Aspects of Attention and Adaptive Memory

这个建议继续了我对负责注意力的系统和负责更高层次处理的系统的研究，例如通过记忆检索识别意义和“对象性”。 本基金申请侧重于两个方向的互动。 首先，注意力的分配（或缺乏注意力）如何影响我们处理意义的能力？ 虽然长期以来的观点是，认识到许多刺激的意义（例如，虽然语言（如文字）是自动的，并且可以在没有注意的情况下完成，但最近的研究正在挑战这一观点。 我将继续追问，是否有必要让一个刺激成为注意力的焦点，以便我们能够理解它的身份并对其进行评估，我还将考察是否存在这样的特殊情况，即在这种情况下，许多信息可以在不应用焦点注意力的情况下被发现。第二个问题，也是很大程度上被忽视的问题，是涉及意义计算和物体识别的过程是否会对注意力的运作产生影响。换句话说，注意的范围和激活是否取决于加工的产品？是否有可能通过操纵刺激的语义显著性等因素来影响注意力如何被吸引到或保持在一个位置或物体上？ 考虑到我们的感知系统是为了应对环境中的选择性压力而进化的，这个问题就变得特别相关了。 例如，一个带有某种威胁迹象的物体或个人可能会影响我们的注意力系统，从而使注意力被“保持”在充分的比喻过程中，直到可以做出关于采取适当行动的决定。 这项工作的一个重要而新颖的焦点是考虑进化适应，这些适应塑造了我们今天看到的工作中的注意力系统。 * 最后，我的实验室和其他人的工作表明，在以前被认为是“标准”的注意力现象中存在相当大的个体差异。 我目前的计划是继续检查我和其他人使用的每一种范式（例如，选择，外源性和内源性线索，启动，双任务，视觉搜索），以建立共同的注意效应的一般性和稳定性。 * 这些问题将在既定模式和程序的范围内进行调查。 我的贡献是将这些已建立的范式和联合收割机以新颖的方式结合起来，提出以前没有解决过的问题。 在这些领域的试点工作表明，这些问题的答案将迫使我们重新评估一些目前的理论帐户的基础上的注意力对更高层次的过程，反之亦然。 **

This proposal continues my study of the systems responsible for attention and those responsible for higher-level processing such as the recognition of meaning and "object-ness," via memory retrieval.  This grant application focuses on the interaction from two directions.  First, how does the allocation of attention (or lack thereof) affect our ability to process meaning?  Although the longstanding view has been that recognizing the meaning of many stimuli (e.g., words) is automatic, and can be accomplished in the absence of attention, more recent work is challenging this view.  I will continue to ask whether it is necessary for a stimulus to be the focus of attention in order for us to be able to apprehend its identity and evaluate it, and I will also examine whether there are particular cases in which much of this information can be uncovered without the application of focal attention.***The second, and largely neglected, issue is whether processes involved in the computation of meaning and object recognition have consequences for the operation of attention. In other words, does the scope and activation of attention depend on the products of processing? Is it possible to affect how attention is attracted to, or held at, a location or object by manipulating factors such as the semantic saliency of the stimulus?  This question becomes particularly pertinent when considering the fact that our perceptual systems evolved in response to selective pressures in the environment.  For example, it is plausible that an object or individual carrying some indication of threat might affect our attentional systems such that attention is "held" to process that similes fully until a decision can be made about the proper action to take.  An important and novel focus of this work, then will be to consider the evolutionary adaptations that shaped the attentional systems that we see at work today.  ***Finally, work in my lab and others has shown that there are considerable individual differences in what were previously conceived to be "standard" attentional phenomena.  My current plan is to continue to examine each of the paradigms that I and others use (e.g., selection, exogenous and endogenous cueing, priming, dual-task, visual search) in order to establish the generality and stability of common attentional effects.  ***These questions will be investigated in the context of well-established paradigms and procedures.  My contribution is to take these established paradigms and combine them in novel ways to ask questions that have not been previously addressed.  Pilot work in these areas suggests that the answers to these questions will force us to re-evaluate the underpinnings of a number of current theoretical accounts of the effects of attention on higher level processes, and vice versa.  **