Rapid serial visual presentation

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Rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) is a scientific method for studying the timing of vision. In RSVP, a sequence of stimuli are shown to an observer at one location in their visual field. The observer is instructed to report one of these stimuli - the target - which has a feature that differentiates it from the rest of the stream. For instance, observers may see a sequence of stimuli consisting of grey letters with the exception of one red letter. They are told to report the red letter. People make errors in this task in the form of reports of stimuli that occurred before or after the target. The position in time of the letter they report, relative to the target, is an estimate of the timing of visual selection on that trial.

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The term, and methodologies to study it, was first introduced by Mary C. Potter. [1]

Peripheral reading

Peripheral reading is vital to those suffering from central field loss, which is most commonly seen in the elderly. Factors which might limit one's peripheral reading rate include acuity, crowding, and eye movements. Many find difficulty making the correct eye movements for peripheral reading, but the dependence on eye movements can be minimized through the presentation format of RSVP. [2]

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Attention Psychological process of selectively concentrating on a discrete aspect of information

Attention is the behavioral and cognitive process of selectively concentrating on a discrete aspect of information, whether considered subjective or objective, while ignoring other perceivable information. William James (1890) wrote that "Attention is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence." Attention has also been described as the allocation of limited cognitive processing resources. Attention is manifested by an attentional bottleneck, in term of the amount of data the brain can process each second; for example, in human vision, only less than 1% of the visual input data can enter the bottleneck, leading to inattentional blindness.

Saccade Quick, simultaneous movement of both eyes between two or more phases of fixation in the same direction

A saccade is a quick, simultaneous movement of both eyes between two or more phases of fixation in the same direction. In contrast, in smooth pursuit movements, the eyes move smoothly instead of in jumps. The phenomenon can be associated with a shift in frequency of an emitted signal or a movement of a body part or device. Controlled cortically by the frontal eye fields (FEF), or subcortically by the superior colliculus, saccades serve as a mechanism for fixation, rapid eye movement, and the fast phase of optokinetic nystagmus. The word appears to have been coined in the 1880s by French ophthalmologist Émile Javal, who used a mirror on one side of a page to observe eye movement in silent reading, and found that it involves a succession of discontinuous individual movements.

Visual acuity Clarity of vision

Visual acuity (VA) commonly refers to the clarity of vision, but technically rates an examinee's ability to recognize small details with precision. Visual acuity is dependent on optical and neural factors, i.e. (1) the sharpness of the retinal image within the eye, (2) the health and functioning of the retina, and (3) the sensitivity of the interpretative faculty of the brain.

Vision span Arc of accurate visual perception

Vision span or perceptual span is a controversial concept referring to the angular span, within which the human eye has sharp enough vision to perform an action accurately. The visual field of the human eye spans approximately 120 degrees of arc. However, most of that arc is peripheral vision. The human eye has much greater resolution in the macula, where there is a higher density of cone cells. The macula has a diameter of about 16 degrees of the retina. The field of view that is observed with sufficient resolution to read text typically spans about 6 degrees of arc, which is wide enough to allow a clear view of about five words in a row when printed text at ordinary size is held about 50 centimeters from the eyes. Regarding face processing, the field of view with a sufficient amount of information in order to recognise faces accurately spans about 7° which represents about 45% of a face. The brain creates the illusion of having a greater visual span by automatically and unconsciously moving the center of vision into any area of interest in the field of view.

Eye tracking Measuring the point of gaze or motion of an eye relative to the head

Eye tracking is the process of measuring either the point of gaze or the motion of an eye relative to the head. An eye tracker is a device for measuring eye positions and eye movement. Eye trackers are used in research on the visual system, in psychology, in psycholinguistics, marketing, as an input device for human-computer interaction, and in product design. Eye trackers are also being increasingly used for rehabilitative and assistive applications . There are a number of methods for measuring eye movement. The most popular variant uses video images from which the eye position is extracted. Other methods use search coils or are based on the electrooculogram.

Attentional blink (AB) is a phenomenon that reflects temporal limitations in the ability to deploy visual attention. When people must identify two visual stimuli in quick succession, accuracy for the second stimulus is poor if it occurs within 200 to 500 ms of the first.

Repetition blindness (RB) is a phenomenon observed in rapid serial visual presentation. People are sometimes poor at recognizing when things happen twice. Repetition blindness is the failure to recognize a second happening of a visual display. The two displays are shown sequentially, possibly with other stimuli displays in between. Each display is only shortly shown, usually for about 150 milliseconds. If stimuli are shown in between, RB can occur in a time interval up to 600 milliseconds. Without other stimuli displayed in between the two repeated stimuli, RB only lasts about 250 milliseconds. Repetition blindness tasks usually are words in lists and in sentences. They are called phonologically similar items. There are also pictures, and words that include pictures. An example of this is a picture of the sun and the word sun. The most popular task used to examine repetition blindness is to show words one after another on a screen fast in which participants must recall the words that they saw. This task is known as the rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP). Repetition blindness is present if missing the second word creates an inaccurate sentence. An example of this is "When she spilled the ink there was ink all over.” An RSVP sequence participants will recall seeing "When she spilled the ink there was all over." However, they are missing the second occurrence of "ink". This finding supports that people are "blind" for the second occurrence of a repetitive item in an RSVP series. For example, a subject's chances of correctly reporting both appearances of the word "cat" in the RSVP stream "dog mouse cat elephant cat snake" are lower than their chances of reporting the third and fifth words in the stream "dog mouse cat elephant pig snake".

Visual learning is a learning style in the Fleming VAK/VARK model where a learner needs to see information in order to process it. Visual learners can utilize graphs, charts, maps, diagrams, and other forms of visual stimulation to effectively interpret information. The Fleming VAK/VARK model also includes kinesthetic learning and auditory learning.

Visual extinction

Visual extinction is a neurological disorder which occurs following damage to the parietal lobe of the brain. It is similar to, but distinct from, hemispatial neglect. Visual extinction has the characteristic symptom of difficulty to perceive contralesional stimuli when presented simultaneously with an ipsilesional stimulus, but the ability to correctly identify them when not presented simultaneously. Under simultaneous presentation, the contralesional stimulus is apparently ignored by the patient, or extinguished. This deficiency may lead to difficulty on behalf of the patient with processing the stimuli's 3D position.

Visual search is a type of perceptual task requiring attention that typically involves an active scan of the visual environment for a particular object or feature among other objects or features. Visual search can take place with or without eye movements. The ability to consciously locate an object or target amongst a complex array of stimuli has been extensively studied over the past 40 years. Practical examples of using visual search can be seen in everyday life, such as when one is picking out a product on a supermarket shelf, when animals are searching for food among piles of leaves, when trying to find a friend in a large crowd of people, or simply when playing visual search games such as Where's Wally?

A continuous performance task, continuous performance test, or CPT, is any of several kinds of neuropsychological test that measures a person's sustained and selective attention. Sustained attention is the ability to maintain a consistent focus on some continuous activity or stimuli, and is associated with impulsivity. Selective attention is the ability to focus on relevant stimuli and ignore competing stimuli. This skill is associated with distractibility.

Eye movement in reading involves the visual processing of written text. This was described by the French ophthalmologist Louis Émile Javal in the late 19th century. He reported that eyes do not move continuously along a line of text, but make short, rapid movements (saccades) intermingled with short stops (fixations). Javal's observations were characterised by a reliance on naked-eye observation of eye movement in the absence of technology. From the late 19th to the mid-20th century, investigators used early tracking technologies to assist their observation, in a research climate that emphasised the measurement of human behaviour and skill for educational ends. Most basic knowledge about eye movement was obtained during this period. Since the mid-20th century, there have been three major changes: the development of non-invasive eye-movement tracking equipment; the introduction of computer technology to enhance the power of this equipment to pick up, record, and process the huge volume of data that eye movement generates; and the emergence of cognitive psychology as a theoretical and methodological framework within which reading processes are examined. Sereno & Rayner (2003) believed that the best current approach to discover immediate signs of word recognition is through recordings of eye movement and event-related potential.

The gaze-contingency paradigm is a general term for techniques allowing a computer screen display to change in function depending on where the viewer is looking. Gaze-contingent techniques are part of the eye movement field of study in psychology.

Visual perception Ability to interpret the surrounding environment using light in the visible spectrum

Visual perception is the ability to interpret the surrounding environment through photopic vision, color vision, scotopic vision, and mesopic vision, using light in the visible spectrum reflected by objects in the environment. This is different from visual acuity, which refers to how clearly a person sees. A person can have problems with visual perceptual processing even if they have 20/20 vision.

Chronostasis is a type of temporal illusion in which the first impression following the introduction of a new event or task-demand to the brain can appear to be extended in time. For example, chronostasis temporarily occurs when fixating on a target stimulus, immediately following a saccade. This elicits an overestimation in the temporal duration for which that target stimulus was perceived. This effect can extend apparent durations by up to half a second and is consistent with the idea that the visual system models events prior to perception.

Word recognition

Word recognition, according to Literacy Information and Communication System (LINCS) is "the ability of a reader to recognize written words correctly and virtually effortlessly". It is sometimes referred to as "isolated word recognition" because it involves a reader's ability to recognize words individually from a list without needing similar words for contextual help. LINCS continues to say that "rapid and effortless word recognition is the main component of fluent reading" and explains that these skills can be improved by "practic[ing] with flashcards, lists, and word grids".

Crowding

Crowding is a perceptual phenomenon where the recognition of objects presented away from the fovea is impaired by the presence of other neighbouring objects. It has been suggested that crowding occurs due to mandatory integration of the crowded objects by a texture-processing neural mechanism, but there are several competing theories about the underlying mechanisms. It is considered a kind of grouping since it is "a form of integration over space as target features are spuriously combined with flanker features."

Natural scene perception refers to the process by which an agent visually takes in and interprets scenes that it typically encounters in natural modes of operation. This process has been modeled in several different ways that are guided by different concepts.

Mary Crawford Potter is an American psychologist and Emerita Professor of cognitive science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Cognitive Science Society, and the Society of Experimental Psychologists.

Visual spatial attention is a form of visual attention that involves directing attention to a location in space. Similar to its temporal counterpart visual temporal attention, these attention modules have been widely implemented in video analytics in computer vision to provide enhanced performance and human interpretable explanation of deep learning models.

References

  1. "Potter, Mary Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emerita Brain & Cognitive Sciences". Brain & Cognitive Sciences. Retrieved 11 December 2020.
  2. Pelli, D. G.; Tillman, K. A.; Freeman, J.; Su, M.; Berger, T. D.; Majaj, N. J. (2007). "Crowding and eccentricity determine reading rate". Journal of Vision. 7 (2): 20.1–36. doi: 10.1167/7.2.20 . PMID   18217835.
  3. https://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Serial-Visual-Presentation-SpringerBriefs/dp/1447150848 - Rapid Serial Visual Presentation: Design for Cognition (SpringerBriefs in Computer Science) 2013th Edition
  4. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1057/palgrave/ivs/9500008