Preattentive Visual Sensitivity

人们有一种非凡的能力，几乎可以立即根据物体的亮度和颜色来描述它们。人们有一种相应的能力来根据表面和物体的视觉纹理属性来表征它们。在他们由NSF资助的研究项目中，加州大学欧文分校的Charles Chubb和George Sperling将使用新的实验范式和新的分析方法(包括微扰法和量纲分析)来表征人类感知纹理的能力。这些程序已经使研究人员能够分离出以前未知的质地感知机制。目前的项目将这些程序应用于对广泛的人类纹理感知机制的正式系统描述和表征，目标是编制一份视觉敏感度基本维度表，有点类似元素周期表。了解使人类能够准确感知其视觉环境的基本视觉机制具有根本重要性，并最终可能有许多有用的应用。例如，视觉纹理的分析是在大脑中进行的，因此了解这些视觉过程将能够更好地描述干扰这些(以前未测量的)过程的大脑损伤。了解人类感知过程的范围和限度将更好地理解人类可以和不能从图像中感知什么，例如医疗X射线、军事伪装和计算机显示器。事实上，模拟人类的这种感觉能力一直是构建成功的机器人感知系统的关键要素。

People have an extraordinary ability to almost instantly characterize objects by their lightness and color. People have a corresponding ability to characterize surfaces and objects by their visual texture properties. In their NSF-funded research project, Charles Chubb and George Sperling at UC Irvine will use new experimental paradigms and new analytic methods (involving perturbation methods and dimensional analysis) to characterize humans' ability to perceive textures. These procedures have already enabled the investigators to isolate previously unknown texture-perception mechanisms. The current project now applies these procedures to the formal systematic description and characterization of the vast range of human texture-perception mechanisms with the goal of compiling a Table of the Elementary Dimensions of Visual Sensitivity, somewhat analogous to the Periodic Table of Elements.Understanding the elementary visual mechanisms that enable humans to accurately perceive their visual environment is of fundamental importance and ultimately is likely to have many useful applications. For example, the analysis of visual textures is carried out in the brain, so understanding these visual processes will enable a better characterization of brain injuries that interfere with these (previously unmeasured) processes. Knowing both the range and the limits of human perceptual processes will yield better understanding of what humans can and cannot perceive in images, such as medical X-rays, military camouflage, and computer displays. Indeed, simulating such human sensory abilities has been a critical element in the construction of successful robotic sensing systems.