Attention and Oculomotor Control: Attentional Resolution

描述(申请人提供)：有大量证据表明眼球运动和注意力是有联系的。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。指定两个系统之间的关系将使我们能够考虑注意力，这是一个不太具体的概念，在相对具体和神经上很好理解的眼动领域内。我们建议在一个新的领域中研究注意力和眼动之间的关系，以帮助解决一些矛盾，填补一些知识的空白。具体地说，我们试图通过对注意力分辨率的研究来了解注意力和眼动之间的关系，注意力分辨率是指一个人可以在紧密相隔的项目之间分散注意力的精确度。考虑到人们可以简单地感知到存在多个物品的精确度，注意解决方案非常粗略。眼球运动似乎也会受到类似的限制；例如，当一个人被允许凝视物品时，在近距离展示中计算物品并不比一个人只能依靠注意力时更容易。总而言之，这些观察表明，眼球运动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探究领域。我们将首先比较注意力分辨率和扫视分辨率，后者是人们将眼睛移动到个别物品上的精确度。我们假设，注意控制的极限是由眼跳控制的极限强加的，因此，注意分辨与眼跳分辨是无法区分的，或者比跳视分辨更粗糙。然后，我们将把眼睛注视的不稳定性与注意力分辨率的粗略联系起来。我们假设，注意力分辨率的限制至少部分由注视过程中眼睛抖动造成的空间不确定性决定，因此，当通过光学稳定显示器消除这种抖动时，注意力分辨率将会更好。最后，我们将评估已知的影响眼跳行为的实验操作如何影响注意力解决。例如，我们假设，眼跳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.