Systematic Psychophysical Investigation of Visual Learning.

描述（由申请人提供）：这是一份申请竞争性更新当前资助的R01资助的提案，题为“视觉学习的系统心理物理研究”。视觉感知学习（VPL）被认为是一种有前途的工具，可以帮助阐明视觉和大脑可塑性的重要方面。我们的长期目标是描述控制VPL的一般规则，并更好地理解视觉和大脑可塑性的机制。在目前的支持期间，我们在澄清VPL下感知和行为变化的特征方面取得了巨大的成功，通常是通过检查在训练特征值处或周围的性能如何因视觉训练而改变。然而，关于VPL的机制出现了新的严重争议。其中一个争议是关于VPL的位置，或与VPL相关的视觉和大脑信息处理阶段的变化。另一个问题是如何在训练中发展具有位置特异性或转移的VPL。我们将进行系统的心理物理研究，目的是建立两个独立但相关的模型，每个模型都涉及VPL的发展位置或如何发展，以解决这些争议，从而将这两个模型整合到一个统一的VPL模型中。在目标1中，我们将试图通过开发一个两阶段模型来解决关于VPL轨迹的争议，该模型可以解释支持低水平变化和支持高水平变化的发现，而不会否认低水平或高水平模型的证据。通过对不同类型的任务、刺激和程序进行各种各样的实验，我们将从心理物理上检验这个两阶段模型以及现有模型的有效性。在目标2中，我们将尝试解决第二个争议。通过双重训练降低位置特异性的程度暴露了现有模型解释位置特异性的严重局限性。到目前为止，还没有理论模型能证明这一点

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This is a proposal for competitive renewal of the currently funded R01 grant entitled "Systematic psychophysical investigation of visual learning". Visual perceptual learning (VPL) is regarded as a promising tool that can help clarify important aspects of visual and brain plasticity. Our long-term goal is to delineate general rules that govern VPL, and to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms of visual and brain plasticity. During the currently supported period, we have attained great success in clarifying the characteristics of perceptual and behavioral changes under VPL, often by examining how performance at or around a trained feature value is changed as a result of visual training. However, new serious controversies about the mechanisms of VPL have emerged. One controversy concerns the locus of VPL, or the visual and brain information processing stage that is changed in association with VPL. The other concerns how VPL with location specificity or transfer is developed during training. We will conduct systematic psychophysical research with the aim of building two separate but related models, each of which concerns where or how VPL is developed to resolve each of these controversies, so that these two models will be integrated to a unified model of VPL. In Aim 1, we will attempt to resolve the controversy about the locus of VPL by developing a two-stage model that can account for both the findings that support low-level changes and those that support higher-level stages, without denying either evidence for the low-level or higher-level models. By conducting a variety of experiments with different types of tasks, stimuli and procedures, we will psychophysically test the validity of this two-stage model as well as existing models. In Aim 2, we will attempt to resolve the second controversy. The reduction of the degree of location specificity by double training has exposed serious limitations in how existing models explain location specificity. Thus far, no theoretical model has been proposed that can clearly explain how location specificity occurs by single training, as well as how location specificity is weakened/eliminated by double training. Based on our recent finding of elimination of VPL followed by reactivation and our influential reinforcement model, we will build the reinforcement reactivation model that assumes that the elimination of location specificity after double training is due to a failure to reconsolidate location specific learning tat was reactivated by reinforcement signals. In a series of experiments, we will test the validity of this reinforcement reactivation model and other existing models. In both aims, results of experiments will also be used to further refine the proposed models to most suitably account for where and how VPL is developed. Examinations of these aims will help to achieve our long-term goal of clarifying general functional rules that govern VPL.