Flexible resource allocation and prediction in attentive tracking

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Markus Huff; Professor Dr. Georg Jahn
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: from 2009 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 130519209

Many everyday-tasks require the simultaneous tracking of multiple objects of interest. In heavy traffic, for example, car drivers have to keep track of moving objects such as cars, pedestrians, and bikers. The challenge in such tasks is to maintain stability of visual selection in dynamic scenes, in which the objects may even be temporarily invisible. This happens in driving, for example, if a large truck temporarily occludes cars the driver attends to. In the second funding period of this project we build on findings of the first funding period by studying challenges of stable selection and stability mechanisms. We develop and test an account that describes how humans maintain stability of visual selection in dynamic scenes. We propose that the resources in visual tracking are deployed flexibly on the moving objects. Central to this assumption is that observers predict in order to keep track of dynamic objects. This prediction process provides stability during perceiving dynamic scenes. As long as there is no deviation between predicted and actual visual input, visual selection and attentive tracking are stable. The prediction process uses spatio-temporal information (speed, direction, texture motion) and/or feature information available at target locations. Further, we propose that attentive tracking is sensitive to social cues, which represent a special case of object feature as known from research using the gaze-cueing paradigm.We propose four experimental series that test this account. First, we test the hypothesis that object motion information contributes to the prediction process in MOT with tracking displays that violate the predictability of object motion information. Second, the proposed prediction process might also evaluate object feature information. We therefore employ a modification of the original MOT paradigm, which enables us to add conflicting feature information on the objects and to manipulate similarity between target and distractor objects. Third, we propose that processes of visual search are involved in re-locating one or more lost target objects. The moving objects are either visible during the complete trial or invisible for a short period of time. Results of these experiments allow us to specify how feature information contributes to tracking and to characterize and specify how visual memory contributes to tracking. In the fourth experimental series we use social gaze cues both to test if gaze cues are helpful in providing direction information in attentive tracking and effects on the stability of selection in attentive tracking. The goal of this proposal is to develop a comprehensive account explaining human attentive tracking of multiple moving objects and to test the predictions of this model in behavioral and eye tracking experiments.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Participating Persons: Dr. Frank Papenmeier; Professor Dr. Stephan Schwan