Attentional selection of moving objects by a serial process

Giovanni d'Avossa, Gordon L. Shulman, Abraham Z. Snyder, Maurizio Corbetta

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

15 Scopus citations

Abstract

How does the efficiency of attentional selection depend on the number of attended objects in a display? We measured the channel capacity (CC) of human observers during the attentional tracking of moving targets. The relation between CC and target number was used to estimate target-sampling rate. The sampling rate was halved when the number of targets was doubled, indicating that tracking was accomplished by a mechanism whose processing rate did not vary with target number. Systematically varying the dynamic parameters of the display provided inconclusive evidence for the idea that the time interval between successive samples of the same target increased with target number. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the selection of multiple moving objects involves a limited capacity processor.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3403-3412
Number of pages10
JournalVision Research
Volume46
Issue number20
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 2006

Keywords

  • Attention
  • Attentional tracking
  • Limited capacity
  • Serial processing

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Attentional selection of moving objects by a serial process'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this