From Perception to Consciousness: Searching with Anne Treisman

439 Pages·2012·11.46 MB·English

by  Jeremy Wolfe

FROM PERCEP T ION
TO CONSCIOUSN E SS
Oxford Series in Visual Cognition
Series Editors
Gillian Rhodes
Mary A. Peterson
Perception of Faces, Objects, and Scenes: Analytic and Holistic Processes
Edited by Mary A. Peterson and Gillian Rhodes
Fitting the Mind to the World: Adaptation and Aft er-Eff ects in High-Level Vision
Edited by Colin W.G. Clifford and Gillian Rhodes
Human Body Perception from the Inside Out
Edited by Günther Knoblich, Ian M. Thornton, March Grosjean, and Maggie Shifrar
Understanding Events: From Perception to Action
Edited by Thomas F. Shipley and Jeffrey M. Zacks
Visual Memory
Edited by Steven J. Luck and Andrew Hollingworth
Perceptual Expertise: Bridging Brain and Behavior
Edited by Isabel Gauthier, Michael J. Tarr, and Daniel Bub
Th e Science of Social Vision
Edited by Reginald B. Adams, Nalini Ambady, Ken Nakayama, and Shinsuke Shimojo
From Perception to Consciousness: Searching with Anne Treisman
Edited by Jeremy Wolfe and Lynn Robertson
FROM PERCEPTION TO
CONSCIOUSNESS
SEARCHING WITH ANNE TREISMAN
EDITED BY EDITED BY
Jeremy Wolfe Lynn Robertson
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
From perception to consciousness : searching with Anne Treisman/edited
by Jeremy Wolfe, Lynn Robertson.
p. cm.—(Oxford series in visual cognition)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–973433–7 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Perception. 2. Consciousness. 3. Treisman, Anne.
I. Wolfe, Jeremy M. II. Robertson, Lynn C.
BF311.F76 2012
153.7—dc23
2011036765
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
PREFACE
Th ose who pick up this book, thumb through it, and, we hope, within and outside psychology, with some 3,600 citations all
contemplate reading it, probably know that Anne Treisman by itself. FIT raised to prominence the idea that early vision
has been a giant in the study of perception, attention, and encodes separate features preattentively in diff erent “feature
memory. However, not many readers may know the whole maps” and that attention was required to “bind” these fea-
story. Given our lamentable tendency to read only the last few tures into perceptually coherent objects (see Wolfe, Cave, and
years of the literature, this will be especially true for readers Egeth commentaries, chapters 5, 6, and 7, respectively). She
who have entered the fi eld fairly recently. In this volume, our went on to show that without this spatially focused attention,
approach has been to reprint a selection of Treisman’s most these features could be bound inaccurately to form “illusory
important papers from the past 50(!) years, accompanied conjunctions” of, for example, the color of one item and the
by new commentaries by authors whose research and think- form of another (see Prinzmetal commentary, chapter 9).
ing has been infl uenced by those papers. Taken together, the Later work, motivated by FIT, addressed an impressive range
chapters in this volume show the depth, breadth, and reach of issues in perception including: fi gure-ground segmenta-
of Treisman’s theoretical and empirical work. As one measure tion (see Peterson; Pomerantz and Portillo commentaries,
of that reach, the papers reprinted here from peer-reviewed chapters 11 and 8, respectively), perceptual learning (see
journals have been cited about 9,000 times. Chun commentary, chapter 10), spatial and object vision
Anne’s creativity and ingenuity was notable from the (see Humphreys and Riddoch and Robertson commentaries,
beginning. While still a young graduate student, her curiosity chapter 15 and 14, respectively), scene analysis (see Evans and
about unperceived visual percepts was refl ected in a study of Chong; Haberman and Whitney commentaries, chapters 13
sound fi ltering and attention to one stream or another that and 16, respectively), and implicit and explicit memory (see
was published in 1960 (see Cowen Commentary, chapter 2). Higgins and Johnson; Zhang, Johnson, Woodman, and Luck
In vision, she addressed similar questions in a study of bin- commentaries, chapters 18 and 17, respectively).
ocular rivalry, published in 1962 (see Blake commentary, Th e impact of Treisman’s work on the emergence of cogni-
chapter 4). Th us, from the beginning, her interests focused on tive neurosciences is also evident in this volume (see especially
unconsciously processed sensory information and how selec- the Hochstein commentary). Her work has spurred a wealth
tion aff ected what was seen and heard and what was not. of imaging, electrophysiological, and neuropsychological
As noted in the introduction by Glucksberg, Treisman’s studies of the relationship between perception and memory,
graduate dissertation in 1962 focused on the question of and these are discussed in several of the commentaries in the
whether attentional fi lters acted early (toward encoding) or present volume. Th roughout her career, Treisman introduced
later (toward response) in the processing of stimuli. She sug- creative methods and innovative solutions for some of the
gested that it could be a bit of both, depending on the task most challenging questions in psychology, including how the
(see Lavie commentary, chapter 3). A few years later Anne brain selects information for conscious awareness and how
published a seminal review of the attention literature in information that is encoded in bits and pieces can be inte-
Psychological Review that was central to the development of grated to form the unifi ed world we experience. Th e entries
the scientifi c study of selection and attention (see Duncan in this volume refl ect this quest and illustrate the diversity of
commentary, chapter 1). Th is paper articulated many of the ideas and experiments that she helped motivate.
basic issues that continue to be fundamental in the fi eld. Aft er
a few years and a great many new experiments, Treisman pro- Lynn Robertson
posed her enormously infl uential Feature-Integration Th eory Jeremy Wolfe
(FIT) (1980), which has continued to have broad impact both February, 2011
v
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INTRODUCTION
Anne Treisman was born in 1935 in Yorkshire, England. She look at a red ball rolling on the fl oor, we do not see redness,
was interested in science early on, but at her father’s wish roundness, and motion as separate percepts. Instead, we see a
that she become a cultured person, she switched to French, moving red ball. How is this accomplished? Anne proposed
Latin, and History for her last three years of high school. that there is a “spotlight” of attention that serially moves
Upon receiving a B.A. in Modern and Medieval languages at around in the representations of space in the brain, perhaps as
Cambridge, she was off ered a Research Fellowship to work for oft en as 25/sec. Th e features of an object are bound together
a doctoral degree in French literature. Th is time she decided when the spotlight of attention lands on the location of that
to follow her interest in science and used the fellowship funds object. In a sense, this suggests that we need to know where
(with permission) to obtain a one-year undergraduate degree an object is before we can know what it is —that is, before its
in Psychology instead. She obtained her PhD from Oxford features are bound together
in 1962, where her thesis, “Selective Attention and Speech Th is idea is quite counterintuitive. People are not aware of
Perception,” presaged her subsequent major contributions to either the serial scan, or of the binding process. Anne’s genius
our understanding of attention and perception. in examining this idea was in developing striking predictions
Anne joined the Princeton faculty in 1993, following of her feature integration theory (FIT) and testing those pre-
university appointments at Oxford University, University dictions empirically. One such prediction is that one process
of British Columbia, and University of California, Berkeley. is involved in detecting that a particular feature is present
Her academic honors include election as a Fellow of the somewhere in a visual scene (e.g., there is something red in
Royal Society, London (1989), Warren medal of the Society the scene), and a diff erent process in detecting a conjunction
of Experimental Psychologists (1990), National Academy of of features (e.g., there is a red X on the left side of a scene). Key
Sciences (1994), American Academy of Arts and Sciences evidence for this prediction came from the results of visual
(1995), honorary degrees from University of British Columbia search tasks. People are asked to look for a target item among
and University College London (2004, 2006), American some number of other items. Th e time to fi nd a target defi ned
Philosophical Society (2005), and the Grawemeyer award by a single basic feature (e.g., a red target among green dis-
in Psychology (2009, an award that recognizes outstanding tractors) was independent of the number of distractor items.
ideas in psychology). Her work has appeared in 29 book chap- Th is implicates a parallel-search process. If a target was not
ters and more than 80 journal articles, and her work is heav- distinguished by a single basic feature (e.g., a letter among
ily cited in the psychological literature, as well as prominently various other letters), then the time required to fi nd the tar-
included in both introductory and advanced textbooks. get increased as a linear function of the number of distract-
Her early work focused on how attention can fi lter per- ing items, suggesting a serial process of binding one item at
ceptual input, allowing only potentially relevant informa- a time.
tion to reach consciousness. Th e dominant theory at the time Th e theory predicted a phenomenon heretofore not
postulated a general, nonselective fi ltering mechanism. Anne observed: the phenomenon of illusory conjunctions. When
used a selective listening paradigm to see what kinds of infor- people cannot focus their attention, people may misperceive
mation get through the general fi lter. People wore earphones objects by combining features from other objects (e.g., see a
and were instructed to attend to only one ear. Messages in the red T when the actual objects are a red O and a blue T). It’s
attended ear were understood and remembered, those in the oft en been said that there is nothing as practical as a good
unattended ear were fi ltered out—they were neither noticed theory, and in Anne’s case her feature integration theory
nor remembered. However, potentially important informa- was good indeed. Th e theory helped to explain a puzzling
tion, such as mention of one’s name in the unattended ear, is symptom in patients with parietal lobe damage, known as
instantly noticed, demonstrating that the attentional fi lter is Balints’ patients. Th ese people have lost their ability to local-
selective. ize objects visually. According to FIT, if an object cannot be
In the 1970s her research interests turned from audition localized, then the selective attention cannot be deployed to
to vision, and to the feature- integration, or binding, problem. that object, making binding of features diffi cult if not impos-
Anne began with two observations: (1) Perceptual features, sible. Anne found that these patients had a major binding
such as shape, color, and motion, are processed by diff erent problem. Even when presented with just two objects, say a red
subsystems of the brain; (2) nonetheless, we experience multi- X and a blue T, the patients would oft en see a blue X or a red
featured objects as integrated wholes. For example, when we T, even if they were given unrestricted observation time to
vii
make their j udgments. Th is result was a striking confi rmation cited paper in the last 12 years in the main cognitive psychol-
of the counterintuitive notion that we need to know where ogy journals. Her papers on attention have been cited more
an object is to know what it is—that is, we need to know than 13,800 times. Her theory was instrumental in bringing
what features must be bound together. Because these patients together the behavioral phenomena of focused and global
could not attend selectively to diff erent object locations, they attention with what neuroscientists have discovered about the
display simultanagnosia (their inability to see more than one functions of the various pathways involved in representing
object at a time). locations and actions. Her work has been used by applied psy-
Th e theory also raises important questions. For example, chologists who work to improve the discriminability of such
if people must bind objects one at a time, how can we have things as railway and traffi c signals, and the search for weap-
immediate impressions of the detailed scenes that we encoun- ons by baggage inspectors in airports. With luck, the people
ter on a daily basis? Anne contrasted the operation of binding who design training regimens for airport security personnel
in order to individuate objects with a diff erent mode of atten- may well be able to use her work to speed up the process with-
tional deployment that processes sets of similar objects (e.g., a out loss of accuracy.
fl ock of geese) and even whole scenes. Th ese latter attentional Rounding out this brief summary of Anne’s career, her
processes provide information about the global properties of contributions extend to her training of graduate and under-
scenes, general spatial layouts, and gists of scenes, without the graduate students, her unstinting participation in both journal
need to bind features of individual objects. Together, focused and book reviewing, in grant-review processes, and in univer-
and global attention allow people to combine accurate iden- sity service. Binding all her features together, we enjoyed the
tifi cation of a few objects with quick apprehension of the gist friendship and collegiality of a complete academic.
of a scene.
Th e impact of Anne’s work on theory and practice has Sam Glucksberg
been enormous. Her original 1980 paper on FIT is the most Princeton, 2008
viii • INTRODUCTION
CONTENTS
Contributors xi Article: Treisman, A., & Paterson, R. (1984). Emergent
features, attention and object perception, Journal
Article: Treisman, A. (1969 ). Strategies and models of of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and
selective attention. Psychological Review, 76(3), 282–299. 1 Performance, 10, 12–21. 172
1. A research agenda for 40 years and counting: Strategies 8. Emergent Features, Gestalts, and Feature
and models of selective attention (1969) 13 Integration Th eory 187
John Duncan James R. Pomerantz and Mary C. Portillo
Article: Treisman, A. (1960). Contextual cues in selective
Article: Treisman, A., & Schmidt, H. (1982). Illusory
listening. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,
conjunctions in the perception of objects. Cognitive
12, 242–248. 20
Psychology., 14, 107–141. 193
Article: Treisman, A., & Davies, A. (1973). Divided
9. At the Core of Feature Integration Th eory:
attention to ear and eye. In S. Kornblum (Ed.)
On Treisman and Schmidt (1982) 211
Attention and Performance IV, Academic Press, 101–117. 24
William Prinzmetal
2. Focused and Divided Attention to the Eyes and Ears:
A Research Journey 32
Article: Treisman, A., Vieira, A., & Hayes, A. (1992).
Nelson Cowan Automaticity and preattentive processing. American
Journal of Psychology, 105, 341–362. 218
Article: Treisman, A. and Geff en, G. (1967). Selective
10. Perceptual Learning and Memory in Visual Search 227
attention: perception or response? Quarterly Journal
Marvin M. Chun
of Experimental Psychology 19(1): 1–17. 40
3. From the Mother Lode to Load 51
Article: Treisman, A. & DeSchepper, B. 1996.
Nilli Lavie
Object tokens, attention, and visual memory. In
T. Inui and J. McClelland (Eds.) Attention and
Article: Treisman, A. (1962). Binocular rivalry and
Performance XVI: Information Integration in
stereoscopic depth perception. Quarterly Journal of
Perception and Communication, Cambridge, MA:
Experimental Psychology, 14, 23–37. 59
MIT Press, 15–46. 237
4. Binocular Rivalry and Stereopsis Revisited 69
Randolph Blake 11. Plasticity, Competition, and Task Eff ects in
Object Perception 253
Article: Treisman, A., & Gelade, G. (1980). A feature- Mary A. Peterson
integration theory of attention. Cognitive Psychology,
12, 97–136. 77 Article: Treisman, A. 2006. How the deployment of
5. Establishing the fi eld: Treisman and Gelade (1980) 97 attention determines what we see. Visual Cognition,
Jeremy M. Wolfe 14, 411–443. 263
12. Reciprocal Eff ects of Attention and Perception:
Article: Treisman, A., & Gormican, S. (1988). Feature
On Anne Treisman’s “How the Deployment
analysis in early vision: Evidence from search
of Attention Determines What We See” 278
asymmetries. Psychological Review, 95, 15–48. 104
Shaul Hochstein
6. FIT: Foundation for an Integrative Th eory 139
Kyle R. Cave 13. Distributed Attention and Its Implication
For Visual Perception 288
Article: Treisman, A. (1988). Features and objects: Th e Karla K. Evans and Sang Chul Chong
Fourteenth Bartlett Memorial Lecture. Quarterly
Journal of Experimental Psychology, 40A (2) 201–237. 147
Article: Robertson, L. Treisman, A., Friedman-Hill, S., &
7. Some Refl ections on the Processing of Grabowecky, M. (1997). Th e interaction of spatial and
Perceptual Features 164 object pathways: Evidence from Balint’s syndrome.
Howard E. Egeth Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 9, 295–3. 297
ix