CAREER: Flexible Resource Allocation and Efficient Coding in Human Vision

想象一下，你正行驶在一条繁忙的三车道高速公路的中间车道上，接近你的出口，开着收音机，这样你就可以听到天气预报，你的孩子在后座上呼唤你。你打算如何应对这种情况？除了一件事之外，你会忽视所有的事情吗？你会全神贯注地注意道路标志来决定何时换道，或者在你换道时关注后视镜中的汽车，或者对着收音机，或者对着你的孩子吗？或者你会以某种方式将你的注意力分散到所有这些传入的信息流中？在这种情况下，最好的做法是什么？你能做到吗？在NSF职业奖的支持下，哈佛大学的乔治·阿尔瓦雷斯博士将研究人们是否可以优化他们分散注意力的方式，以及这如何影响他们看到和准确报告自己视野中的信息的能力。我们同时处理多件事情的能力是有限的，考虑到我们注意力的局限性，在任何给定的情况下，都有一个如何集中注意力的最佳策略。这种最佳策略可以包括灵活地分配注意力(例如，将40%的注意力放在路标上，40%放在其他车道上的汽车上，20%放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，你可以在不关注每个人的声音的情况下，获得后座上的闲聊是否需要你立即关注的要点)。这项拟议的研究将考察这些不同的策略是否以及如何被用来优化我们有限的注意力资源的使用。对人们如何优化他们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使用而打开的。因此，这项研究的结果将对注意力缺陷障碍、强迫症、自闭症、精神分裂症、痴呆症等障碍，或由中风或脑损伤引起的障碍，如视觉疏忽或执行功能障碍产生影响。此外，阿尔瓦雷斯博士还将利用这一研究项目为来自代表性不足群体的本科生干部提供指导。阿尔瓦雷斯博士帮助协调了一个暑期研究项目，将学生安排在实验室，为他们提供进行行为研究的实践培训。作为一名拉美裔背景的教授，阿尔瓦雷斯博士在提高少数族裔在大脑和认知科学中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.