How do independent attentional mechanisms coordinate information processing across the visual system?

独立的注意力机制如何协调整个视觉系统的信息处理？

• 批准号: RGPIN-2018-04689
• 负责人: AlAidroos, Naseem
• 金额: $ 2.11万
• 依托单位: University of Guelph
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2023-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=763949
• 关键词: How; do; independent; attentional; mechanisms

We live in environments that contain far more visual information than our finite brains can process. While this means that sometimes we fail to see parts of our world (as demonstrated by the popular invisible gorilla: http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/videos.html), we can nevertheless use this environmental information to guide our behaviour in amazingly complex ways, such as when driving a car. How do we make sense of overwhelming environments to successfully guide behaviour?The key to our success is attention. Our brains use of a number of attentional mechanisms that shape how we process information based on our current goals. In this way, attention simplifies information processing by focussing on the important information, and ignoring the rest. For example, when searching for a friend in a crowd wearing a red sweater, attention will prioritize processing of red things, over non-red things. Indeed, there are numerous attentional mechanisms that allow us to prioritize visual processing in different ways. There are mechanisms for prioritizing features (e.g., specific colours or shapes), spatial locations (e.g., specific regions in your visual field), and categories (e.g., faces or scenes), among many others. While past research has studied each of these attentional mechanisms in isolation to identify their basic properties and limitations, my research program will investigate how these individual mechanisms coordinate to guide information processing in a coherent manner across the visual system. This level of description is critical for understanding the attentional constraints on human behaviour. While we sometimes make mistakes due to a lack of attention, our mistakes also frequently result from attending to the wrong information. For example, in Canada, motor vehicle collisions have social costs measured in the tens of billions of dollars (Transport Canada, 2011), and 80% of motor vehicle collisions have driver inattention as a contributing factor (NHSTA, 2010). By studying how control over visual processing is coordinated and passed between attentional mechanisms, the present research program will provide an important guide in optimizing behavioural performance across diverse domains, including applied settings such as driving a car, screening luggage at airports, and detecting anomalies on diagnostic medical images.

我们生活的环境包含的视觉信息远远超过我们有限的大脑所能处理的。虽然这意味着我们有时看不到世界的一部分(正如流行的隐形大猩猩http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/videos.html)，所证明的那样)，但我们仍然可以使用这些环境信息以令人惊讶的复杂方式来指导我们的行为，比如开车时。我们如何理解铺天盖地的环境才能成功地引导行为？我们成功的关键是注意力。我们的大脑使用许多注意力机制，这些机制塑造了我们根据当前目标处理信息的方式。通过这种方式，注意力集中在重要的信息上，而忽略其余的信息，从而简化了信息处理。例如，当在一群穿着红色毛衣的人中寻找朋友时，注意力会优先处理红色的东西，而不是非红色的东西。事实上，有许多注意力机制可以让我们以不同的方式对视觉处理进行优先排序。存在用于确定特征(例如，特定颜色或形状)、空间位置(例如，您视野中的特定区域)和类别(例如，人脸或场景)等的优先顺序的机制。虽然过去的研究孤立地研究了这些注意机制中的每一种，以确定它们的基本特性和局限性，但我的研究计划将调查这些单独的机制如何协调，以一致的方式引导整个视觉系统的信息处理。这一水平的描述对于理解人类行为的注意力限制至关重要。虽然我们有时会因为注意力不集中而犯错误，但我们的错误也经常是因为注意到了错误的信息。例如，在加拿大，机动车碰撞的社会成本高达数百亿美元(加拿大交通部，2011年)，80%的机动车碰撞是驾驶员注意力不集中的一个促成因素(NHSTA，2010)。通过研究视觉处理的控制是如何在注意机制之间协调和传递的，本研究计划将为优化不同领域的行为表现提供重要的指导，包括应用环境，如驾驶汽车、机场行李检查和检测诊断医学图像上的异常。