Abstract
Top-down influence over short timescales (e.g. shape priming) has been shown to greatly improve success on high difficulty visual integration tasks by increasing salience, and over longer timescales, visual integration task training has resulted in enhanced visual integration performance. However, the possible benefit for task performance from combining the more immediate influence of shape priming with task training has not been explored. The aim of the present study was to determine if training in contour integration with added shape priming cues would improve performance on a contour integration task that has well-established psychometric properties. Subjects first briefly viewed a series of Gabor element displays with embedded contours forming shapes with the task of indicating which direction the shape was pointing (up, down, left, or right). A baseline threshold for target shape recognition was established. Task difficulty was determined by amount of jitter in orientation of the embedded contour elements. Perceptual threshold was established utilizing a staircase procedure. Subjects were then randomly assigned to training either with contour priming or without contour priming for 30 minutes a day, starting after baseline assessment, for a total of three consecutive days. After training on day 3, perceptual threshold was measured utilizing the same procedure as used at baseline. Using a two-way repeated measures analysis of variance it was established that both groups showed a significant decrease in perceptual threshold from baseline to post training assessment, but the effect of priming was not significant. These findings suggest that the top-down influence of shape priming does not modulate perceptual learning associated with visual contour integration training.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2014