Higher-order spatial correlations contribute strongly to visual structure and salience, and are common in the natural environment. One method for studying this structure has been through the use of highly controlled texture patterns whose obvious structure is defined entirely by third- and higher-order correlations. Here we examine the effects that longer-term training has on discrimination of 17 such texture types. Training took place in 14 sessions over 42 days. Discrimination performance increased at different rates for different textures. The time required to complete a visit reduced by 25.4% ($p = {0.0004}$). Factor analysis was applied to data from the learning and experienced phases of the experiment. This indicated that the gain in speed was accompanied by an increase in the number of mechanisms contributing to discrimination. Learning was not affected by sleep quality but was affected by extreme tiredness ($p \lt {0.01}$). The improved discrimination and speed were retained for 2.5 months. Overall, the effects were consistent with perceptual learning. The observed learning is likely related to the adaptation of innate mechanisms that underlie our ability to identify nonredundant, visually salient structure in natural images. It may involve cortical V2 and appears to involve increased strength, speed, and breadth of connections within our internal representation of this complex perceptual space.

中文翻译：

---

学习复杂纹理辨别


高阶空间相关性对视觉结构和显着性有很大贡献，并且在自然环境中很常见。研究这种结构的一种方法是使用高度受控的纹理图案，其明显的结构完全由三阶和高阶相关性定义。在这里，我们研究了长期训练对 17 种此类纹理类型的辨别力的影响。培训在 42 天内分 14 期进行。对于不同的纹理，辨别性能以不同的速率增加。完成访问所需的时间减少了 25.4% ( $p = {0.0004}$ )。因子分析应用于实验学习和经历阶段的数据。这表明，速度的提高伴随着助长歧视的机制数量的增加。学习不受睡眠质量的影响，但受到极度疲劳的影响 ( $p \lt {0.01}$ )。改进的辨别力和速度保留了 2.5 个月。总体而言，效果与知觉学习一致。观察到的学习可能与先天机制的适应有关，这些先天机制是我们识别自然图像中非冗余、视觉上显着结构的能力的基础。它可能涉及皮质 V2，并且似乎涉及我们对这个复杂感知空间的内部表征中连接的强度、速度和广度的增加。