The selective tuning model of attention: psychophysical evidence for a suppressive annulus around an attended item.

Full Abstract

The selective tuning model [Artif. Intell. 78 (1995) 507] is a neurobiologically plausible neural network model of visual attention. One of its key predictions is that to simultaneously solve the problems of convergence of neural input and selection of attended items, the portions of the visual neural network that process an attended stimulus must be surrounded by inhibition. To test this hypothesis, we mapped the attentional field around an attended location in a matching task where the subject's attention was directed to a cued target while the distance of a probe item to the target was varied systematically. The main result was that accuracy increased with inter-target separation. The observed pattern of variation of accuracy with distance provided strong evidence in favor of the critical prediction of the model that attention is actively inhibited in the immediate vicinity of an attended location.

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Author information

Author/s: Cutzu, Florin (F); Tsotsos, John K (JK);

Affiliation: Department of Computer Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. florin@indiana.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

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

Reference: 2003-Jan; vol 43 (issue 2) : pp 205-19

Dates: Created 2003/01/21; Completed 2003/04/07; Revised 2004/11/17;

PMID: 12536142, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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