Visual attention to surfaces in three-dimensional space.
Year: 1995
Type: article
Abstract: Although attention plays a significant role in vision, its spatial deployment and spread in the third dimension is not well understood. In visual search experiments we show that we cannot easily focus attention across isodepth loci unless they are part of a well-formed surface with locally coplanar elements. Yet we can easily spread our attention selectively across well-formed surfaces that span an extreme range of stereoscopic depths. In cueing experiments, we show that this spread of attention is, in part, obligatory. Attentional selectivity is reduced when targets and distractors are coplanar with or rest on a common receding stereoscopic plane. We conclude that attention cannot be efficiently allocated to arbitrary depths and extents in space but is linked to and spreads automatically across perceived surfaces.
Authors: Z J He, K Nakayama
Institution: Harvard University
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2030059665