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Attention-based visual routines: sprites.

P Cavanagh·A T Labianca·I M Thornton
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Abstract

A central role of visual attention is to generate object descriptions that are not available from early vision. Simple examples are counting elements in a display or deciding whether a dot is inside or outside a closed contour (Ullman, Cognition 18 (1984) 97). We are interested in the high-level descriptions of dynamic patterns - the motions that characterize familiar objects undergoing stereotypical action - such as a pencil bouncing on a table top, a butterfly in flight, or a closing door. We examine whether the perception of these action patterns is mediated by attention as a high-level animation or 'sprite'. We have studied the discrimination of displays made up of simple, rigidly linked sets of points in motion: either pairs of points in orbiting motion or 11 points in biological motion mimicking human walking. We find that discrimination of even the simplest dynamic patterns demands attention.

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AttentionDiscrimination, PsychologicalHumansLinear ModelsMotion PerceptionReaction TimeRecognition, PsychologyClinical TrialJournal ArticleRandomized Controlled TrialResearch Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

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BibTeXRIS

P Cavanagh, A T Labianca, I M Thornton. 2001. Attention-based visual routines: sprites.. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0010-0277(00)00153-0

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