Attention and Oculomotor Control: Attentional Resolution

描述（由申请人提供）：有大量证据表明眼球运动和注意力是相关的。然而，关于这种联系的性质的证据有时是相互矛盾和缺乏的。这两个系统之间的关系的规格将允许我们考虑注意，这是一个很难指定的结构，在相对具体和神经很好地理解的领域内的眼球运动。我们建议在一个新的领域内调查注意力和眼动之间的关系，以帮助解决一些矛盾，填补一些知识空白。具体来说，我们试图通过对注意力分辨率的研究来理解注意力和眼动之间的关系，注意力分辨率是一种精确度，人们可以在密集的项目之间离散地移动注意力。考虑到人们可以简单地感知到存在多个项目的精度，注意力分辨率是非常粗糙的。看起来，眼球运动也会受到类似的限制。例如，在一个密集的展示中，当人们被允许注视这些项目时，计数项目并不比只依靠注意力时更容易。总之，这些观察结果表明，视力限制可能决定至少一些注意力限制（反之亦然），从而提供了一个特定的链接和两个系统之间的调查域。我们将开始比较注意分辨力和扫视分辨力，扫视分辨力是人们将眼睛移动到单个物体上的精确度。我们假设，注意控制的限制是由扫视控制的限制，因此，注意分辨率将是无法区分的或比扫视分辨率粗糙。然后，我们将把眼注视的不稳定性与注意分辨的粗糙性联系起来。我们假设，注意力分辨率的限制至少部分地由空间的不确定性，这是由眼睛抖动在固定过程中，因此，注意力分辨率将更精细时，抖动消除光学稳定的显示。最后，我们将评估已知影响扫视行为的实验操作如何影响注意力分辨率。例如，我们假设扫视系统的瞬时适应将转移到注意控制系统并改变观察者的注意分辨率。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): There is a great deal of evidence that eye movements and attention are linked. However, evidence regarding the nature of the link is sometimes contradictory and lacking. Specification of the relationship between the two systems would allow us to consider attention, which is a poorly specified construct, within the relatively concrete and neurally well understood domain of eye movements. We propose to investigate the relationship between attention and eye movements within a new domain to help resolve some of the contradictions and fill in some of the gaps of knowledge. Specifically, we seek to understand the relationship between attention and eye movements through an investigation of attentional resolution, which is the precision with which one can discretely move attention among closely spaced items. Attentional resolution is remarkably coarse given the precision with which people can perceive simply that there are multiple items present. Eye movements, it seems, may be limited in a similar way; counting items in a closely spaced display, for example, is no easier when one is allowed to fixate the items than when one must rely on attention only. Together, these observations suggest that oculomotor limitations may determine at least some attentional limitations (or vice versa), thereby providing a specific link and domain of inquiry between the two systems. We will begin by comparing attentional resolution to saccadic resolution, which is the precision with which people can move their eyes to individual items. We hypothesize that the limits of attentional control are imposed by the limits of saccadic control, and therefore that attentional resolution will be indiscriminable from or coarser than saccadic resolution. We will then relate the instability of ocular fixation to the coarseness of attentional resolution. We hypothesize that the limitations of attentional resolution are at least partly determined by the spatial uncertainty that is created by ocular jitter during fixation, and therefore that attentional resolution will be finer when that jitter is eliminated by optically stabilizing the display. Finally, we will assess how experimental manipulations that are known to affect saccadic behavior affect attentional resolution. We hypothesize, for example, that transient adaptation of the saccadic system will transfer to the attentional control system and alter observers' attentional resolution.