1. Preparatory attention in visual cortex
· THE CONCEPT
2. Attention
· On a daily basis…
· Our visual environment is filled with multiple objects that are competing for our attention.
· The amount of visual information entering our eyes is much greater that what our brain can fully process.
· Since our brain is limited in its capacity to process all sensory stimuli, we are prioritize some visual events while others are simultaneously excluded from processing. Which is also known as selective attention.
· Can anyone think of a time or a situation where you are aware of using selective attention? Exactly. This occurs on a daily in all of our interactions with the environment.
· Selection can be controlled by the observer in a top-down way. According to top-down processing, the brain selectively directs an individuals attention towards stimuli with features that fit in their internal goals
3. Top-Down (goal driven)
· For example; just a show of hands… has anyone taken a subway b4? Confused/ or overwhelmed on switching subway lines?
· When looking for directions to the central line in a Crowed visual environment like the London underground station with many people & signs, finding targets that guide us can be quite complex. However, our brains allows to allocate our attention to goal-relevant stimuli (such as the red color or even the letter string “central”) and ignore other visual signals.
4. What is Preparatory Attention?
· However, attention does not always start at the moment a scene is processed by the visual system; it often starts before, when internal goals are established.
· This intuitive concept of preparatory attention was described by William James; He believed that…
· THEREFORE; The search starts by deciding which object or feature to look for and representing this search goal in memory.
· Ex. CROSSING A ROAD
· WE decide to look out for cars before physically looking in both directions in search of the scene for the presence of cars.
· From previous experience the cars can sometimes hit pedestrians thus we have this we have this awareness of how traffic flows in that situation. This is because we have some schema knowledge about the situation.
5. Overview Battistoni et al. **** OVERVIEW *****
· Before interpreting the findings of the article…I just wanted to give you a quick overview of what I will be briefly discussing.
· **** OVERVIEW *****
· This article by Battistoni et al is a literature review, and the author chose to focus and investigate of the underling mechanisms of preparatory attention.
6. Types of Preparatory Attention **** FIGURE *****
· Preparatory attention can be directed to spatial attributes such as location (e.g., right of center), or to non-spatial attributes.
· These non-spatial attributes can range from low-level features like (for ex. upwards motion, color) or to high-level object categories (e.g., people, a car).
7. Spatial-Based Attention
· Many studies of visual spatial attention have investigated ...
