Report
Attention, automaticity and priority learning
ADA242226
Defense Technical Information Center
01/01/1991
Abstract
It is widely held that there is a distinction between attentive and automatic cognitive processing. In research on attention using visual search tasks, the detection performance of human subjects in consistent mapping paradigms is generally regarded as indicating a shift, with practice, from serial, attentional, controlled processing to a parallel, automatic processing, while detection performance in varied mapping paradigms is taken to indicate that processing remains under attentional control. This paper proposes a priority learning mechanism to model the effects of practice and the development of automaticity, in visual search tasks. A connectionist simulation model implements this learning algorithm. Five prominent features of visual search practice effects are simulated. These are: (1) in consistent mapping tasks, practice reduces processing time, particularly the slope of reaction times as a function of the number of comparisons; (2) in varied mapping tasks, there is no change in the slope of the reaction time function: (3) both the consistent and varied effects can occur concurrently; (4) reversing the target and distractor sets produces strong interference effects; and (5) the benefits of practice are a function of the degree of consistency. (GRA)
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Attention, automaticity and priority learning
- Creators
- PRAHLAD GuptaWALTER Schneider
- Resource Type
- Report
- Publication Details
- ADA242226
- Publisher
- Defense Technical Information Center
- Number of pages
- 9
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 01/01/1991
- Academic Unit
- Psychological and Brain Sciences
- Record Identifier
- 9984213401602771
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