Search Results

This chapter comments on Anne Treisman's 2006 paper How the deployment of attention determines what we see, published in Visual Cognition. Treisman reports the results of some studies on focused attention and its use in binding features, as well as distributed attention and the kinds of information we gain and lose when the attention window is opened wide. She describes two kinds of visual processing: the first occurs automatically with distributed attention and results in a statistical description of sets of similar objects, and the second gives the gist of the scene, which may be inferred from sets of features registered in parallel. This chapter discusses Treisman's findings in terms of feature integration theory and its association with binding, the reciprocal effects of attention and perception, and the physiology and mathematics underlying the way independent analyzers join to form unified percepts. It also considers processing stages, from illusory conjunctions to veridical binding, along with the relationship between implicit versus explicit processing and perception with spread versus focused attention and their relationship to reverse hierarchy theory. It concludes with an assessment of the goal of attention according to Treisman.

This chapter comments on Anne Treisman's 1996 paper Object tokens, attention, and visual memory, published in Attention and Performance XVI: Information Integration in Perception and Communication and written in collaboration with Brett DeSchepper. Treisman and DeSchepper performed a series of experiments to investigate the implicit visual memory representations that are formed for novel objects and events, observed without attention, conscious processing, or any contribution from prior knowledge. Using a negative priming paradigm, they found evidence for long-lasting memory traces formed in a single trial, independently of attention, conscious recognition, and repetition. Their findings suggest how plasticity and permanence work in combination in object perception. This chapter summarizes six of the experiments undertaken by Treisman and DeSchepper and considers the debates concerning them. It also compares their results with those of two experiments that used figure-ground displays.

This chapter comments on Anne Treisman's 1962 paper Binocular rivalry and stereoscopic depth perception, published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. Treisman reports the results of her experiment on stimulus factors causing retinal rivalry or allowing stereoscopic depth perception, given a requisite positional disparity. Her research shows that identity of color can act as a cue for stereopsis and that stereopsis is not incompatible with rivalry and suppression of one aspect of the stimulus. This chapter discusses several related questions arising from Treisman's paper and her answers to them, with particular reference to whether stereopsis and binocular rivalry are incompatible, the monocular features that are being compared binocularly to generate stereopsis, and the neurophysiology behind Treisman's findings. It also includes commentaries on subsequent studies whose roots can be traced back to Treisman's 1962 paper.

This chapter comments on Anne Treisman's 1969 paper Strategies and models of selective attention, published in Psychological Review. The paper reviews experiments on selective attention, especially to competing speech messages, and relates them to D. E. Broadbent's 1958 filter theory. Treisman identifies four types of attention strategy: the first restricts the number of inputs analyzed, the second restricts the dimensions, the third restricts the items (defined by sets of critical features) for which the subject looks or listens, and the fourth selects which results of perceptual analysis will control behavior and be stored in memory. She also explores the role played by these different mechanisms in various experimental tasks, along with their relative importance and efficiency. This chapter discusses some salient examples of where Treisman's ideas have taken us and how they continue to shape attentional experiment and theory. In particular, it examines Treisman's arguments about divided attention between inputs or objects, as well as analyzers, focused attention and stimulus selection, and the importance of load.

This chapter comments on Anne Treisman's 1967 paper Selective attention: perception or response?, published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology and written in collaboration with Gina Geffen. The paper describes an experiment that investigated whether our limited capacity in selective listening tasks arises primarily in perception or in response organization. The chapter discusses Treisman's attenuation theory of selective attention in relation to the early- versus late-selection debate: that in order to understand attention we need to know how attention affects information processing. It also explores the perceptual load model and its assumptions about early selection versus late selection. In particular, it considers the suggestion made by the perceptual load model that perception has limited capacity but nevertheless has to proceed on all stimuli within its capacity in an automatic, involuntary manner until it runs out of capacity.

This chapter comments on Anne Treisman's 1988 paper Features and objects: The Fourteenth Bartlett Memorial Lecture, published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. Treisman outlines a model for perceptual processing in object perception and discusses the evidence regarding visual search for features and conjunctions. She also considers modularity in feature analysis and the role of attention in feature integration, with particular emphasis on the association between identification and localization, illusory conjunctions with divided attention, and iconic memory and conjunctions of features. Furthermore, Treisman explores top-down effects in object perception, along with “object files” in perceptual representation. This chapter examines Treisman's feature integration theory of attention as it applies to spatial parallelism, the attentional blink paradigm, top-down effects and automaticity, and detection of features without focused attention.

This chapter comments on Anne Treisman's 1982 paper Illusory conjunctions in the perception of objects, published in Cognitive Psychology and written in collaboration with Hilary Schmidt. Treisman and Schmidt performed experiments to test the feature integration theory (FIT) and its prediction that when attention is diverted or overloaded, features may be wrongly recombined, giving rise to “illusory conjunctions.” They showed that the illusory conjunctions in object perception are not dependent on verbal mediation and instead occurred both in a successive matching task, and in a simultaneous matching task, and that distance has a negligible effect on the frequency of illusory conjunctions. This chapter discusses the phenomenon of illusory conjunctions as a clear manifestation of the perceptual problem of FIT, in which the visual system (and other perceptual systems) must correctly combine information for veridical perception.

This chapter comments on Anne Treisman's 2006 paper How the deployment of attention determines what we see, published in Visual Cognition. Treisman reviews the evidence from some research on focused attention and its use in binding features, as well as distributed attention and how it differs from focused attention in terms of scale and function. The chapter compares Treisman's distributed attention with similar concepts such as global or holistic attention and examines how two modes of attention can be empirically dissociated. It summarizes the results of some recent studies that looked into statistical properties, rapid scene categorization, and gist perception, and suggests how Treisman's idea of distributed attention may play a role. It considers how the visual system extracts the mean size of an array and how properties acquired from distributed attention contribute to rapid scene perception.

This chapter comments on Anne Treisman's papers Contextual cues in selective listening, published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (1960) and Divided attention to ear and eye, published in Attention and Performance IV (1973). The first paper describes the results of an experiment that investigated how expectancy based on transition probabilities between words affects dichotic localization cues. The second paper, written in collaboration with Alison Davies, discusses the results of two experiments that show how the limits of divided attention are reduced when stimuli are presented simultaneously to ear and eye rather than both to the ears or both to the eyes. This chapter analyzes the research of Treisman (1960) and Treisman and Davies (1973) and proposes some tentative resolutions of key theoretical issues relating to dichotic stimuli and filter theories of selective attention, with particular reference to attenuation theory, along with bimodal stimuli and theories of working memory limits.

This chapter reviews some new evidence relating to early visual processing and propose an explanatory framework. A series of search experiments tested detection of targets distinguished from the distractors by differences on a single dimension. The aim was to use the pattern of search latencies to infer which features are coded automatically in early vision. The results are interpreted as evidence that focused attention to single items or to groups is required to reduce background activity when the Weber fraction distinguishing the pooled feature activity with displays containing a target and with displays containing only distractors is too small to allow reliable discrimination.

This chapter comments on Anne Treisman's 1997 paper The interaction of spatial and object pathways: Evidence from Balint's syndrome, published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience and written in collaboration with Lynn Robertson, Stacia Friedman-Hill, and Marcia Grabowecky. The authors report the results of a study involving a patient with bilateral parietal damage who was diagnosed with Balint's syndrome or dorsal simultanagnosia. The patient showed severe binding problems between shape and color on one hand, and shape and size on the other hand. He also exhibited a large number of illusory conjunctions combining the shape of one letter with the color of the other, severe deficits in locating and reaching for objects, and difficulty in seeing more than one object at a time. The observed spatial deficits and binding errors are consistent with Treisman's predictions in her feature integration theory.

This chapter comments on Anne Treisman's 2002 paper Binding in short-term visual memory, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology General and written in collaboration with Mary E. Wheeler. Treisman and Wheeler performed a series of experiments to investigate binding in short-term visual working memory using a change-detection paradigm featuring objects defined by color with location or shape. They found that features from the same dimension compete for capacity, whereas features from different dimensions can be stored in parallel. Binding between these features can occur, but can be created and maintained over time only through focused attention. This chapter examines how features and conjunctions are represented in visual working memory within the conceptual framework of Treisman's feature integration theory. In particular, it considers the role of attention in maintaining bindings of features in visual working memory.

This chapter comments on Anne Treisman's 1988 paper Feature analysis in early vision: Evidence from search asymmetries, published in Psychological Review and written in collaboration with Stephen Gormican. Treisman and Gormican review some new evidence from behavioral tests relating to early visual processing and propose an explanatory framework. They performed a series of visual search experiments to test detection of targets distinguished from the distractors by differences on a single dimension and to identify separable values on different dimensions of perceptual analysis. They also discussed feature analysis in early vision by focusing on the pooled response hypothesis and the group-scanning hypothesis. This chapter considers Treisman's feature integration theory of visual attention and some of its underlying concepts regarding visual processing, parallel and serial search, and attentional zoom versus two-stage processing.

This chapter comments on Anne Treisman's 1984 paper Emergent features, attention and object perception, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance and written in collaboration with Randolph Paterson. Treisman and Paterson report the results of their experiments to test the assumptions of feature integration theory by focusing on the perceptual processing of arrows and triangles as well as their component angles and lines. They observed that triangle lines can form illusory conjunctions with another shape, making it unlikely that triangles are perceived holistically and lending credence to the psychological reality of emergent features in object perception. This chapter discusses the findings of Treisman and Paterson by asking how more complex objects with wholistic, gestalt properties might be processed, ways to detect higher-order features, and basic features in human vision.

This chapter comments on Anne Treisman's 1990 paper Implicit and explicit memory for visual patterns, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition and written in collaboration with Gail Musen. Treisman and Musen report the results of their research on implicit and explicit memory for novel, visual patterns. They examined implicit memory by means of a speeded perception task, and explicit memory by a four-alternative, forced-choice recognition task. They observed that a single exposure of a novel, nonverbal stimulus is capable of creating a representation in memory that can support long-lived perceptual priming. Conversely, there was significant loss of recognition memory over the same delay. This chapter discusses the findings of Treisman and Musen by focusing on the association between perception and reflection. After reviewing some of the evidence about the characteristics of perceptual representation, it considers Treisman and Musen's work on long-term perceptual memory and recent studies that investigated the interaction of perceptual and reflective processes. It explores the effect of reflective processing of a representation on later perceptual processing, along with the effect of perceptual memory on later reflective processing.

This chapter comments on Anne Treisman's 1997 paper The interaction of spatial and object pathways: Evidence from Balint's syndrome, published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience and written in collaboration with Lynn Robertson, Stacia Friedman-Hill, and Marcia Grabowecky. The authors report the results of an experimental analysis of a patient who was diagnosed with Balint's syndrome. They observed that the patient was severely impaired at detecting some types of visual targets, particularly targets defined by a conjunction of features, but not other types of targets, such as those defined by single features relative to their background. The results were interpreted within the framework of Treisman's feature integration theory. This chapter discusses the findings of Treisman et al. by focusing on whether common factors affect explicit and implicit spatial coding as well as the effects of time after transient and organic lesions.