SBE-UKRI: "Looked but failed to see" errors in human vision.

我们经常没有注意到清晰可见的东西。有时，这甚至是我们正在积极寻找的东西，比如我们写作中的打字错误。当放射科医生在肺部X光片中看不到癌症迹象或司机看不到过马路的人时，这些“看过但看不到”(LBFTS)错误可能是潜在的危险。这个项目的目的是了解这些LBFTS错误的来源，并调查可能减少这些错误的方法。有多种不同的原因可能会导致人们在指出时没有报告清楚可见的事情。例如，一些LBFTS错误可以被认为是坏运气的版本：你不能处理所有事情，所以只有一些刺激得到了充分的处理。目标1中的实验调查了一些任务中的LBFTS错误是否是随机的，或者是否存在使它们不太可能被发现的遗漏刺激的属性。在目标2中探索的第二种可能性是，在功能视野或有用视野内存在知觉偏差，其定义为你正在寻找的点周围的区域，你可以在其中找到你的目标(即使你找不到)。例如，如果你正在阅读英语，当你看一个单词时，你会偏向右边的下一个单词，而不是你注视的正上方或正下方的单词。当阅读阿拉伯语或希伯来语时，你会偏向于你注视点左边的单词。这个项目的两位主要研究人员对功能视野中的偏见可能来自哪里有不同的想法，他们利用一种“对抗性合作”来解决这些差异。最后，Aim 3致力于LBFTS错误，这些错误是在完成一项任务时发生的，但仍“密切关注”其他刺激因素(例如，当医生检查胸部X光时，它可能显示的不仅仅是患者抱怨的肋骨骨折，例如可疑的癌症迹象)。调查人员将试图开发方法来帮助观察者完成他们的主要任务，同时保持对可能发生的重要但无关事件的协调。如果能够确定并减少LBFTS错误的来源，它可能会对重要的社会领域产生重大影响，如医学图像感知和交通事故。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

It often happens that we fail to notice something that is in plain view. Sometimes this can even be something that we are actively looking for, like typos in our writing. These “looked but failed to see” (LBFTS) errors can be potentially dangerous, as when a radiologist fails to see signs of cancer in a lung x-ray or a driver fails to see someone crossing the road. The aim of this project is to understand the source of these LBFTS errors and to investigate possible ways to reduce them.There are a variety of different causes that might lead someone to fail to report something that is clearly visible when pointed out. For example, some LBFTS errors can be thought of as a version of bad luck: You can't process everything, so only some stimuli get processed adequately. The experiments in Aim 1 investigate whether LBFTS errors in some tasks are random or whether there are attributes of the missed stimuli that make them less likely to be found. A second possibility, explored in Aim 2, is that there are perceptual biases within the functional visual field or useful field of view, defined as the region around the point where you are looking, within which you could find your target (even if you don’t). For example, if you are reading English, while you are looking at one word, you are biased to the next words to the right rather than to the words directly above or below where you are fixating. When reading Arabic or Hebrew, you would be biased to words on the left of your fixation point. The two principal investigators on this project have different ideas about where the biases in the functional visual field might come from and they exploit an "adversarial collaboration" in order to resolve these differences. Finally, Aim 3 is devoted to LBFTS errors that occur when doing one task but still "keeping an eye out" for other stimuli (e.g. when a doctor is examining a chest x-ray, it may show more than just the fractured rib about which the patient is complaining, such as a suspicious sign of cancer). The investigators will try to develop ways to help observers do their primary task while staying attuned to the possible occurrence of important but non-related events. If the sources of LBFTS errors can be identified and reduced, it could have a major impact on important societal arenas, such as medical image perception and traffic accidents.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.