Mechanisms of Multiple-Element Stimulus Discrimination

9307247库克这项研究的目标是了解包括人类在内的动物是如何快速看到和识别视觉对象的。库克博士的新研究详细阐述了他之前由NSF支持的一项研究，该研究着眼于鸽子对纹理刺激的感知和处理。这些鸟是比较视觉研究的理想之选，因为在飞行过程中对准确和快速感知的需求，以及最小化体重的需要，导致它们进化出非常小但强大的视觉系统。这使得它们成为关于微小神经系统如何解决非常复杂的感知问题的丰富的比较信息来源。结合对人类和其他动物的研究，这些结果将有助于识别许多物种共有的一般规则和机制，以及那些独特的规则和机制。先前工作的一个含义是，鸽子和人类视觉处理的早期阶段有许多共同的特征。这项新的研究通过调查刺激驱动和受试者驱动的过程在鸽子和适当情况下的人类对多元素刺激的辨别中的贡献来继续研究这个问题。除了它的心理学意义，这项研究的信息将在小型、自给自足的智能机器人的工程和为视障人士开发紧凑型视觉假肢方面具有潜在的实际应用。

9307247 Cook The goal of this research is to understand how animals, including humans, rapidly see and recognize visual objects. Dr. Cook's new research elaborates on his prior NSF-supported research looking at the perception and processing of textured stimuli by pigeons. These birds are ideal for comparative visual studies because the demands for accurate and rapid perception during flight, in conjunction with the need to minimize body weight, have caused them to evolve very small, but powerful, visual systems. This makes them a rich source of comparative information about how small nervous systems solve the very complex problems of perception. In conjunction with research investigating humans and other animals, the results will help to identify those general rules and mechanisms shared by many species and those that are unique. One implication of the prior work was that the early stages of visual processing in pigeons and humans share many common characteristics. The new research continues to examine this issue by investigating the contributions of stimulus-driven and subject-driven processes in the discrimination of multi-element stimuli by pigeons, and by humans when appropriate. Besides its psychological implications, information from this research will have potential practical applications in the engineering of small, self- sufficient, intelligent robots and the development of compact visual prostheses for the visually impaired.