Abstract

Subjects viewed a brief flash of 8–24 dots of either two or three colors randomly arrayed. Their task was to move a mouse cursor to the centroid (center-of-gravity) of each color in a pre-designated order. Conventional and idea-detector analyses show that subjects accurately judged all three centroids utilizing an astounding 13/24 stimulus dots, with only a modest loss of accuracy compared to judging a single-predesignated color centroid. The ability to concurrently compute three centroids is important because it is believed that centroid judgments are made on salience maps that record only salience and are ignorant of the features that produced the salience. Our explanation, instantiated in a computational model of salience processing, is that subjects have three salience maps. Dots are initially segregated into three groups according to color, then each color-group is recorded on a different salience map to compute a centroid. In Part 2, the data are analyzed in terms of Attention Operating Characteristics to characterize impairments in subjects’ color-attention filters (mostly insignificant) and encoding efficiency (20% drop for the hardest task) in making multiple versus single centroid judgments. A new, more sensitive analysis measured five sources of subject error variance, four independent, additive sources of error variance: imperfect color-attention filters; a Bayesian-like bias towards a central tendency; storage, retrieval, and cursor misplacement error; a large residual error due mostly to inefficient encoding; and fifth, an interactive source – error in all four components that increases when multiple centroid judgments versus a single centroid judgment are required on each trial.

Significance statement

An important brain process is a salience map, a representation of the relative importance (salience) of the locations of visual space. It is needed to guide where to look next, for computing the center (technically “centroid”) of a cluster of items, and for other important computations. Here we show that in a brief flash of dots of three different colors, randomly interleaved, subjects can compute all three centroids. As a single salience map cannot discriminate dots of different colors, accurately reporting three centroids demonstrates that subjects have not just one, as is commonly believed, but at least three salience maps.

中文翻译：

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多个并发质心判断意味着多个组内显着图

摘要

受试者观看了随机排列的两种或三种颜色的8-24点的短暂闪光。他们的任务是将鼠标光标按预先指定的顺序移至每种颜色的质心（重心）。常规分析和思想检测器分析显示，受试者使用惊人的13/24刺激点准确地判断了所有三个质心，与判断单个预先指定的颜色质心相比，准确性仅有中等程度的降低。同时计算三个质心的能力很重要，因为据信质心判断是在仅记录显着性并且不知道产生显着性的特征的显着性图上做出的。我们在显着性处理的计算模型中实例化的解释是，受试者具有三个显着性图。最初，根据颜色将点分为三类，然后将每个颜色组记录在不同的显着图上以计算质心。在第2部分中，将根据注意力运行特征来分析数据，以表征受试者的色彩注意力滤镜（大多数情况下微不足道）和编码效率（最困难的任务下降20％）中的损伤，以进行多个或单个质心判断。一种新的，更敏感的分析方法测量了五个主题误差方差源，四个独立的，附加的误差方差源：不完美的色彩注意滤镜；对集中趋势的类似贝叶斯的偏见；存储，检索和光标错位错误；主要由于编码效率低而导致的较大残留误差；第五，

重要性声明

重要的大脑过程是显着图，代表视觉空间位置的相对重要性（显着性）。需要指导下一步去看，计算项目群的中心（技术上为“质心”），以及进行其他重要计算。在这里，我们展示了在随机交织的三种不同颜色的点的短暂闪烁中，对象可以计算所有三个质心。由于单个显着图无法区分不同颜色的点，因此准确报告三个质心表明，受试者不仅拥有一个通常认为的质心，而且至少拥有三个显着图。