Visual Attention Paper

The human brain is capable of perceiving and interpreting information or stimuli received through the sense organs (i.e., eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and skin) (Weiten, 1998). This ability to perceive and interpret stimulus allows the human being to make meaningful sense of the world and environment around them. However, even as the human being is able to perceive and interpret stimuli information through all sense organs, stimuli is most often or primarily interpreted using the visual (eyes) and auditory (ears) sense organs (Anderson, 2009). However, for the purpose of this paper, the visual information process will be examined.

The Stroop effect is demonstrated by the reaction time to determine a color when the color is printed in a different color’s name. Participants respond slower or make more errors when the meaning of the word is incongruent with the color of the word. Despite knowing the meaning of the word, participants showed incapability of ignoring the stimulus attribute. This reflects a clear instance of semantic interference and an unfathomed failure of selective attention (Stroop, 1935).

The Stroop (1935) effect is the inability to ignore a color word when the task is to report the ink color of that word (i.e., to say "green" to the word RED in green ink). The present study investigated whether object-based processing contributes to the Stroop effect. According to this view, observers are unable to ignore irrelevant features of an attended object (Kahneman & Henik, 1981). In three experiments, participants had to name the color of one of two superimposed rectangles and to ignore words that appeared in the relevant object, in the irrelevant object, or in the background. The words were congruent,

Visual attention is the collective title given to the cognitive mechanisms that allow us to attend some visual stimuli over others, improving processing efficiency (McMains & Kastner, 2009). Here only covert visual attention, i.e. attention without head or eye-movement, will be considered. This is appropriate, since it seems that the primary purpose of eye-movements is to enhance visual acuity (Posner, 1980, p.9), which is not necessary for simple target detection required by the present study. There is a debate concerning the type of information that covert visual attention operates on, specifically if attention is deployed to specific areas in space or to perceptual objects.

This study examined visual perception and the rates at which global and local features are reacted to with an aim of replicating and validating a previous experiment conducted by Navon (1977) to see if global processing was faster than local processing. There was 222 University of Newcastle students participating in the experiment, partaking in two phases, one centred round global processing, the other around local processing, where there reaction times were recorded using a computer program and imputed into a data worksheet. Results indicated that, as predicted, global processing occurred at a faster rate than local processing. It was concluded that global features were

This is an anti-smoking advertisement geared towards parents of young children. The advertisement is overall plain and simple; it gets straight to the point when you look at it and utilizes a dark theme. This anti-smoking advertisement is trying to evoke a sense of “parental guilt” into parents who smoke. The way the advertisement is able to do this is through the use of an optical illusion, use of text and the use of negative space.

This was achieved by presenting central cues, indicating the position of the target letter thus increasing focus. Through these experiments they found that when a subject is in a diffuse attention state (unfocussed) SOD do cause attentional capture and increase reaction time. However, if the subject was presented with a cue this same increase in reaction time was not observed. This led them to conclude that attentional capture from SOD is not automatic and instead propose a priority based visual attention system. In 2006 Neo and Chua conducted research which built upon Yantis and Jonides’ to further demonstrate effects of attentional capture on reaction time. They investigated whether sporadic use of the SOD increased the effect of attentional capture as well as investigated whether maintaining the same position for the target letter decreased reaction times. They found that SOD attentional capture did affect reaction times and unlike in Yantis and Jonides’ experiment they concluded SOD did trigger an automaticity response when used

This study examined whether participant’s response times to global target were faster than local targets. Participants had to identify global and local shapes and letters as quick as possible and the response times which were recorded to the computer data. The study was a replication of Navon’s (1977), (cited in Ness Smith and Thirkettle, 2014) experiment but differed, as it was a focused attention task whereas this experiment was a divided attention task. This was the same as Yovel (2001), (cited in Ness, Smith and Thirkettle, 2014) mixed attention task study which tested the global to local accounts. The current

Powell (1986) conducted a study in which individuals viewed a photo or slide. Individuals were required to scan images and decide on an image for the entire display (Powell, 1986). Objects were pointed to, and subjects were asked to identify its location (Powell, 1986). The subject was asked to close his or her eyes and were shown another image. The subjects were to decide if the object was in the correct position (Powell, 1986). The subjects would hear one of the objects and was required to focus on the object while keeping the entire image in his or her mind (Powell, 1986). When the next object was identified, the subjects were to move from the first object to the second watching a black dot moving in a straight line (Powell, 1986).

Humans have a unique and wonderful device in how one sees. The eye and brain work together to turn the world into visual data one’s brain can understand and use. There are some eye conditions that inhibit the sight or the recognition of the shapes one sees. Research continues to overcome these conditions as well as to further understand the biochemical reaction that gives humans the sight and understanding one has of visual data. Included in the paper are some of the latest research methods.

final experiment Johnson, Hollingworth, and Luck tested to see whether whole-array stimuli would generate a binding deficit. The main alteration that researchers used was color and shape rather than that of the use of color and orientation. This study used a 3-digit number that each participant was to repeat aloud during experiment. Displayed for participant was a stimulus randomly assigned a positon or centered on the display screen. A small time allotment was given for participants to respond. Findings suggest that overall accuracy was highest within the whole display in the color only condition. Johnson, Hollingworth, and Luck conclude that having a multitude of objects to focus on, memory performance remained near 65% correct in the dual-task binding condition. (Johnson, Hollingworth, & Luck, 2008)

1. The authors decided to do a replication of a study performed by of Ramachandran & Hubbard (2001) and Hubbard (2005). From this study researchers looked at individuals who had synaesthetes and how they interpreted shapes, numbers and colors. Results from their study showed that individuals who had synaesthetes performed better by interpreting certain pictures by using more of the ‘pop-out’ effect rather than using the serial search effect. It also “assumed that color and shapes are processed independently, which does not hold true for people who have synathecia, giving that some amount of grapheme processing must be required for the color to be included”(Ramachandran & Hubbard 2001b, 2003b). Due to these findings researchers decided to “correct”

Overall this study provides some interesting insight into the field as it found that even in scenarios were the cues offer no insight into the next location of the target, the same IOR effect can be seen. This research found that trial validity appeared to have no effect on performance, implying that individuals do not simply shift attention to or from but rather do a complex combination of the

This definition emphasises how attention is thought of as a selective process. It seems clear from common sense that we cannot attend to all stimuli at once, so some kind of selection must take place as to what information we attend to and process further, and what is disregarded.

Research carried out on attention has mainly been associated with the selective processing of incoming sensory information. It proposes, to some degree, our awareness of the world depends on what we choose to focus on and not simply the stimulation received by our senses. Attention is often linked to a filter that screens out most potential stimuli whilst allowing a select few to pass through into our conscious awareness, however, a great deal of debate has been devoted to where the filter is situated in the information processing chain (Martindale, 1991). Psychologists have made extensive contributions to this subject matter in the past century. Notable examples include Donald Broadbent's filter theory of attention (1958), which set the