OBJECT RECOGNITION & NAVIGATION--NORMAL & LOW VISION

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DESCRIPTION (Taken from the applicant's Abstract):There are 3.5 million Americans with low vision. Many have daily problems navigating and recognizing objects around them. These problems can threaten personal independence and quality of life. There has been almost no research on low-vision object recognition or navigation. Theoretical and experimental studies in this proposal have the broad goal of understanding and ameliorating these problems. Most people with low vision contend with either visual-field loss or field restriction form magnifiers. As a result, viewing of objects or environments often requires a piecemeal search of the scene for informative details. People with normal vision use eye movements to explore scenes, especially when visibility is poor. The major theoretical goal is to develop a conceptual framework for describing visual exploration of objects and environments. We will develop Active ideal-observer models of object recognition and navigation. These models will perform optimally in a given visual task, and will serve as benchmarks for interpreting the performance of people with normal and low vision. One of the experimental goals is to study eye-movement exploration and magnifier exploration to recognize objects. What visual features and cognitive strategies guide this exploration? A second experimental goal is to determine whether training on cognitive maps can be a useful navigation aid for people with low vision. (Cognitive maps are memory representations of visual and spatial information about environments.) The team will perform psychophysical experiments in virtual and real buildings. The long-term goal is to develop a computer-based method for imparting information about building layouts to visually disabled people. In this grant, the team will study the impact of impaired vision, esp. field loss, on the formation and use of cognitive maps. Their hypothesis is that cognitive maps, although difficult to learn with visual impairment, will be esp. beneficial to people with low vision.