topic
attention
temporal
attention
spatial attention
feature based attention
presaccadic attention
perceptual learning
crowding
performance fields
method
psycho-
physics
eye-
tracking
fMRI
MEG
TMS
EEG
modeling
reverse correlation
speed accuracy tradeoff
2019
Yashar A, Wu X, Chen J & Carrasco M (in press).
Crowding and binding: Not all feature-dimensions behave in the same way.
Psychological Science.
Humans often fail to identify a target because of nearby flankers. The nature and stages at which this crowding occurs are unclear, and whether crowding operates via a common mechanism across visual dimensions is unknown. Usinga dual-estimation report (N = 42), we quantitatively assessed the processing of features alone and in conjunction with another feature both within and between dimensions. Under crowding, observers misreported colors andorientations (i.e., reported a flanker value instead of the target’s value) but averaged the target’s and flankers’ spatialfrequencies (SFs). Interestingly, whereas orientation and color errors were independent, orientation and SF errorswere interdependent. These qualitative differences of errors across dimensions revealed a tight link between crowdingand feature binding, which is contingent on the type of feature dimension. These results and a computational modelsuggest that crowding and misbinding are due to pooling across a joint coding of orientations and SFs but not of colors.
Kupers ER, Carrasco M & Winawer J (2019).
Modeling visual performance differences 'around' the visual field: A computational observer approach.
PLOS Computational Biology, 15(5): e1007063.
Visual performance depends on polar angle, even when eccentricity is held constant; on many psychophysical tasks observers perform best when stimuli are presented on the horizontal meridian, worst on the upper vertical, and intermediate on the lower vertical meridian. This variation in performance ‘around’ the visual field can be as pronounced as that of doubling the stimulus eccentricity. The causes of these asymmetries in performance are largely unknown. Some factors in the eye, e.g. cone density, are positively correlated with the reported variations in visual performance with polar angle. However, the question remains whether these correlations can quantitatively explain the perceptual differences observed ‘around’ the visual field. To investigate the extent to which the earliest stages of vision–optical quality and cone density–contribute to performance differences with polar angle, we created a computational observer model. The model uses the open-source software package ISETBIO to simulate an orientation discrimination task for which visual performance differs with polar angle. The model starts from the photons emitted by a display, which pass through simulated human optics with fixational eye movements, followed by cone isomerizations in the retina. Finally, we classify stimulus orientation using a support vector machine to learn a linear classifier on the photon absorptions. To account for the 30% increase in contrast thresholds for upper vertical compared to horizontal meridian, as observed psychophysically on the same task, our computational observer model would require either an increase of ~7 diopters of defocus or a reduction of 500% in cone density. These values far exceed the actual variations as a function of polar angle observed in human eyes. Therefore, we conclude that these factors in the eye only account for a small fraction of differences in visual performance with polar angle. Substantial additional asymmetries must arise in later retinal and/or cortical processing.
Fernández A, Li HH & Carrasco M (2019).
How exogenous spatial attention affects visual representation.
Journal of Vision.
Orienting covert spatial attention to a target location enhances visual sensitivity and benefits performance in many visual tasks. How these attention-related improvements in performance affect the underlying visual representation of low-level visual features is not fully understood. Here we focus on characterizing how exogenous spatial attention affects the feature representations of orientation and spatial frequency. We asked observers to detect a vertical grating embedded in noise and performed psychophysical reverse correlation. Doing so allowed us to make comparisons with previous studies that utilized the same task and analysis to assess how endogenous attention and presaccadic modulations affect visual representations. We found that exogenous spatial attention improved performance and enhanced the gain of the target orientation without affecting orientation tuning width. Moreover, we found no change in spatial frequency tuning. We conclude that covert exogenous spatial attention alters performance by strictly boosting gain of orientation-selective filters, much like covert endogenous spatial attention.
Donovan I, Zhou YJ & Carrasco M (2019).
In search of exogenous feature-based attention.
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics.
Visual attention prioritizes the processing of sensory information at specific spatial locations (spatial attention; SA) or with specific feature values (feature-based attention; FBA). SA is well characterized in terms of behavior, brain activity, and temporal dynamics—for both top-down (endogenous) and bottom-up (exogenous) spatial orienting. FBA has been thoroughly studied in terms of top-down endogenous orienting, but much less is known about the potential of bottom-up exogenous influences of FBA. Here, in four experiments, we adapted a procedure used in two previous studies that reported exogenous FBA effects, with the goal of replicating and expanding on these findings, especially regarding its temporal dynamics. Unlike the two previous studies, we did not find significant effects of exogenous FBA. This was true (1) whether accuracy or RT was prioritized as the main measure, (2) with precues presented peripherally or centrally, (3) with cue-to-stimulus ISIs of varying durations, (4) with four or eight possible target locations, (5) at different meridians, (6) with either brief or long stimulus presentations, (7) and with either fixation contingent or noncontingent stimulus displays. In the last experiment, a postexperiment participant questionnaire indicated that only a small subset of participants, who mistakenly believed the irrelevant color of the precue indicated which stimulus was the target, exhibited benefits for valid exogenous FBA precues. Overall, we conclude that with the protocol used in the studies reporting exogenous FBA, the exogenous stimulus-driven influence of FBA is elusive at best, and that FBA is primarily a top-down, goal-driven process.
Yashar A, Wu X, Chen J & Carrasco M (in press).
Crowding and binding: Not all feature-dimensions behave in the same way.
Psychological Science.
[pdf]
Yashar A, Wu X, Chen J & Carrasco M (in press).
Crowding and binding: Not all feature-dimensions behave in the same way.
Psychological Science.
[pdf]
Yashar A, Wu X, Chen J & Carrasco M (in press).
Crowding and binding: Not all feature-dimensions behave in the same way.
Psychological Science.
[pdf]
2019
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