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Automatic Control of Visual Selection

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The Influence of Attention, Learning, and Motivation on Visual Search

Part of the book series: Nebraska Symposium on Motivation ((NSM))

Abstract

This paper seeks out to reduce the role of the homunculus, the ‘little man in the head’ that is still prominent in most psychological theories regarding the control our behaviour. We argue that once engaged in a task (which is a volitional act), visual selection run off more or less in an automatic fashion. We argue that the salience map that drives automatic selection is not only determined by raw physical salience of the objects in the environment but also by the way these objects appear to the person. We provide evidence that priming (feature priming, priming by working memory and reward priming) sharpens the cortical representation of these objects such that these objects appear to be more salient above and beyond their physical salience. We demonstrate that this type of priming is not under volitional control: it occurs even if observers try to volitionally prepare for something else. In other words, looking at red prepares our brain for things that are red even if we volitionally try to prepare for green.

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  1. Department of Cognitive Psychology, Vrije Universiteit, Van der Boechorststraat 1, 1081 BT, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Jan Theeuwes

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Correspondence to Jan Theeuwes .

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  1. University of Nebraska, 222 Burnett Hall, Lincoln, 68588, Nebraska, USA

    Michael D. Dodd

  2. University of Nebraska, Burnett Hall 219, Lincoln, 68588-0308, Nebraska, USA

    John H. Flowers

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Theeuwes, J. (2012). Automatic Control of Visual Selection. In: Dodd, M., Flowers, J. (eds) The Influence of Attention, Learning, and Motivation on Visual Search. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4794-8_3

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