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联系在一起的。然而，关于这种联系的性质的证据有时是矛盾的和缺乏的。说明两个系统之间的关系将允许我们考虑注意力，这是一个不太明确的结构，在相对具体和神经上很好理解的眼球运动领域内。我们建议在一个新的领域内研究注意力和眼球运动之间的关系，以帮助解决一些矛盾和填补一些知识空白。具体来说，我们试图通过对注意力分辨率的调查来理解注意力和眼球运动之间的关系，注意力分辨率是一个人在紧密间隔的物体之间分散注意力的精度。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。眼动似乎也以类似的方式受到限制；例如，在一个间隔很近的展示中，当一个人被允许盯着物品时，计算物品的数量并不比一个人只能依靠注意力时容易。总之，这些观察结果表明，动眼肌限制可能至少决定了一些注意力限制（反之亦然），从而在两个系统之间提供了一个特定的联系和研究领域。首先，我们将比较注意力分辨率和跳视分辨率，后者是人们将目光转移到单个物品上的精度。我们假设，注意控制的限制是由眼动控制的限制施加的，因此，注意分辨率将与眼动分辨率无法区分或比眼动分辨率更粗糙。然后，我们将把眼球固定的不稳定性与注意力分辨率的粗糙程度联系起来。我们假设，注意力分辨率的限制至少部分是由注视时由眼抖动产生的空间不确定性决定的，因此，当通过光学稳定显示器消除抖动时，注意力分辨率将会更好。最后，我们将评估已知影响跳眼行为的实验操作如何影响注意分辨率。例如，我们假设跳眼系统的短暂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.