Abstract

L. Itti, J. Braun, D. K. Lee, C. Koch, Attentional Modulation of Human Pattern Discrimination Psychophysics Reproduced by a Quantitative Model, In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS*1998), Vol. 11, (M. S. Kearns, S. A. Solla, D. A. Cohn Ed.), pp. 789-795, Cambridge, MA:MIT Press, Aug 1999. [1998 acceptance rate: 31%] (Cited by 33)

Abstract: We previously proposed a quantitative model of early visual processing in primates, based on non-linearly interacting visual filters and statistically efficient decision. We now use this model to interpret the observed modulation of a range of human psychophysical thresholds with and without focal visual attention. Our model -- calibrated by an automatic fitting procedure -- simultaneously reproduces thresholds for four classical pattern discrimination tasks, performed while attention was engaged by another concurrent task. Our model then predicts that the seemingly complex improvements of certain thresholds, which we observed when attention was fully available for the discrimination tasks, can best be explained by a strengthening of competition among early visual filters.

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