Focal Visual Attention and Pattern Discrimination

Perception ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 509-515 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jukka Saarinen
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Reaction Time ◽  
Stimulus Pattern ◽  
Discrimination Task ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Stimulus Display ◽  
Pattern Discrimination ◽  
Specific Question ◽  
Target Pattern ◽  
Focal Attention

Pattern discrimination in the presence of distractor patterns is improved when the stimulus display is preceded by a precue designating the location of the target pattern. Experiments were conducted to determine how big an improvement the precue produced. The specific question of whether the observer is able to process selectively the stimulus pattern in the cued location of the display and ignore the patterns of the noncued locations was addressed. In order to study this, reaction time for pattern discrimination on a blank background (no distractors) was compared with the reaction time when the observer performed the same discrimination task in the presence of distractors and a precue had indicated the location of the stimulus pattern to be discriminated. The results showed that these two reaction times were equal if the cue preceded the stimulus patterns at intervals which were longer than some minimum time. Hence, stimuli outside the ‘aperture’ of focal attention can be ignored. These results could not be attributed to eye movements, because the longest duration of the whole sequence of precue and stimulus patterns was only 200 ms.

Pattern Discrimination Learning with Rhesus Monkeys

1966 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 311-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra R. Blehert
Keyword(s):  
Discrimination Learning ◽  
Mathematical Description ◽  
Rhesus Monkeys ◽  
Stimulus Pattern ◽  
Discrimination Task ◽  
Pattern Discrimination ◽  
Individual Learning ◽  
Group Data

Rhesus monkeys were trained to criterion on a 2-stimulus and a 5-stimulus pattern discrimination task. The probabilities of response to the various stimuli throughout learning are examined for individual Ss, and it is found that Ss exhibit consistency in the order and manner in which incorrect stimuli are eliminated. This suggests a simple mathematical description of the process, which is used to deepen the analysis of the data, permitting estimation of individual learning parameters and construction of more meaningful summaries of the group data.

scholarly journals Inhibition of Return in Fear of Spiders: Discrepant Eye Movement and Reaction Time Data

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa Berdica ◽  
Antje B. M. Gerdes ◽  
Andre Pittig ◽  
Georg W. Alpers
Keyword(s):  
Visual Search ◽  
Eye Movements ◽  
Reaction Time ◽  
Significant Interaction ◽  
Discrimination Task ◽  
Inhibition Of Return ◽  
Reaction Time Data ◽  
Stimulus Category ◽  
Tracking Data ◽  
Time Data

Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to a bias against returning the attention to a previously attended location. As a foraging facilitator it is thought to facilitate systematic visual search. With respect to neutral stimuli, this is generally thought to be adaptive, but when threatening stimuli appear in our environment, such a bias may be maladaptive. This experiment investigated the influence of phobia-related stimuli on the IOR effect using a discrimination task. A sample of 50 students (25 high, 25 low in spider fear) completed an IOR task including schematic representations of spiders or butterflies as targets. Eye movements were recorded and to assess discrimination among targets, participants indicated with button presses if targets were spiders or butterflies. Reaction time data did not reveal a significant IOR effect but a significant interaction of group and target; spider fearful participants were faster to respond to spider targets than to butterflies. Furthermore, eye-tracking data showed a robust IOR effect independent of stimulus category. These results offer a more comprehensive assessment of the motor and oculomotor factors involved in the IOR effect.

scholarly journals Learning to search. The importance of eye movements in the decrease of response times during a visual choice reaction time task

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Kroll ◽  
Monika Mak ◽  
Jerzy Samochowiec
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Reaction Time ◽  
Choice Reaction Time ◽  
Visual Target ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Reaction Time Task ◽  
Visual Tasks ◽  
Target Searching

Reaction times are often used as an indicator of the efficiency of the processes in thecentral nervous system. While extensive research has been conducted on the possibleresponse time correlates, the role of eye movements in visual tasks is yet unclear. Here wereport data to support the role of eye movements during visual choice reaction time training.Participant performance, reaction times, and total session duration improved. Eyemovementsshowed expected changes in saccade amplitude and resulted in improvementin visual target searching.

Effects of the Common Cold on Subjective Alertness, Reaction Time, and Eye Movements

1999 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 145-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Smith ◽  
Neil Rich ◽  
Wendy Sturgess ◽  
Carolyn Brice ◽  
Claire Collison ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Reaction Time ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Behavioral Changes ◽  
Upper Respiratory Tract ◽  
Saccadic Eye Movement ◽  
Respiratory Tract Illnesses ◽  
The Common ◽  
Upper Respiratory ◽  
Subjective Alertness

Abstract The present study examined whether volunteers with common colds showed impairments in objective and subjective indicators of alertness. All the volunteers (N = 81) were tested when healthy to provide baseline data for mood, simple and choice reaction time tasks, and an anti-saccadic eye movement task. When subjects developed a cold (N = 17) they returned to the laboratory and repeated the procedure. Volunteers (N = 64) who remained healthy over a 10-week period were recalled as controls. The results showed that those with colds felt significantly less alert and had significantly slower simple and choice reaction times and eye movements. This extends earlier research and shows that electrophysiological measures may also be of use in assessing the behavioral changes induced by upper respiratory tract illnesses.

scholarly journals Eye movements during visuomotor adaptation represent only part of the explicit learning

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zohar Bromberg ◽  
Opher Donchin ◽  
Shlomi Haar
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Reaction Time ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Verbal Report ◽  
Visuomotor Adaptation ◽  
Explicit Learning ◽  
Relative Contribution ◽  
Fully Implicit ◽  
Multiple Components ◽  
Practical Implications

AbstractVisuomotor rotations are learned through a combination of explicit strategy and implicit recalibration. However, measuring the relative contribution of each remains a challenge and the possibility of multiple explicit and implicit components complicates the issue. Recent interest has focused on the possibility that eye movements reflect explicit strategy. Here we compared eye movements during adaptation to two accepted measures of explicit learning - verbal report and the exclusion test. We found that while reporting, all subjects showed a match between all three measures. However, when subjects did not report their intention, the eye movements of some subjects suggested less explicit adaptation than what was measured in an exclusion test. Interestingly, subjects whose eye movements did match their exclusion could be clustered into two subgroups: fully implicit learners showing no evidence of explicit adaptation and explicit learners with little implicit adaptation. Subjects showing a mix of both explicit and implicit adaptation were also those where eye movements showed less explicit adaptation than did exclusion. Thus, our results support the idea of multiple components of explicit learning as only part of the explicit learning is reflected in the eye movements. Individual subjects may use explicit components that are reflected in the eyes or those that are not or some mixture of the two. Analysis of reaction times suggests that the explicit components reflected in the eye-movements involve longer reaction times. This component, according to recent literature, may be related to mental rotation.Significance StatementVisuomotor adaptation involves both explicit and implicit components: aware re-aiming and unaware error correction. Recent studies suggest that eye movements could be used to capture the explicit component, a method that would have significant advantages over other approaches. We show that eye movements capture only one component of explicit adaptation. This component scales with reaction time while the component unrelated to eye movements does not. Our finding has obvious practical implications for the use of eye movements as a proxy for explicit learning. However, our results also corroborate recent findings suggesting the existence of multiple explicit components, and, specifically, their decomposition into components correlated with reaction time and components that are not.

scholarly journals Increased preparation time reduces, but does not abolish, action history bias of saccadic eye movements

2019 ◽  
Vol 121 (4) ◽  
pp. 1478-1490 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva-Maria Reuter ◽  
Welber Marinovic ◽  
Timothy N. Welsh ◽  
Timothy J. Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Reaction Time ◽  
Target Location ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Saccadic Eye Movements ◽  
Limb Movements ◽  
Preparation Time ◽  
Movement History ◽  
Target Locations ◽  
Dependent Processes

The characteristics of movements are strongly history-dependent. Marinovic et al. (Marinovic W, Poh E, de Rugy A, Carroll TJ. eLife 6: e26713, 2017) showed that past experience influences the execution of limb movements through a combination of temporally stable processes that are strictly use dependent and dynamically evolving and context-dependent processes that reflect prediction of future actions. Here we tested the basis of history-dependent biases for multiple spatiotemporal features of saccadic eye movements under two preparation time conditions (long and short). Twenty people performed saccades to visual targets. To prompt context-specific expectations of most likely target locations, 1 of 12 potential target locations was specified on ~85% of the trials and each remaining target was presented on ~1% trials. In long preparation trials participants were shown the location of the next target 1 s before its presentation onset, whereas in short preparation trials each target was first specified as the cue to move. Saccade reaction times and direction were biased by recent saccade history but according to distinct spatial tuning profiles. Biases were purely expectation related for saccadic reaction times, which increased linearly as the distance from the repeated target location increased when preparation time was short but were similar to all targets when preparation time was long. By contrast, the directions of saccades were biased toward the repeated target in both preparation time conditions, although to a lesser extent when the target location was precued (long preparation). The results suggest that saccade history affects saccade dynamics via both use- and expectation-dependent mechanisms and that movement history has dissociable effects on reaction time and saccadic direction. NEW & NOTEWORTHY The characteristics of our movements are influenced not only by concurrent sensory inputs but also by how we have moved in the past. For limb movements, history effects involve both use-dependent processes due strictly to movement repetition and processes that reflect prediction of future actions. Here we show that saccade history also affects saccade dynamics via use- and expectation-dependent mechanisms but that movement history has dissociable effects on saccade reaction time and direction.

Effect of pulvinar lesions on visual pattern discrimination in monkeys

1976 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 354-369 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. M. Chalupa ◽  
R. S. Coyle ◽  
D. B. Lindsley
Keyword(s):  
Discrimination Task ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Pattern Discrimination ◽  
Visual Pattern ◽  
Learning Ability ◽  
Unoperated Control ◽  
Percent Correct ◽  
Prolonged Training ◽  
Level Performance ◽  
Visual Pattern Discrimination

This study compares the performance (percent correct responses and reaction times) of three unoperated control monkeys with the postoperative performance of eight monkeys with pulvinar lesions, either inferior pulvinar or medial and lateral pulvinar, on a tachistoscopically presented visual pattern-discrimination task highly demanding of attention. To further emphasize and assess the attentional factor in visual pattern discrimination, all monkeys who attained criterion performance (90% correct response on three consecutive sessions of 100 trials each) were tested for the effects of visually distracting interference stimuli added to the original discriminative stimuli. In addition, retention of postoperatively learned discriminations was tested after a 6-wk interval withou training and compared with the performance of control monkeys. Four monkeys with only inferior pulvinar lesions and one monkey with inferior pulvinar plus medial and lateral pulvinar lesions were markedly impaired in the postoperative learning of a visual pattern discrimination. Three of these monkeys failed to acquire criterion perfromance in 9,000 or more training trials, while two learned to ceiterion level only after prolonged training (7,400 and 6,900 trials). In contrast, monkeys with medial and lateral pulvinar lesions showed no deficit in learning ability compared to unoperated control monkeys. Furthermore, the performance of the two monkeys with inferior pulvinar lesions, who attained the criterion level of learning only with difficulty, was further impaired by the addition of distracting interference stimuli, where the performance of monkeys with medial and lateral pulvinar lesions as well as the control monkeys was only temporarily disrupted by this procedure. None of the monkeys with pulvinar lesions, who were tested for retention of the postoperatively learned discrimination, showed appreciable deficits in comparison to control monkeys. All monkeys, including controls and those uith pulvinar lesions who were able to learn the visual pattern discrimination, showed a common pattern of reaction time (RT) change during the course of the learning; that is, RT was low during change-level performance, increased during learning, and decreased once criterion performance was achieved. Reaction times of monkeys with inferior pulvinar lesions tended to be longer than for controls or for those with medial and lateral pulvinar lesions. These results provide the first behavior evidence that the inferior pulvinar of monkeys is involved in visual pattern discrimination and add further support to the concept of a second visual system in which the inferior pulvinar plays a role. The attentional aspects of the visual pattern-discrimination task employed in this study and the additional effects obtained with distracting stimuli suggest that the impairments arising from inferior pulvinar lesions may be dependent in part on visual attentional factors.

Interactions in the Discrimination and Absolute Judgement of Orientation and Length

Perception ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miri Dick ◽  
Shaul Hochstein
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Sensory Processing ◽  
Discrimination Task ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Orientation Discrimination ◽  
Sequential Effects ◽  
Amount Of Information ◽  
Random Fashion ◽  
Absolute Judgement

An asymmetric model is described for interactions in the perception of two dimensions (length and orientation) of a single visual stimulus. Two methods were used to test these interactions, and models for the interpretation of the possible outcomes of these tests are discussed. A length discrimination task showed facilitation (decreased reaction time) when orientation was covaried with length, and interference (increased reaction time) when random orientation variation was introduced. A smaller effect was seen when length was varied in an orientation discrimination task in a correlated or random fashion. Analysis of sequential effects showed that reaction times are fastest on repetition trials and are slowed by either the need to change the response or the need for additional sensory processing. With the second method, it was found that the amount of information transmitted in the estimation of orientation was not affected by the introduction of the redundant dimension of length, but that there was a significant gain in the amount of information transmitted in the estimation of length by the addition of the redundant dimension of orientation. It is concluded that orientation is probably a perceptual primitive of the visual system whereas length is a computed variable.

Visual Search, Reaction Time, and Cognitive Ability

1998 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl Schweizer
Keyword(s):  
Visual Search ◽  
Eye Movements ◽  
Reaction Time ◽  
Cognitive Ability ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Large Display ◽  
Space Scale ◽  
Lower Ability

The contributions of visual search to reaction time and cognitive ability were investigated with 45 subjects. Visual search was assessed via eye movements. The electrooculogram was recorded while a subject located letters arranged in a large display. Reaction time was obtained for a search task. A reasoning and a space scale served to assess cognitive ability. Substantial correlations of number, amplitude, and velocity of saccades with reaction time were obtained. Significant correlations of scores on ability scales with reaction times and amplitudes of saccades were also observed. Obviously, subjects of higher ability showed amplitudes better adjusted to the distances between the letters than those of lower ability.

Modeling Within-Person Variance in Reaction Time Data of Older Adults

GeroPsych ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 169-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Rast ◽  
Daniel Zimprich
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Cognitive Aging ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Reaction Time Task ◽  
Reaction Time Data ◽  
Scale Model ◽  
Time Data ◽  
Time Task ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Second Wave

In order to model within-person (WP) variance in a reaction time task, we applied a mixed location scale model using 335 participants from the second wave of the Zurich Longitudinal Study on Cognitive Aging. The age of the respondents and the performance in another reaction time task were used to explain individual differences in the WP variance. To account for larger variances due to slower reaction times, we also used the average of the predicted individual reaction time (RT) as a predictor for the WP variability. Here, the WP variability was a function of the mean. At the same time, older participants were more variable and those with better performance in another RT task were more consistent in their responses.

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