Abstract

R. Carmi, L. Itti, The Role of Memory in Guiding Attention During Natural Vision, In: Proc. Computational and Systems Neuroscience (Cosyne), p. 105, Mar 2006. (Cited by 97)

Abstract: What is the time frame in which perceptual memory guides attention? Current estimates range from a few hundred milliseconds to several seconds, minutes, or even days. Here we answer this question during natural vision by revealing the time course of attentional selection. First, we generated MTV-style video clips from continuous clips by using jump cuts to connect semantically unrelated clip segments. We then asked participants to visually explore either continuous or MTV-style clips, tracked their eyes, and extracted rapid gaze shifts as objective behavioral indicators of attentional selections. The utilization of perceptual memory was estimated across viewing conditions and over time by quantifying the agreement between human attentional selections and predictions made by a neurally-grounded computational model. In the critical condition, jump cuts led to sharp declines in the impact of perceptual memory on attentional selection, which then increased monotonically for up to 2.5 seconds. Our study demonstrates that previous accounts of memory utilization in simplified laboratory conditions have repeatedly led to misleading conclusions. We propose novel hypotheses and experiments with hybrid natural-artificial stimuli to further elucidate neurocomputational mechanisms of attentional selection.

Themes: Model of Top-Down Attentional Modulation, Computational Modeling, Human Psychophysics