Task-set switching with natural scenes: measuring the cost of deploying top-down attention.

Interactions of Visual Attention and Object Recognition: Computational Modeling, Algorithms, and Psychophysics

vi Selective visual attention provides an effective mechanism to serialize perception of complex scenes in both biological and machine vision systems. In extension of previous models of saliencybased visual attention by Koch & Ullman (Human Neurobiology, 4:219–227, 1985) and Itti et al. (IEEE PAMI, 20(11):1254–1259, 1998), we have developed a new model of bottom-up salient region selection, whi...

Measuring the Cost of Deploying Top-down Visual Attention

Top-down attention switches coupling between low-level and high-level areas of human visual cortex.

Top-down attention is an essential cognitive ability, allowing our finite brains to process complex natural environments by prioritizing information relevant to our goals. Previous evidence suggests that top-down attention operates by modulating stimulus-evoked neural activity within visual areas specialized for processing goal-relevant information. We show that top-down attention also has a se...

A model of top-down attentional control during visual search in complex scenes.

Recently, there has been great interest among vision researchers in developing computational models that predict the distribution of saccadic endpoints in naturalistic scenes. In many of these studies, subjects are instructed to view scenes without any particular task in mind so that stimulus-driven (bottom-up) processes guide visual attention. However, whenever there is a search task, goal-dri...

Individual differences in multiple types of shifting attention.

Many researchers consider costs in shifting attention and mental set to reflect a basic ability to use top-down goal information to guide action. Although switch costs have been used as measures of individuals' executive function, whether common abilities underlie task set switching across different types of shifting tasks has not been well studied. In 249 participants, we studied whether switc...