29 European Conference on Visual Perception
St-Petersburg, Russia
20-25 August 2006


Important Note: The abstracts presented on this website have not yet been updated with author corrections and publisher revisions. See printed abstract book for most recent versions.

ECVP2006 Abstract




Training eye movements: Integrating top down and bottom up influences in visual search
      R C Dewhurst    
School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK
  lwxrcd@psychology.nottingham.ac.uk
 
      D Crundall    
School of Psychology, University of Nottingham
  david.crundall@nottingham.ac.uk
 

A central focus of vision research in recent decades has been to identify what visual search strategies people use in different contexts. Recent models of visual attention and eye movements have been primarily concerned with the bottom up influences of stimuli, via saliency maps, upon the decision to fixate a stimulus or to make a saccade to another stimulus. It is less clear however, how goal directed strategies effect saccade generation via top down control. This is the focus of the research to be presented. Using Findlay and Walker’s (1999) Model of saccadic eye-movements as a basis, specific strategies to enhance the efficiency of participants’ visual search have been developed. These “training” principles are purposefully implemented to reduce response times to target stimuli via two routes in Findlay and Walkers Model. It will be argued that top down control strategies can differentially affect the WHERE and WHEN pathways of Findlay and Walker’s Model, and that training can be directed to these pathways either independently or in concert, with different consequences. This research is particularly relevant to training the eye-movements of novice practitioners of complex tasks (e.g. learner drivers), where there has been mixed success in the literature to date.

Support:
Findlay, J.M. and Walker, R. (1999) A model of saccade generation based on parallel processing and competitive inhibition. Behavioral and Brain Science 22(4), 661-721.

Presentation Website:
None.

Keywords:
Saccades
Training

Presentation:
Perceptual learning in attention and visual search
Talk: Monday, 21 August 2006; 10:15-10:30

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