Processing Streams in Early Vision

描述(由申请者提供)：注意力选择我们意识到的东西。当我们的注意力分散时，即使我们凝视着什么东西，我们也可能错过它，无论是驶近的汽车，坡道的边缘，还是在街上玩耍的孩子。注意力在组织我们的心理过程中起着至关重要的作用，注意力障碍经常伴随着主要的精神疾病。在这项建议中，我们关注视觉注意早期阶段的三个方面。首先，我们使用注意跟踪任务来检查索引所关注的空间位置的选择地图的属性。其次，我们使用空间拥挤任务研究了从单个选择地点获取信息的空间特性。最后，使用一种新的移动目标技术，我们分离了非视网膜定位的后选择分析。注意力是什么经历的最终仲裁者，也是我们学习周围事件的指南。我们对注意力了解得越多，我们就能更好地增强精神功能，改进学习策略，构建最佳的信息展示，处理注意力缺失，并更好地康复那些注意力神经障碍的人。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Attention selects what reaches our awareness. When our attention wanders, we can miss seeing something even when we are staring right at it, whether it is an approaching car, an edge of a ramp, or child playing in the street. Attention plays a critical role in organizing our mental processes and disorders of attention frequently accompany the major mental diseases. In this proposal we focus on three aspects of the early stages of visual attention. First, we use attentional tracking tasks to examine the properties of the selection map that indexes the attended spatial locations. Second, we study the spatial properties of the uptake of information from a single selection location, using spatial crowding tasks. Finally using a new technique with moving targets we isolate non-retinotopic postselection analyses. Attention is the final arbiter of what ^experience and the guide to our learning about the events around us. The more we learn about attention, the better we will be equipped to enhance mental function, improve learning strategies, construct optimal displays of information, deal with failures of attention, and better rehabilitate those with neurological impairments of attention.