Determinants of Visual Attention in Real-World Scenes

1975 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 411-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc S. Lewis

The present study examined the saliency of size, movement, and human content variables in visual selective attention. Ss named stimuli present in motion pictures of real world scenes or in animated cartoon controls during a 15-sec. exposure period. Regardless of the type of presentation that they saw, Ss tended to name large and/or moving stimuli more often than small and/or nonmoving stimuli. Also, small human stimuli were named more frequently than small nonhuman stimuli, while there were no differences between the frequencies with which large human and nonhuman stimuli were named. The order in which Ss named stimuli was not related to either the size, movement, or human content variables. Results are discussed in terms of the generalizability of the results of previous studies to conditions simulating the real world.

Animals ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
pp. 120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandra Alterisio ◽  
Paolo Baragli ◽  
Massimo Aria ◽  
Biagio D’Aniello ◽  
Anna Scandurra

In order to explore the decision-making processes of horses, we designed an impossible task paradigm aimed at causing an expectancy violation in horses. Our goals were to verify whether this paradigm is effective in horses by analyzing their motivation in trying to solve the task and the mode of the potential helping request in such a context. In the first experiment, 30 horses were subjected to three consecutive conditions: no food condition where two persons were positioned at either side of a table in front of the stall, solvable condition when a researcher placed a reachable reward on the table, and the impossible condition when the food was placed farther away and was unreachable by the horse. Eighteen horses were used in the second experiment with similar solvable and impossible conditions but in the absence of people. We measured the direction of the horse’s ear cup as an indicator of its visual attention in terms of visual selective attention (VSA) when both ears were directed at the same target and the visual differential attention (VDA) when the ears were directed differentially to the persons and to the table. We also included tactile interaction toward table and people, the olfactory exploration of the table, and the frustration behaviors in the ethogram. In the first experiment, the VDA was the most frequent behavior following the expectancy violation. In the second experiment, horses showed the VDA behavior mostly when people and the unreachable resource were present at the same time. We speculate that the VDA could be a referential gesture aimed to link the solution of the task to the people, as a request for help.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lupeng Wang ◽  
James P. Herman ◽  
Richard J. Krauzlis

AbstractCovert visual attention is accomplished by a cascade of mechanisms distributed across multiple brain regions. Recent studies in primates suggest a parcellation in which visual cortex is associated with enhanced representations of relevant stimuli, whereas subcortical circuits are associated with selection of visual targets and suppression of distractors. Here we identified how neuronal activity in the superior colliculus (SC) of head-fixed mice is modulated during covert visual attention. We found that spatial cues modulated both firing rate and spike-count correlations, and that the cue-related modulation in firing rate was due to enhancement of activity at the cued spatial location rather than suppression at the uncued location. This modulation improved the neuronal discriminability of visual-change-evoked activity between contralateral and ipsilateral SC neurons. Together, our findings indicate that neurons in the mouse SC contribute to covert visual selective attention by biasing processing in favor of locations expected to contain relevant information.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy F. Brady ◽  
Viola S. Störmer ◽  
Anna Shafer-Skelton ◽  
Jamal Rodgers Williams ◽  
Angus F. Chapman ◽  
...  

Both visual attention and visual working memory tend to be studied with very simple stimuli and low-level paradigms, designed to allow us to understand the representations and processes in detail, or with fully realistic stimuli that make such precise understanding difficult but are more representative of the real world. In this chapter we argue for an intermediate approach in which visual attention and visual working memory are studied by scaling up from the simplest settings to more complex settings that capture some aspects of the complexity of the real-world, while still remaining in the realm of well-controlled stimuli and well-understood tasks. We believe this approach, which we have been taking in our labs, will allow a more generalizable set of knowledge about visual attention and visual working memory while maintaining the rigor and control that is typical of vision science and psychophysics studies.


Author(s):  
Timothy F. Brady ◽  
Viola S. Störmer ◽  
Anna Shafer-Skelton ◽  
Jamal R. Williams ◽  
Angus F. Chapman ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Macarena Bowen ◽  
Gonzalo Terreros ◽  
Felipe N. Moreno-Gómez ◽  
Macarena Ipinza ◽  
Sergio Vicencio ◽  
...  

Abstract The auditory efferent system comprises descending projections from the cerebral cortex to subcortical nuclei, reaching the cochlear receptor through olivocochlear fibres. One of the functions attributed to this corticofugal system is to suppress irrelevant sounds during selective attention to visual stimuli. Medial olivocochlear neurons can also be activated by sounds through a brainstem reflex circuit. Whether the individual variability of this reflex is related to the cognitive capacity to suppress auditory stimuli is still controversial. Here we propose that the individual strength per animal of the olivocochlear reflex is correlated with the ability to suppress auditory distractors during visual attention in awake chinchillas. The olivocochlear reflex was elicited with a contralateral broad-band noise at ~ 60 dB and ipsilateral distortion product otoacoustic emissions were obtained at different frequencies (1–8 kHz). Fourteen chinchillas were evaluated in a behavioural protocol of visual attention with broad-band noise and chinchilla vocalizations as auditory distractors. Results show that the behavioural performance was affected by both distractors and that the magnitudes of the olivocochlear reflex evaluated at multiple frequencies were relevant for behavioural performance during visual discrimination with auditory distractors. These results stress the ecological relevance of the olivocochlear system for suppressing natural distractors.


2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 920-920
Author(s):  
B. Bridgeman ◽  
C. Sterling

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Henrique Caldeira de Oliveira ◽  
Janaina de Moura Engracia Giraldi

Abstract Neuromarketing and neurophysiology of consumer behavior and sensory experiences are growing in research results and importance to the operations activities due to the possibility of designing products and processes that are more suitable to the consumers’ needs. In addition, there is a wide range of applications on the shop floor, such as safety design, man-machine design and other applications related with cognitive processing and its impact on human behavior. This article discusses the impact of advertising of recognized brands on the visual selective attention of young adults in the consumption of alcoholic beverages. The discussion considered the model of dual cognitive processing, in which prolonged effects of exposure to brands with strong positive associations would result in increased selective attention and commitment to strong brands. An experiment with two brands of beer using an eye-tracking equipment to identify the patterns of visual attention was carried out. The results showed that there are considerable differences in young adults for visual attention, with greater attention to strong brands. The study may help to develop more effective marketing campaigns and products, providing the consumers a better experience. Furthermore, it also allows for a better comprehension on attention at the workplace, providing important insights in several areas of production, such as work safety, repetitive processes, equipment handling among others.


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