The overall aim of the proposed research is to address theoretical questions about how people perceive, comprehend, and remember words and pictures. The research focuses on the early stages of processing in conditions of overload--when stimuli appear in a rapid sequence or when two targets are in close temporal proximity or both. Overload conditions can tell us how people allocate their attention and how they consolidate memory of a stimulus. In the experiments two words or pictures are presented close in time and therefore compete for limited processing resources. Potter, Staub, & O'Connor (2002) reported a surprising shift in attention between two words presented at stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) varying between 13 and 213 ms (the words appeared in adjacent streams of stimuli). At very short SOAs the second word was more likely to be reported, whereas at an SOA of 213 ms the reverse was the case, and the second word was often missed (an attentional blink). A two-stage competition theory is proposed: In Stage 1 detection of a possible target draws attentional resources, but attention is labile. If a second potential target is detected very soon after the first the two targets compete for resources. When one of the targets is identified as a particular word that word enters Stage 2 for consolidation in short-term memory. Stage 2 is serial: while one target is being processed, the other must wait in Stage 1 and may be forgotten. The 15 proposed experiments will test specific predictions of this model and will extend it to new domains. A computational version of this model will be developed. The long-term goal of the proposed research is to extend conclusions from this work to perception of the environment in normal viewing conditions, in order to answer important practical as well as theoretical questions about visual attention. ? ?
| Hagmann, Carl Erick; Potter, Mary C (2016) Ultrafast scene detection and recognition with limited visual information. Vis cogn 24:2-14 |
| Hagmann, Carl Erick; Cohn, Neil (2016) The pieces fit: Constituent structure and global coherence of visual narrative in RSVP. Acta Psychol (Amst) 164:157-64 |
| Potter, Mary C; Hagmann, Carl Erick (2015) Banana or fruit? Detection and recognition across categorical levels in RSVP. Psychon Bull Rev 22:578-85 |
| Potter, Mary C; Wyble, Brad; Hagmann, Carl Erick et al. (2014) Detecting meaning in RSVP at 13 ms per picture. Atten Percept Psychophys 76:270-9 |
| Endress, Ansgar D; Potter, Mary C (2014) Large capacity temporary visual memory. J Exp Psychol Gen 143:548-65 |
| Endress, Ansgar D; Potter, Mary C (2014) Something from (almost) nothing: buildup of object memory from forgettable single fixations. Atten Percept Psychophys 76:2413-23 |
| Endress, Ansgar D (2013) Bayesian learning and the psychology of rule induction. Cognition 127:159-76 |
| Wyble, Brad; Folk, Charles; Potter, Mary C (2013) Contingent attentional capture by conceptually relevant images. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 39:861-71 |
| Endress, Ansgar D; Potter, Mary C (2012) Early conceptual and linguistic processes operate in independent channels. Psychol Sci 23:235-45 |
| Meng, Ming; Potter, Mary C (2011) An attentional blink for nontargets? Atten Percept Psychophys 73:440-6 |
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