Abstract
It will be difficult to properly understand attention without understanding how it functions in the context of natural behavior. What principles control the selection of visual information from the environment? From the results of several studies that monitor eye movements in both real and virtual environments, several principles emerge. First, both selection and storage of visual information in natural tasks depend on momentary task relevance. Thus to understand attentional control we will need to have a theory that takes into account the priority structure of natural tasks. Second, observers deal with attentional limitations by using memory representations, and do not re-attend to information that is typically stable. Thus an important determinant of attentional control may be what observers have previously learnt about the dynamic properties of the world. Third, observers are sensitive to the statistical properties of the visual scene and rapidly modify overt attentional allocation when changes occur. These principles provide a basis for understanding the generation of complex gaze sequences involved in natural visually guided behavior.
Meeting abstract presented at OSA Fall Vision 2012