Basic mechanisms of human visual attention

注意是个体为有意识地觉察而选择对象的过程。了解注意力的基本机制对许多日常任务都很重要，比如开车，甚至是找钥匙。我的研究计划是建立在这样一个假设之上的：对注意力的全面理解需要同时考虑环境和观察者。目前，人们对物体的基本视觉特性和任务需求的基本变化如何影响注意力已经了解得很多，这些因素在当前的注意力模型中得到了很好的体现。相比之下，关于注意力是如何受到整个个体特征的影响，包括一个人的身体、情感和认知方面，我们所知相对较少。因此，本研究的重点是评估(1)观察者的身体状态（疲劳）、认知需求（分心）和情绪状态（情绪）的变化如何影响视觉注意的部署；(2)物体对个体的意义如何影响视觉注意。拟议的研究通过研究正常个体以及具有被称为联觉的不寻常状况的个体来实现这些目标。在联觉中，普通的刺激会引发不同寻常的意识体验。例如，经历一种称为时空联觉的联觉亚型的人会体验到时间单位（例如，一年中的几个月）占据了他们身体之外的特定空间位置。通过研究基本注意过程如何依赖于环境和观察者之间的复杂关系，本研究有可能改变人们概念化和研究注意的方式。此外，提出的疲劳、分心和情绪的研究将直接影响到日常生活中无数的注意定向情况（如机场安检、驾驶）。因此，拟议研究的结果将为指导许多重要安全和安保部门的政策制定提供急需的数据。

Attention is the process whereby individuals select objects for conscious awareness. Understanding the basic mechanisms of attention is import for many day-to-day tasks such as driving and even searching for one's keys. My research program is built on the hypothesis that a complete understanding of attention requires considering both the environment and the observer. Currently, much is known about how attention is influenced by basic visual properties of objects and basic variations of task demands and these factors have been well represented in current models of attention. In contrast, relatively little is known about how attention is influenced by the characteristics of the whole embodied individual, including the physical, emotional and cognitive aspects of a person. Accordingly, the present research focuses on evaluating (1) how changes in an observer's physical state (fatigue), cognitive demands (distraction) and emotional state (mood) influence the deployment of visual attention and (2) how the meaning that an object has to an individual influences visual attention. The proposed research addresses these objectives by studying normal individuals as well as individuals with an unusual condition known as synaesthesia. In synaesthesia, ordinary stimuli elicit extraordinary conscious experiences. For example, people who experience a subtype of synaesthesia known as time-space synaesthesia experience units of time (e.g., months of the year) as occupying specific spatial location outside of their bodies. By studying how basic attentional processes might depend on the complex relationship between the environment and the observer, the proposed research has the potential to change the way that people conceptualize and study attention. In addition, the proposed research on fatigue, distraction and mood will have direct bearing on countless situations of attentional orienting in everyday life (e.g., airport security screening, driving). The findings from the proposed studies will thus provide much needed data to guide policy making in many important safety and security sectors.