Visualizing Trumps Vision in Training Attention

Abstract

Mental imagery can have powerful training effects on behavior, but how this occurs is not well understood. Here we show that even a single instance of mental imagery can improve attentional selection of a target more effectively than actually practicing visual search. By recording subjects’ brain activity, we show that these imagery induced training effects were due to perceptual attention being more effectively focused on targets following imagined training. Next, we show the downside of this potent training by changing the target after several trials of training attention with imagery. Finally, we found that proactive interference from task-irrelevant elements in the visual displays appears to underlie the superiority of imagined training compared to actual practice. Our findings demonstrate that visual attention mechanisms can be effectively trained to select target objects in the absence of visual input, and this results in more effective control of attention than practicing the task itself.

The effect of visualization on visual search performance

“…An interesting recent study by Reinhart et al (2015) demonstrated that attentional mechanisms can be effectively trained to select target objects through visualization. Moreover, they found that visualizing search for a particular target in an imagined array can speed reaction time to find the target on a subsequent trial even more than actually searching for the target in an array presented on the screen.…”

“…If it is the case that visualization is more effective because it isolates the facilitative components of the task, for example, vague or incomplete representations may in fact be superior to less vivid or detailed ones. We therefore plan to first replicate the original study by Reinhart et al (2015), focusing specifically on the behavioral results. Omitting the recording of EEG allows us to use a slightly simplified stimuli design to test the original results, without the second irrelevant colored distractor (only included in the original study to allow for comparison of the lateralized N2PC component between the two Hemifields).…”

“…Provided we replicate the original findings, we also plan to run a second experiment using a more traditional visual search paradigm using an array of C's of uniform color, in which the observer's task is to determine whether the target (a C of the cued orientation) is present or absent. If the superiority of visualization over practice at search is Reinhart et al (2015) new 500 Results over all participants. The mean reaction time was first computed for each participant, and then the mean of the means and associated standard error were plotted.…”

“…The mean reaction time was first computed for each participant, and then the mean of the means and associated standard error were plotted. Note: in order to facilitate comparison with Reinhart et al (2015), the error bars indicate ± standard error, rather than 95 % confidence intervals due to proactive interference from the distractors when the search array is presented, there should be even larger benefits of visualization when serial search of all the items is required.…”

“…

Abstract Striking results recently demonstrated that visualizing search for a target can facilitate visual search for that target on subsequent trials (Reinhart et al, 2015). This visualization benefit was even greater than the benefit of actually repeating search for the target.

…”