Visual feature perception during dynamic spatial attention and distraction

我们的视觉系统是如何感知我们周围的世界的？我们的大脑从最原始的视觉输入中构建了令人难以置信的丰富感知体验：眼睛视网膜上的光线模式。一个主要的挑战是，环境提供的信息比我们的视觉系统一次可以完全处理的信息要多，所以我们依赖注意力机制来优先考虑最相关的信息。注意力和感知是重要的认知过程，影响着我们日常生活的方方面面。了解这些过程通常是如何工作的-以及我们何时容易受到感知错误和扭曲的影响-对健康的视觉系统和各种疾病都有重要影响，沿着广泛的应用，从最大化人类行为到人工智能和技术的发展。该项目的教育部分将增加代表性不足的种族和族裔群体的STEM机会，加强本科教育，并提供社区外展服务。该提案概述了一项为期三年的综合研究和教育计划，旨在解决动态空间注意力和分心过程中视觉特征感知如何改变的问题。该提案调查了我们视觉系统面临的一个根本挑战：我们如何成功地将关于物体是“什么”的信息与它在“哪里”的信息整合起来？虽然绑定过程本身就具有足够的挑战性，但在动态视觉和认知过程中变得尤为重要，因为环境中通常有多个感兴趣的对象或位置，空间注意力不断变化。使用PI Golomb最近开发的范例，我们测试的假设，不稳定的空间注意力会导致错误的功能和对象的感知。在目标1中，我们与注意力控制和注意力分散方面的专家PI Leber合作，重点关注在分心条件下视觉特征感知如何改变。在目标2中，我们扩展到一个更基本的方向，询问不同类型的动态空间注意力如何影响多特征对象的对象整合。实验包括感知特征报告、概率混合建模、EEG alpha解码、眼动跟踪和基于奖励的操作的组合。这种创新的方法致力于提高我们对如何实现稳定和综合视觉感知的理解，特别是在动态注意力和分心的条件下。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

How does our visual system make sense of the world around us? Our brains construct incredibly rich perceptual experiences from the rawest of visual inputs: patterns of light on the eye's retina. A major challenge is that the environment presents more information than our visual system can fully process at a time, so we rely on the mechanisms of attention to prioritize the most relevant information. Attention and perception are vital cognitive processes that affect every aspect of our daily functioning. Understanding how these processes typically work - and when we are susceptible to perceptual errors and distortions - has critical repercussions for both the healthy visual system and various disorders, along with broad-reaching applications ranging from maximizing human behavior to development of artificial intelligence and technology. The project's education component will increase STEM opportunities for underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, enhance undergraduate education, and offer community outreach. This proposal outlines a three-year integrated research and education plan addressing how visual feature perception is altered during dynamic spatial attention and distraction. The proposal investigates a fundamental challenge for our visual systems: How do we successfully integrate information about 'what' an object is with 'where' it is? While the binding process is challenging enough on its own, it becomes particularly crucial during dynamic vision and cognition, where there are often multiple objects or locations of interest in the environment and spatial attention is constantly shifting. Using a paradigm recently developed by PI Golomb, we test the hypothesis that unstable spatial attention can cause errors in feature and object perception. In Aim 1, we focus on how visual feature perception might be altered during conditions of distraction, in collaboration with co-PI Leber, an expert in attentional control and distraction. In Aim 2, we expand in an even more fundamental direction, asking how different types of dynamic spatial attention might impact object integration for multi-feature objects. The experiments include a combination of perceptual feature reports, probabilistic mixture modeling, EEG alpha decoding, eye-tracking, and reward-based manipulations. This innovative and novel approach strives to advance our understanding of how we achieve stable and integrated visual perception, especially under conditions of dynamic attention and distraction.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.