Automaticity and preattentive processing.

A Treisman; A Vieira; A Hayes

Home/Archive/PubMed

PubMed · 1621885

Automaticity and preattentive processing.

A Treisman·A Vieira·A Hayes

View original source ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

The characteristics of automatized performance resemble those of preattentive processing in some respects. In the context of visual search tasks, these include spatially parallel processing, involuntary calling of attention, learning without awareness, and time-sharing with other tasks. However, this article reports some evidence suggesting that extended practice produces its effects through different mechanisms from those that underlie preattentive processing. The dramatic changes in search rate seem to depend not on the formation of new preattentive detectors for the task-relevant stimuli, nor on learned abstracted procedures for responding quickly and efficiently, but rather on changes that are very specific both to the particular stimuli and to the particular task used in practice. We suggest that the improved performance may depend on the accumulation of separate memory traces for each individual experience of a display (see Logan, 1988), and we show that the traces differ for conjunction search in which stimuli must be individuated and for feature search where a global response to the display is sufficient.

Explore related subjects

Attention Awareness Color Perception Discrimination Learning Humans Mental Recall Orientation Pattern Recognition, Visual Practice, Psychological Reaction Time Journal Article Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeX RIS

A Treisman, A Vieira, A Hayes. 1992. Automaticity and preattentive processing.. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1621885/

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related citations

PubMed2001

Covert attention accelerates the rate of visual information processing.

Whenever we open our eyes, we are confronted with an overwhelming amount of visual information. Covert attention allows us to select visual information at a cued location, without eye movements, and to grant such information priority in processing. Covert attention can be voluntarily allocated, to a given location according to goals, or involuntarily allocated, in a reflexive manner, to a cue that appears suddenly in the visual field. Covert attention improves discriminability in a wide variety of visual tasks. An important unresolved issue is whether covert attention can also speed the rate at which information is processed. To address this issue, it is necessary to obtain conjoint measures of the effects of covert attention on discriminability and rate of information processing. We used the response-signal speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT) procedure to derive measures of how cueing a target location affects speed and accuracy in a visual search task. Here, we show that covert attention not only improves discriminability but also accelerates the rate of information processing.

Attention↗

PubMed2001

Seeing properties of an invisible object: feature inheritance and shine-through.

We characterize a class of spatio-temporal illusions with two complementary properties. Firstly, if a vernier stimulus is flashed for a short time on a monitor and is followed immediately by a grating, the latter can express features of the vernier, such as its offset, its orientation, or its motion (feature inheritance). Yet the vernier stimulus itself remains perceptually invisible. Secondly, the vernier can be rendered visible by presenting gratings with a larger number of elements (shine-through). Under these conditions, subjects perceive two independent "objects" each carrying their own features. Transition between these two domains can be effected by subtle changes in the spatio-temporal layout of the grating. This should allow psychophysicists and electrophysiologists to investigate feature binding in a precise and quantitative manner.

Attention↗

PubMed2001

Local and global attention are mapped retinotopically in human occipital cortex.

Clinical evidence suggests that control mechanisms for local and global attention are lateralized in the temporal-parietal cortex. However, in the human occipital (visual) cortex, the evidence for lateralized local/global attention is controversial. To clarify this matter, we used functional MRI to map activity in the human occipital cortex, during local and global attention, with sustained visual fixation. Data were analyzed in a flattened cortical format, relative to maps of retinotopy and spatial frequency peak tuning. Neither local nor global attention was lateralized in the occipital cortex. Instead, local attention and global attention appear to be special cases of visual spatial attention, which are mapped consistently with the maps of retinotopy and spatial frequency tuning, in multiple visual cortical areas.

Attention↗