Sensation & Perception
Ch. 6: Visual Attention
© Takashi Yamauchi (Dept. of Psychology, Texas A&M
University)
Main topics
Binding problem
Feature integration theory
Synchrony hypothesis
The physiology of attention
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“neuroenhancing drugs”
• http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/
04/27/090427fa_fact_talbot
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What is attention for?
• Selecting information
• Enhancing information
• Combining
C bi i information
i f
ti
• What role does attention play in
combining/integrating information?
• What physiological mechanism underlie the
integrative process?
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Selecting information
• The retina receives so much information.
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• Attention helps select information.
• This is necessarily because of the way the eye is
structured.
– Most cones reside at the fovea.
– To get accurate information about a scene, we need to
select carefully particular parts of a scene.
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Visual Attention
• Visual attention and eye movement
• Eye tracker
• Eye tracking machine and demo
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGehsY7pcrc
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Attention also enhances perception
• If we don
don’tt attend,
attend we lose information.
information
• If we attend,
d we understand
d
d bbetter.
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Attention helps integrate information
• Binding problem
• Feature integration theory
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Binding problem
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Two visual pathways (what &
where/how systems)
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Image from Neuroscience, 2nd Ed. (2000).
12
Columnar organization
• Ne
Neurons
rons that
respond to the
same orientation
are packed in
the same
column
Image courtesy of Dr. Paul Wellman and ch
Neuroscience,
2nd Ed. (2000).
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Distributed coding
• 
g
Combining
input
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Binding problem
• The modular organization of the brain poses an
essential problem.
– How does the brain combine information?
– How does it bind features that are processed separately?
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• Feature integration theory
• by Treisman & Gelade
– Attention
Att ti plays
l
a central
t l role
l in
i solving
l i
the binding problem.
– Attention helps
p organize
g
information.
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Attention and Figure-ground segregation
Depending on where you look at, the figure and the ground
p y
switch rapidly.
 Attention plays some
role in determining the
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figure and the ground.
17
Attention and 3D structure
Depending on where to
look at, you get different
kinds of 3D perception.
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Damage to the parietal lobe creates
bi di errors.
binding
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Copies of the black (A) and
the white
th
hit (B) vertical
ti l
contour.
Copies of the black (A)
and
the white (B) diagonal
contour.
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Feature integration theory
• Attention combines the information from
the what and where systems.
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What can you predict from this
theory?
• If you can’t attend, you can’t combine
information.
•  Illusionary conjunction
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Demonstration
• I will show you a scene quickly.
• Report first the black numbers.
• Report what you see at each of the 4
locations.
+++
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• Report first the black numbers.
• Report what you saw at each of the 4
locations.
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Illusionary conjunctions
• We tend to put different features from
different objects
j
together.
g
• brain damaged patients (parietal lobe) show
illusionary conjunctions even when they
view the stimuli for 10 seconds.
seconds
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Visual search experiments
• Looking for the target
• Feature search
– You look for a single feature.
–  you don’t need attention
• C
Conjunction
j
i search
– You need to combine two or
more features (color and
orientation)
–  yyou need attention
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Visual search experiments
• Looking for the target
Color
T: ggreen
D: green
Orientation
horizontal
vertical
Color
T: green
D1: green
D2: red
Orientation
horizontal
vertical
horizontal
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Find
Which is more difficult?
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Find
Which is more difficult?
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Feature binding and attention
(Treisman, 1988)
Experiments:
Task:
Given a stimulus frame containing visual
items subjects were asked to indicate
items,
whether or not a target item was present
in the frame.
frame
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Feature search vs.
vs conjunction
search
• Feature search
– The target item has a unique feature
feature.
• Conjunction search
– need
d to combine
bi features
f
 need
d attention.
i
– Because you can attend only one item at a
time, the conjunction search becomes more
difficult when more items are in the stimulus
frame.
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Generality of the results:
Feature search
Conjunction search
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Experiments:
• Measure accuracy and response times
((conjunction
j
cases vs. non-conjunction
j
cases)
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Response time
1000
ms
500ms
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# of
distractors
38
Response
time
1000
ms
500ms
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# of
distracters
39
• Patients with damage to the parietal lobe
have difficulty
y with conjunction
j
searches.
• (Ambridge et al., 1999)
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Some problems with FIT
• Distinctiveness of features can also create
p
phenomenon.
p
the ppop-out
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The physiology of attention
• How do you combine features?
• Synchrony
y
y hypothesis
yp
• When neurons in different parts of the cortex are
firing to the same object, the pattern of firing is
synchronized (they fire at the same time, and in
the same manner).
• So when neurons are firing in synchrony, the
corresponding
di features
f
are bound
b
d together.
h
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• Separate neurons respond
to color, contours, textures,
so on.
• Synchrony hypothesis:
– When the features come
from the same object,
th
these
neurons fi
fire att
the same time in the
same manner
manner.
– This synchronicity of
firing binds features.
• Attention increases
synchrony
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Binding problem and schizophrenia
•
•
People suffering from schizophrenia often experience hallucination.
An EEG study
y shows that brain waves of schizophrenic
p
ppatients are
not synchronous compared to normal control subjects.
• Spencer, et al (2005). Neural synchrony indexes disordered
perception and cognition in schizophrenia. Proceedings of National
Academy of Sciences, 101, 17288-17293.
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Attention and Autism
• Impaired social interaction and communication
– Often fail to understand what other people think.
• Far more autistic boys than autistic girls (4:1)
• Overrepresented in children whose parents / grand
parents are engineers
– (Baron-Cohen et al.; Autism, 1997, 1, 153-163)
• substantial genetic component
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• Video clip
– Invisible wall
– Autism and symptoms (3:56)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuWWie1DlJY
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Attention and Autism
Eye movement:
normall (white
( hi
markers) vs. autistic
viewers (black
(
markers)
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