Psychophysical analyses of perceptual learning

我的研究考察了决定我们如何感知视觉模式的因素，以及这些因素受感知学习影响的方式。 感知学习是指我们发现、区分和识别模式的能力随着实践而提高。研究知觉学习可以提供对学习和记忆的一般原则的见解，以及我们的大脑适应和改变经验的方式。这些知识可以用来设计提高需要高度视觉技能的应用领域技能的方法（例如，放射学和医学成像），或者可能用于减轻与神经障碍相关的视觉缺陷，例如弱视、脑损伤或衰老的影响。许多实验研究了感知学习如何提高我们执行简单辨别任务的能力，这些任务要求我们在单个维度上不同的两种模式（例如，方向）。然而，我的研究探讨了学习如何改变我们识别人脸等复杂模式的能力。 学习识别，而不是歧视，空间复杂的目标，如纹理和人脸。使用更复杂的图案的一个明显原因是，它们可以更好地了解学习如何影响我们对自然图案，纹理和物体（以及重要类别的“人造”图案，如放射图像）的感知。此外，调查学习与越来越复杂的刺激和/或任务是必要的，以确定如何学习的理论必须改变，以考虑在各种条件下的学习。因此，目前的建议描述了几个项目，检查简单和复杂的刺激和任务获得的感知学习之间的相似性和差异，以澄清感知的基础过程的性质，以及这些过程是如何通过实践改变。**

My research examines the factors that determine how we perceive visual patterns, and the way those factors are affected by perceptual learning. Perceptual learning refers to the fact that our ability to detect, discriminate, and identify patterns improves as a result of practice. Studying perceptual learning can provide insights into the general principles of learning and memory, and into the ways our brain adapts and changes as a function of experience. This knowledge could be used to devise ways of improving skills in applied areas requiring a high degree of visual skill (e.g., radiology and medical imaging), or perhaps to alleviate visual deficits associated with neural disorders such as amblyopia, brain injuries, or the effects of aging. Many experiments examine how perceptual learning improves our ability to perform simple discrimination tasks that require us to two patterns that differ on a single dimension (e.g., orientation). However, my research examines how learning alters our ability to identify complex patterns like faces. learning on identification, rather than discrimination, of spatially complex targets like textures and faces. One obvious reason for using more complex patterns is that they may provide better insights into the way learning affects our perception of naturalistic patterns, textures, and objects (as well as important classes of "artificial" patterns such as radiographic images). Also, investigating learning with progressively more complex stimuli and/or tasks is necessary to determine how theories of learning must be altered to account for learning in a variety of conditions. Therefore, the current proposal describes several projects that examine the similarities and differences between perceptual learning obtained with simple and complex stimuli and tasks to clarify the nature of the processes that underlie perception and how those processes are altered by practice. **