Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference:	GR/R85006/01
Title:	Mechanisms of Selective Attention and Signal Detection in Human Vision
Principal Investigator:	Morgan, Professor M
Other Investigators:	Solomon, Professor JA
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Department:	Optometry and Visual Science
Organisation:	City, University of London
Scheme:	Standard Research (Pre-FEC)
Starts:	01 May 2002	Ends:	30 April 2004	Value (£):	80,142
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:	Vision & Senses - ICT appl.
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:	Healthcare Creative Industries Information Technologies Transport Systems and Vehicles
Related Grants:
Panel History:
Summary on Grant Application Form
Our current work, recently described in 'Nature Neuroscience' (Parkes et al, NN, 2001,4, 739-744) has confirmed that observers carry out OBLIGATORY averaging of tilted targets in a texture when their task is to report the orientation of only one target. In closely-spaced ('crowded') arrays observers base their decision on the average tilt of the elements in the texture, even when they know which position in the texture Is occupied by the target. In widely-spaced arrays the situation Is different. 'Cueing'; the target element position prevents averaging; however, In the absence of the cue, performance deteriorates with increasing number of distractor elements by exactly the amount predicted from averaging. This is puzzling, since even In the face of early noise, observers would do a lot better by reporting the orientaiton of the element that is most different from the mean (the MAX rule of Signal Detection Theory). We wish to investigate two possibilities (1) using the MAX rule requires serial search and thus a longer exposure time than the 100 msec used so far (2) If required to report the POSTION of the targe and not just its orientation observers will use the MAX rule (3) They will use the MAX rule if given practice and feedback.We wish to embed this in a more general investigation of observers use of the MAX rule in detection tasks, where there is at present considerable doubt about the function of spatial cueing and selective attention.
Key Findings
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
Potential use in non-academic contexts
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
Impacts
Description This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk Summary Date Materialised
Sectors submitted by the Researcher
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
Project URL:
Further Information:
Organisation Website:	http://www.city.ac.uk