Attending to structure in the visual field

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Our environments contain much more visual information than our visual system can process at any given moment. Because of this, we move the focus of our visual attention from location to location, and from object to object, across the visual field to select information for more detailed processing in our brains. One of the key questions in the study of visual cognition concerns this process; how do humans allocate our attention across the visual scenes we encounter? In the past, the answer to this question has focused on the direct physical features that make up objects, such as colour, shape, and size. Indeed, we have learned much about what direct physical features capture our attention. But objects are much more complex than simply the sum of their parts, and this proposed research will examine how attention is allocated to the relationship of physical properties in objects (which I will term "structure"). Our interactions with environments have taught us to expect certain structures; for example, stable objects have larger bases and smaller tops, objects resting on other objects need to be roughly vertically aligned (or they will fall over), and removing a supporting lower object is precarious for upper objects being supported. Thus, objects may be said to have good structure (stable, supportive, and match our intuitive understanding of physics) or bad structure (unstable, unsupportive, do not match our intuitive understanding of physics). The present research will answer two questions regarding good and bad structure; does either (or both) guide our attention across the visual field (i.e., does structure capture attention) and is structure treated as a fundamental feature (as is color, shape, and size) by our attentional system? To answer these questions, two programs of research are proposed. Within each program, multiple studies are planned using a variety of experimental designs, some of which are adaptations of well-known experimental procedures while others are newly designed for the questions at hand. Given the ubiquitous role that structure plays in the organization of our visual environments, and how we interact with such environments, this research will provide the foundational work to launch a new field of attentional research. Moreover, this research fits into the broad domain of the recent approaches to attention that go beyond examining simple physical features (colour, shape, size) to ownership, animacy, and the context. The implications for the research extend into engineering, industry, architecture, civil planning, and all manners of design and art. Simply put, understanding how our attention system processes structure means a more complete understanding of what we perceive in the structured visual environments (both natural and human-made) that we inhabit.