Preattentive and Attentive Visual Information Processing

Abstract

Twelve (12) experiments are described in this report. The first nine (9) are concerned with the hypothesis that the identification of the values of stimulus features in multielement visual displays requires serial processing. Contrary to this hypothesis, the weight of the evidence suggests that feature identification can be carried out by spatially parallel processes. The remaining three (3) experiments are concerned with the ability to extract semantic information from several stimuli in parallel. Both alphanumeric character classification and lexical (i.e., word vs. nonword) decisions can be accomplished by parallel processes, but semantic categorization of words cannot. The implications of these findings for theories of attention are discussed. Keywords: Attention, Lexical access, Perception, Semantic processing, Subsidizing, Texture perception, Vision, Visual search.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 15, 1988
Accession Number
ADA197670

Entities

People

  • Howard E. Egeth

Organizations

  • Johns Hopkins University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Air Force Facilities
  • Analysis Of Variance
  • Biological Sciences
  • Coding
  • Computer Vision
  • Data Displays
  • Detection
  • Economic Forecasting
  • Identification
  • Information Processing
  • Judgment
  • Parallel Computing
  • Parallel Processing
  • Psychology
  • Scientific Research
  • Symbols

Fields of Study

  • Psychology

Readers

  • Computational Linguistics
  • Vision Science/Vision Psychology/Cognitive Neuroscience.