High-Level Influences on Low-Level Learning

描述（由申请人提供）：人类的能力对实践的效果有显着的反应。在实验室和自然环境中对练习效果的研究已经记录了人类在从运动到认知等任务中获得异常高水平表现的程度。在过去的二十年里，关于感知学习的文献迅速增加，记录了一系列任务，在这些任务中，对基本感知判断的练习可以显著提高表现。这些研究表明，即使是人类信息处理的基本方面也可以进行实质性的修改，并且，通过扩展，早期感觉水平可能具有高度的可塑性。这个建议的具体重点是视觉任务，涉及刺激特性操纵水平或附近的观察者的检测阈值。虽然特定的任务可能需要分类，识别或区分判断，但需要准确区分特征的存在和不存在是感兴趣的感知能力的基本方面;一个例子是熟练的放射科医生能够在X射线图像中检测和识别肿瘤的程度。关于这些类型的技能的现有证据提出了三个假设：（a）感知专业知识的获得和表达依赖于多个层次的编码信息，（B）所有这些代码都是同时可用的，（c）学习的时间过程涉及在视觉系统的越来越低的层次上逐渐加强代码。这些假设的测试将涉及行为和神经生理（EEG）数据的收集，以及能够将这两种类型的数据联系起来的计算建模方法的开发。相关性：明确关注的感知能力，需要检测和识别持有潜在的翻译应用领域中，观察者必须获得的能力，可靠地区分存在和不存在的一些视觉属性，并可靠地分类或命名的对象的基础上，该属性时，可供观察者的信息可能是极其有限的。例子包括视觉障碍的行为干预（例如，弱视），警察狙击手的培训，或安全检查员的培训。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Human abilities are remarkably responsive to the effects of practice. Studies of the effects of practice, in both laboratory and natural settings, have documented the extent to which humans can obtain exceptionally high levels of performance in tasks ranging from motor to cognitive. Within the past two decades, a rapidly-expanding literature on perceptual learning has documented the range of tasks in which practice on basic perceptual judgments can produce dramatic improvements in performance. These studies suggest that even elementary aspects of human information processing can be substantially modified and, by extension, that early sensory levels may be highly plastic. The specific focus of this proposal is on visual tasks that involve stimulus characteristics manipulated at levels at or near observers' detection thresholds. While specific tasks may require categorization, identification, or discrimination judgments, the need to accurately distinguish between the presence and absence of a characteristic is a fundamental aspect of the perceptual abilities that are of interest; an example would be the extent to which a skilled radiologist is able to both detect and identify a tumor in an X-ray image. The available evidence on these types of skills suggests three hypotheses: (a) The acquisition and expression of perceptual expertise relies on multiple levels of encoded information, (b) All of these codes are available simultaneously, (c) The time-course of learning involves an incremental strengthening of codes at increasingly lower levels of the visual system. Tests of these hypotheses will involve the collection of both behavioral and neurophysiological (EEG) data, and the development of a computational modeling approach capable of linking these two types of data. Relevance: The explicit concern with perceptual abilities that require both detection and identification holds the potential for translational application in domains in which observers must acquire the ability to reliably distinguish between the presence and absence of some visual attribute, and to reliably categorize or name an object based on that attribute when the information available to observers may be extremely limited. Examples include behavioral interventions for visual impairments (e.g., amblyopia), the training of police sharp-shooters, or the training of security screeners.