Attentional selection of moving objects by a serial process.

Full Abstract

How does the efficiency of attentional selection depend on the number of attended objects in a display? We measured the channel capacity (CC) of human observers during the attentional tracking of moving targets. The relation between CC and target number was used to estimate target-sampling rate. The sampling rate was halved when the number of targets was doubled, indicating that tracking was accomplished by a mechanism whose processing rate did not vary with target number. Systematically varying the dynamic parameters of the display provided inconclusive evidence for the idea that the time interval between successive samples of the same target increased with target number. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the selection of multiple moving objects involves a limited capacity processor.

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Author information

Author/s: d'Avossa, Giovanni (G); Shulman, Gordon L (GL); Snyder, Abraham Z (AZ); Corbetta, Maurizio (M);

Affiliation: Department of Neurology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63110, USA. giovanni(-atsign-)nil.wustl.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Vision research (Vision Res), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2006-Oct; vol 46 (issue 20) : pp 3403-12

Dates: Created 2006/07/31; Completed 2007/01/12;

PMID: 16857234, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Attention - physiology
Color Perception - physiology
Humans
Male

Male
Motion Perception - physiology
Photic Stimulation - methods
Visual Fields - physiology

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