Contextual Influences on Visual Attention and Perception

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Our visual world is complex and is in a continual state of flux, changing over time and space. Contextual information, such as expectations, current knowledge, and regularities in the sensory environment, interacts with selective attention to facilitate processing of our sensory world and, ultimately, coherent and adaptive human behavior. The research proposed here is aimed at investigating how contextual information influences the deployment of visual attention under conditions of limited capacity processing. The aim of Experiment 1 is to investigate the influence of explicit contextual cues; those are cues in the environment of which we are aware, on preparing the system dynamically for upcoming information. This experiment uses a novel modification of the typical dual-task paradigm used to study the attentional blink (AB), in which the first target serves as a cue to the identity of the second target. Critically, this experiment will bridge a key theoretical gap that exists between the dual-task and task-switching literatures. The aim of Experiment 2 is to investigate the influence of implicit contextual cues; those are cues in the environment of which we are not aware, on preparing the system dynamically for upcoming information. Although, this experiment uses the same basic design as the first, the relationship between the first and the second targets will not be revealed to the subjects. In addition to providing more information about how the context can reconfigure the system in a dual-task situation, this experiment will also provide insight on the relationship between attention and memory. The intention of both studies is that by rigorously investigating the interaction between sources of visual context and selective attention, a better understanding of conscious behavior will be achieved.