9511633 TREISMAN The goal of this research is to study the formation, storage and retrieval of visual representations of objects. In particular, it will explore the separate effects of attention, of prior knowledge, and of the task being performed on the nature of visual memories. Recent research is revealing surprising evidence of the plasticity of the visual system: Information is often registered without awareness or conscious memory, although it can be probed using indirect methods like priming or interference with subsequent perception of the same objects. The conceptualization behind this research distinguishes between the reactivation of prestored representations of familiar objects (which leads to object identification or classification) and the creation of new tokens, either of familiar or of unfamiliar objects, representing the current stimulus as we are seeing it, in its particular, perhaps arbitrary instantiation. Several different priming paradigms will be used to study newly formed object tokens. One series of experiments will explore the object-specific integration of information in displays of moving objects. The general question is how we maintain the coherence and continuity of perceived objects as they move and change in a dynamic environment. Another explores the initial representations that are automatically generated without attention the first time a new object is seen. A negative priming paradigm, in which an unattended object becomes the attended one on a later trial, will be used to explore the nature and duration of these object tokens. For example, is their three-dimensional structure available? Is their shape abstracted from other aspects like size, color and orientation? Under what conditions can they be consciously retrieved, as well as passively shaping our perceptual responses? The focus will be on the ways in which these implicit memory tokens differ from the representations formed either for attended novel object s or for unattended familiar objects. The aim is to better understand what roles attention and prior knowledge play and how they interact in object perception. This research may well lead to a better understanding of the higher levels of processing in the visual system. It may have implications for ways of improving visual learning in a variety of skilled tasks, and for better understanding the various influences that unattended visual stimuli can have in shaping our behavior (for example in advertising). It may also suggest ways of linking the inferred processes to neural mechanisms in the brain, perhaps throwing light on the various difficulties experienced by neurological patients with damage to specific areas of the brain. ***
