CAREER: Flexible Resource Allocation and Efficient Coding in Human Vision

想象一下，你正开着车在一条繁忙的三车道高速公路的中间车道上驶近出口，收音机开着，你可以听到天气预报，你的孩子在后座上叫你。你打算如何处理这种情况？除了一件事之外，你会忽略所有的事情吗？在决定何时换车道时，你会全神贯注地注意道路标志吗？在换车道时，你会全神贯注地注意后视镜里的汽车吗？或者你会把你的注意力分散在所有这些传入的信息流上吗？在这种情况下，什么是最理想的事情，你能做到吗？在美国国家科学基金会（NSF）职业奖的支持下，哈佛大学的乔治·阿尔瓦雷斯（George Alvarez）博士将研究人们是否能够优化分散注意力的方式，以及这如何影响他们在视野中观察和准确报告信息的能力。我们同时关注多件事情的能力是有限的，鉴于我们的注意力有限，在任何特定情况下，都有一个最佳的集中注意力的策略。这种最佳策略可能包括灵活分配注意力（例如，将40%的注意力集中在道路标志上，40%的注意力集中在其他车道上，20%的注意力集中在后座上的孩子身上），或者使用巧妙的策略来梳理信息（例如，你可以得到要点，知道后座上的谈话是否需要你立即注意，而不必注意每个人的声音）。拟议的研究将检查是否以及如何使用这些不同的策略来优化我们有限的注意力资源。对人们如何优化利用有限的注意力资源的基本理解，为研究人类注意力缺陷在多大程度上是由于对可用资源的次优利用而打开了大门。因此，这项研究的结果将对诸如注意力缺陷障碍、强迫症、自闭症、精神分裂症、痴呆症等疾病，或由于中风或脑损伤引起的疾病，如视觉忽视或执行功能障碍，产生影响。此外，阿尔瓦雷斯博士将利用该研究项目为契机，指导一群来自代表性不足群体的本科生干部。阿尔瓦雷斯博士帮助协调了一个暑期研究项目，该项目将学生们安排在实验室里，为他们提供进行行为研究的实际训练。作为一名西班牙裔背景的教授，阿尔瓦雷斯博士在增加少数族裔在大脑和认知科学领域的代表性和知名度方面处于独特的地位。

Imagine you are driving in the middle lane of a busy three-lane highway, approaching your exit, with the radio on so you can hear the weather report, and with your children in the backseat calling for you. How are you going to manage this situation? Will you ignore all but one thing, and pay full attention to the road signs to determine when to switch lanes, or to cars in the rearview mirror as you change lanes, or to the radio, or to your children? Or will you somehow divide your attention between all of these incoming streams of information? What is the optimal thing to do under these circumstances, and can you do it? With the support of an NSF CAREER award, Dr. George Alvarez at Harvard University will examine whether people can optimize the way they divide their attention, and how this affects their ability to see and accurately report information in their field of view. We are limited in our ability to attend to multiple things at once, and given the limits on our attention, there is an optimal strategy for how to pay attention in any given situation. This optimal strategy could involve flexibly distributing attention (e.g., paying 40% to the road signs, 40% to cars in other lanes, and 20% to the children in the backseat), or using clever strategies for combing information (e.g., you can get the gist of whether the chatter in the backseat requires your immediate attention without paying attention to each individual voice). The proposed research will examine whether, and how, these different strategies are employed to optimize the use of our limited attentional resources.A basic level understanding of how people optimize the use of their limited attentional resources opens the door to studying the extent to which attention deficits in humans are due to sub-optimal use of available resources. Thus, the results of the research will have implications for disorders such as Attention Deficit Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Autism, Schizophrenia, Dementia, or disorders due to stroke or brain damage, such as Visual Neglect or Executive Dysfunction. In addition, Dr. Alvarez will use the research project as an opportunity to mentor a cadre of undergraduate students from underrepresented groups. Dr. Alvarez helps coordinate a summer research program that places students in labs, providing them with hands on training in conducting behavioral research. As a professor of Hispanic background, Dr. Alvarez is in a unique position to increase minority representation and visibility in the brain and cognitive sciences.