Top-down and Bottom-up Control of Visual Attention: Evidence from ERPs and Eye Tracking

 描述(由申请人提供)：视觉注意对于日常运作是必不可少的。然而，关于视觉注意本质的一些基本问题仍然没有解决。关于视觉注意力是如何不由自主地被引导的，目前有一场激烈的辩论。刺激驱动理论认为，显著刺激可以自动“捕捉”视觉状态。要向前推进，迫切需要在这两种截然相反的说法之间达成某种和解。这项拟议的研究将测试一种新的注意力捕捉混合抑制账户，该账户假设，由显著信息产生的“注意-我”信号在视觉处理的早期被抑制。该自上而下的抑制信号可以由PD ERP组件来索引。在提出的实验中，我们测试了行为捕获效应的存在与自上而下抑制之间的关系。关键的预测是，即使没有行为捕捉效应，我们仍然应该找到显著项目的PD事件相关电位(ERP)成分。如果成功，这种混合模式可能会解决长达20年的关于视觉分心本质的争论。拟议的奖学金有几个培训目标。作为一名博士后学者，申请者将接受高级ERP和眼球跟踪技术方面的培训。申请者还将获得宝贵的机会成为加州大学戴维斯分校研究社区的一员，该社区以其在认知神经科学方面的开创性合作研究而闻名国际。这一奖学金对申请者的长期职业发展至关重要，申请者寻求开发一个独立的研究项目，将神经成像和行为技术结合起来，研究选择性视觉注意和高级视觉功能。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Visual attention is imperative for day-to-day functioning. However, some basic questions about the nature of visual attention remain unresolved. There is currently a heated debate about how visual attention is involuntarily guided. Stimulus-driven theories propose that salient stimuli can automatically "capture" visual sTo move forward, some reconciliation between these two opposing accounts is urgently needed. The proposed research will test a new hybrid suppression account of attention capture, which posits that "attend-to-me" signals produced by salient information are suppressed early in visual processing. This top- down suppression signal can be indexed by the PD ERP component. In the proposed experiments, we test the relationship between the presence of behavioral capture effects and top-down suppression. The key prediction is that even when the behavioral capture effects are absent, we should still find a PD event-related potential (ERP) component to salient item. If successful, this hybrid model could resolve a twenty year debate on the nature of visual distraction. The proposed fellowship has several training goals. As a postdoctoral scholar, the applicant would receive training in advanced ERP and eyetracking techniques. The applicant would also gain the valuable opportunity to become a member of the UC Davis research community, which is internationally-renowned for its groundbreaking collaborative research in cognitive neuroscience. This fellowship is vital for the long-term career development of the applicant, who seeks to develop an independent research program that combines neuroimaging and behavioral techniques to study selective visual attention and high-order visual functioning.