Visual attention, memory, and performance across space and time

我们如何从错误中吸取教训？练习如何提高成绩？我们如何成为专家？我和我的学生研究认知和注意力控制，以及新手成为专家后发生的变化背后的大脑过程，特别是认知、注意力和记忆过程的经验依赖变化。我们通过测量高密度电极阵列的头皮电位来研究神经事件，这些电极阵列检测神经元产生的毫秒分辨率电压变化。事件相关电位(ERP)的高时间分辨率使我们能够询问与练习和学习相关的神经变化的具体问题。特别令人感兴趣的是如何在实践中监控性能，如何检测错误，以及如何改变行为以响应错误。多年来长期玩游戏的动作视频游戏玩家会发展出特殊的视觉空间技能，这些技能可以在实验室中进行操作定义和测量。大多数已发表的关于电子游戏玩家的研究集中在玩游戏的社交方面，直到最近人们才开始研究游戏玩家经历的认知和注意力变化。我们研究视频游戏玩家，以了解他们的专业知识是如何发展的，以及它是如何推广到其他任务中的表现的。我们都是专家的一个领域是人脸识别。大多数人脸识别研究都集中在感知、身份和视觉记忆上。很少有研究专门关注相关的语义信息，但我们每天经历的面部识别涉及检索特定于人的信息。我们正在研究随着对一个人的知识的获得，行为的变化和面孔处理的大脑关联。我们的目标是探索认知和注意力控制机制，注意力和记忆的经验依赖变化，以及专业知识的发展。在注意力缺陷、自闭症、抑郁和上瘾等障碍中观察到的失控会使人虚弱。我们的结果将有助于改善认知和注意力控制的模型，并有助于开发针对大脑损伤或疾病以及正常衰老衰退的认知补救策略。

How do we learn from our mistakes? How does practice improve performance? How do we become experts? My students and I study cognitive and attentional control and the brain processes underlying the changes that occur as a novice becomes an expert, particularly the experience dependent changes to cognitive, attentional, and memory processes. We study neural events by measuring scalp potentials from a high density array of electrodes which detect millisecond resolution voltage changes generated by neurons. The high temporal resolution of event-related potentials (ERP) allows us to ask specific questions about neural changes related to practice and learning. Of particular interest is how performance is monitored during practice, how errors are detected, and how behaviour is altered in response to errors. Action video game players who play games for long periods of time over many years develop particular visual spatial skills that can be operationally defined and measured in the laboratory. Most published work on video game players focuses on the social aspects of game playing, and only recently have people started studying the cognitive and attentional changes that gamers experience. We study video game players to understand how their expertise develops and how it generalizes to performance on other tasks. A domain in which we are all experts is face recognition. Most face recognition research focuses on perception, identity, and visual memory. Fewer studies look specifically at associated semantic information, yet the face identification that we experience every day involves retrieval of person-specific information. We are studying alterations in behaviour and brain correlates of face processing as knowledge about a person is acquired. Our goal is the exploration of cognitive and attentional control mechanisms, experience dependent changes in attention and memory, and development of expertise. Loss of control is debilitating as observed in disorders such as attention deficit, autism, depression, and addiction. Our results will help improve models of cognitive and attentional control, and help to develop cognitive remediation strategies for brain damage or disease, and declines in normal aging.