Images in the mind: The control of visual object selection by attentional templates

我们对外部视觉世界的感知以及我们与这个世界互动的方式受到我们当前的期望，意图和我们以前的经验的强烈影响。尽管我们可能主观地认为我们的意识体验和我们的行动主要是由外部世界决定的，但在任何特定时刻，我们的积极思维都塑造了我们对外部世界的感知和反应。我们意识到什么是由我们注意到什么决定的，而我们注意到什么是由“头脑中的图像”（注意力模板）决定的，这些图像引导我们的注意力与我们的目标和偏好一致。 威廉·詹姆斯（William James）在1890年就已经强调了主动引导心智在控制注意力中的重要作用，但令人惊讶的是，我们对注意力模板的性质以及这些模板如何决定在任何时候关注哪些对象仍然知之甚少。在这里提出的研究中，我们将应用新的实验程序和新的方法技术（包括在观察者从事注意力选择任务时获得的大脑电活动的时间精确测量）来回答实验心理学家争论了世纪多的一些基本问题。我们将调查我们在任何时候都能注意到多少事情，并期望发现威廉·詹姆斯提出的答案（“不容易超过一件”）可能是正确的。我们将研究在知觉、视觉工作记忆和行动中同时注意多个物体的不良后果。在同时处理多件事情的能力上，个体之间是否存在系统性差异？这种能力是否与年龄有关，是否可以通过训练来提高？我们还将研究如何组织的“图像在头脑中”：注意模板表示完整的视觉对象，还是他们包括列表的视觉特征，定义当前的目标对象？这个问题的答案将对目前关于注意力如何运作的理论模型产生重要影响。最后，也是非常重要的一点，我们将开发新的方法来精确测量自愿视觉注意力转移的速度：如果注意力集中在一个特定的位置，它能以多快的速度转移到一个新的潜在相关的物体上？如果我们想把注意力引导到一个不同的物体上，我们能多快地改变“头脑中的形象”？我们的初步结果表明，自上而下的注意力引导比通常认为的要快得多，也更灵活，现在我们将发现是否以及在何种情况下会出现这种情况。 “头脑中的图像”如何控制意识体验和自愿行动的问题是选择性注意理论的核心。找到这个问题的新答案将对注意力研究具有重要的理论和概念意义。但我们的研究从应用的角度来看也很重要。在我们这个技术发达的社会中，生活的一个定义性特征是多个信息源之间的注意力竞争，这导致了对注意对象选择和选择的永久性要求。因此，关于注意力模板如何引导个人感知以及他们如何选择行动的新见解，对教育、工作场所设计和经济决策等不同领域都有明显的实际意义。

Our perception of the external visual world and the ways in which we interact with this world are strongly affected by our current expectations, intentions, and our previous experience. Even though we may subjectively feel that our conscious experiences and our actions are primarily determined by the outside world, it is our active mind that shapes what we perceive and how we react to the external world at any given moment. What we become aware of is determined by what we attend to, and what we attend to is determined by "images in the mind" (attentional templates) that guide our attention in line with our goals and preferences. The essential role of the active guiding mind in the control of attention was already highlighted by William James in 1890, but we still know surprisingly little about the nature of attentional templates, and about how these templates determine which object(s) are attended at any time. In the research proposed here, we will apply new experimental procedures and new methodological techniques (including temporally precise measures of electrical brain activity obtained while observers are engaged in attentional selection tasks) to answer some of the fundamental questions that have been debated by experimental psychologists for more than a century. We will investigate how many things we can attend to at any time, and expect to find that the answer suggested by William James ("not easily more than one") may be correct. We will study the adverse consequences of having to simultaneously attend to multiple objects in perception, visual working memory, and action. Are there systematic differences between individuals in their ability to attend to more than one thing at a time? Is this ability age-dependent and can it be improved by training? We will also investigate how the "image in the mind" is organised: Do attentional templates represent integral visual objects, or do they include lists of the visual features that define a current goal object? An answer to this question will have important consequences for current theoretical models of how attention operates. Finally, and very importantly, we will develop new methods to obtain precise measures of the speed of voluntary visual attention shifts: If attention is engaged at a particular location, how fast can it be moved to a new potentially relevant object? And how fast can we change the "image in the mind" if we want to guide our attention to a different object? Our initial results suggest that the top-down guidance of attention can be much faster and is more flexible than is usually believed, and we will now find out whether and under which circumstances this is the case. The question how "images in the mind" control conscious experience and voluntary action is central to theories of selective attention. Finding new answers to this question will have important general theoretical and conceptual implications for attention research. But our research is also important from an applied perspective. A defining feature of life in our technologically advanced society is the attentional competition between multiple sources of information, which result in permanent demands on attentional object selection and choice. New insights into how attentional templates guide what individuals perceive and how they choose to act therefore has obvious practical implications for areas as diverse as education, workplace design, and economic decision making.