated with specific graph interpretations

Michal

Franconeri

2017

Cogn. Research

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“…Although relational attention is a key component of visual perception, studies of attention have traditionally focused on perception of individual features or locations (Kastner & Ungerleider, 2000;Maunsell & Treue, 2006). As a consequence, the neural substrates of relational judgments in online visual perception have been largely unexplored (though see Franconeri et al, 2012;Michal et al, 2016). One candidate system for supporting relational attention is the hippocampus, a structure traditionally studied for its role in long-term memory, and particularly for relational forms of long-term memory (Eichenbaum & Cohen, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Focusing on what matters: Modulation of the human hippocampus by relational attention

Córdova

Turk‐Browne

Aly³

2018

Preprint

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Hippocampal episodic memory is fundamentally relational, consisting of links between events and the spatial and temporal contexts in which they occurred. Such relations are also important over much shorter time periods, during online visual perception. For example, how do we assess the relative spatial positions of objects, their temporal order, or the relationship between their features? Here, we investigate the role of the hippocampus in such online relational processing by manipulating visual attention to different kinds of relations in a dynamic display. While undergoing high-resolution fMRI, participants viewed two images in rapid succession on each trial and performed one of three relational tasks, judging the images' relative: spatial positions, temporal onsets, or sizes. As a control, they sometimes also judged whether one image was tilted, irrespective of the other; this served as a baseline item task with no demands on relational processing. All hippocampal regions of interest (CA1, CA2/3/DG, subiculum) showed reliable deactivation when participants attended to relational vs. item information. Attention to temporal relations was associated with more robust deactivation than the other conditions. One possible interpretation of such deactivation is that it reflects hippocampal disengagement. If true, there should be reduced information content and noisier, less reliable patterns of activity in the hippocampus for the temporal vs. other tasks. Instead, analyses of multivariate activity patterns revealed more stable hippocampal representations in the temporal task. Additional analyses showed that this increased pattern similarity was not simply a reflection of the lower univariate activity. Thus, the hippocampus differentiates between relational and item processing even during online visual perception, and its representations of temporal relations in particular are robust and stable. Together, these findings suggest that the relational computations of the hippocampus, known to be important for memory, extend beyond this purpose, enabling the rapid online extraction of relational information in visual perception.

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Focusing on what matters: Modulation of the human hippocampus by relational attention

2019

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Hippocampal episodic memory is fundamentally relational, comprising links between events and the spatiotemporal contexts in which they occurred. Such relations are also important over shorter timescales, during online perception. For example, how do we assess the relative spatial positions of objects, their temporal order, or the relationship between their features? Here, we investigate the role of the hippocampus in online relational processing by manipulating attention to different kinds of relations. While undergoing fMRI, participants viewed two images in rapid succession on each trial and performed one of three relational tasks, judging the images’ relative: spatial positions, temporal onsets, or sizes. Additionally, they sometimes judged whether one image was tilted, irrespective of the other. This served as a baseline item task with no demands on relational processing. The hippocampus showed reliable deactivation when participants attended to relational vs. item information. Attention to temporal relations was associated with the most robust deactivation. One interpretation of such deactivation is that it reflects hippo-campal disengagement. If true, there should be reduced information content and noisier activity patterns for the temporal vs. other tasks. Instead, multivariate pattern analysis revealed more stable hippocampal representations in the temporal task. This increased pattern similarity was not simply a reflection of lower univariate activity. Thus, the hippocampus differentiates between relational and item processing even during online perception, and its representations of temporal relations are particularly robust. These findings suggest that the relational computations of the hippocampus extend beyond long-term memory, enabling rapid extraction of relational information in perception.

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Visual routines for extracting magnitude relations

Cited by 25 publications

References 33 publications

Visual routines are associated with specific graph interpretations

Visual routines are associated with specific graph interpretations

Focusing on what matters: Modulation of the human hippocampus by relational attention

Focusing on what matters: Modulation of the human hippocampus by relational attention

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