Attentional spread in the statistical processing of visual displays

Abstract

We tested the hypothesis that distributing attention over an array of similar items makes its statistical properties automatically available. We found that extracting the mean size of sets of circles was easier to combine with tasks requiring distributed or global attention than with tasks requiring focused attention. One explanation may be that extracting the statistical descriptors requires parallel access to all the information in the array. Consistent with this claim, we found an advantage for simultaneous over successive presentation when the total time available was matched. However, the advantage was small; parallel access facilitates statistical processing without being essential. Evidence that statistical processing is automatic when attention is distributed over a display came from the finding that there was no decrement in accuracy relative to single-task performance when mean judgments were made concurrently with another task that required distributed or global attention.

The Representation of Simple Ensemble Visual Features Outside the Focus of Attention

“…Nevertheless, the targets in Experiments 1 and 2 were often distributed across the display such that the "virtual polygon", or convex hull, formed by the targets would often encompass several of the distractors. It is possible that distractors frequently received diffuse attention in these displays, which was insufficient to do the local computations necessary to accurately judge the individual distractor locations, but sufficient to accurately make judgments about the centroid of the distractors (Chong & Treisman, 2005a). Experiment 3 investigates this possibility.…”

“…Previous work suggests that processing summary statistics is improved when we spread our attention diffusely (Chong & Treisman, 2005a), and Treisman (2006) has argued that summary statistics are computed automatically under diffuse attention. The current results suggest that, even when our attention is focally allocated to a subset of items, summary features can be computed outside the focus of attention.…”

A Configural Dominant Account of Contextual Cueing: Configural Cues are Stronger than Colour Cues

“…Furthermore, it has been well established that participants were able to process the statistics of a display early on in the visual process. For example, Chong & Treisman (2003) showed that the mean estimates of a scene could be accurately judged within 50 msecs, while Oliva & Torralba (2006) showed that people could process gists of scenes rapidly after first presentation (see also Chong & Treisman, 2005a, 2005bOliva & Torralba, 2001, Rensink, 2002, Potter, 1975, 1976, Potter et al, 2004, Thorpe et al, 1996 for evidence of fast processing of scene statistics). Given that the backgrounds in Experiments 1 -4 here provided a contextual cueing effect, were highly salient and that scene statistics were assimilated early on it is highly unlikely that the background colour was not processed.…”

Fragile associations coexist with robust memories for precise details in long-term memory.

“…However, the tasks may have encouraged subjects to encode the objects differently. Simultaneous report (as in the free-recall task) compared to sequential report (as in the cued-recall task) may have encouraged subjects' to encode objects based on their "ensemble statistics" (Chong & Treisman, 2005;Brady & Alvarez, 2011). Using such statistics may have even helped subjects remember the objects more accurately (Orhan, Sims, Jacobs, & Knill, 2014).…”