Long Term Visual Associations affect Attentional Guidance By Christian N. L. Olivers

1. Long Term Visual Associations affect Attentional GuidanceBy Christian N. L. Olivers Katie, Josh, and Ellie

2. Past studies • Focused on what makes stimulus important • Color • Orientation • Relevance • Search template: representation of visual object one is searching for

3. Past studies • Visual Short Term memory generates attentional bias towards, or against, visual search target by preactivating perceptual representations • Studied many times, including Oliver, et al 2006

4. Past Studies • Long-term Memory in Use as well • Soto and Humphreys, 2007 found that when subjects read the words “red square” prior to a visual search task, a red square distracter in the actual task would indeed slow subjects’ search time down.

5. Past studies • Moores, et al 2003 studied LTM and language-vision interaction on attentional guidance • Heuttig and Altman,2005 • Allopenna et al, 1998

6. Present Study • Investigates influence of long term visual memory associations on attention set • If particular objects are strongly associated with a visual property (such as color), attention may be automatically guided by this property, even if it is task irrelevant.

7. Speed limit 50

9. “Speed limit 50” • Used written instruction in order to avoid visual cue • Visual cue would bring affect working memory • subject told to ignore color, search for shape • Target-related “distractor” only related in color, not in shape

10. Effect of search performance due to • Task irrelevant color • NOT task relevant shape

11. Manipulation #1COLOR of Distractor • Related to Target VS. Unrelated to Target • Measures impact of irrelevant, but associated visual attributes • Control for salience

12. Other Manipulations • Target Presence • SOA

13. Prediction • If irrelevant but associated visual attributes automatically guide attention, then search performance should be worse when color related distractors are present.

14. Results • Errors: • Only found effect of target presence • More misses on Target Present trials then on Target Absent trials • Reaction Time: • Slower for short SOA trials then long SOA trials • Slower for Target Absent trials then Target Present trials • ~37ms slower when color was related to target then when it was unrelated. • Found correlation between reaction time and driving experience, and reaction time and age

15. Conclusions • The experimenters believed visual properties that were irrelevant, but related, to the task at hand (i.e. color) would automatically guide attention • Related distractors slowed searches more than unrelated distractors • These results confirmed their hypothesis • They also have further implications

16. Conclusions • The results may also be immediately related to long term memory • When looking for a particular object, related distractors capture attention, even when it is known that they should be ignored • This suggests that in a search task, one must retrieve all, not part, of the desired visual search template from long term memory

17. Conclusions • Olivers’ results, when taken in tandem with the results gained by Bravo and Farid(2009), have even further implications to visual attention • We have discussed both goal-directed and stimulus-directed models of attention • Anderson suggested a third reward-driven model of attention • This model requires an object to be “learned” as a reward

18. Conclusions • Olivers’ findings suggest that we use learned visual properties and their relations to create search templates and facilitate our search task • Taken together, the results suggest that visual attention and memory is learning based • Associative learning

19. Further Research • Examine if the trend found by Olivers holds when more complex visual stimuli, such as shape is used as a distractor • One point that Olivers brought up is that participants had no true incentive to avoid the distractor • What if we gave them incentive?

20. Further Research • Anderson – Olivers Hybrid Experiment • Anderson implemented a reward-counter • Similar task to Olivers, but add reward-counter • Track observer’s eye movements • If their search goes quickly and directly to target, reward is increased • If their gaze deviates to distractor, reward decreased • If given incentive, can observers consciously suppress the effect Olivers discovered? • Or will their attempts draw increased awareness to the distractor?