Automaticity and attention: investigating automatic processing in texture segmentation with event-related brain potentials.

The present article deals with the question of automaticity and/or plasticity of processes in early vision. The detection of irregularities in an otherwise homogeneous surrounding, as studied in texture segmentation tasks, is considered an example of an automatic process in the processing of visual information. Participants in texture segmentation experiments are usually instructed to respond to the texture stimuli, i.e. attention is completely allocated towards them. Automaticity, however, would imply that processing takes also place when no attention is allocated to the texture stimuli and participants, e.g. perform another primary task. We investigated the automaticity of texture segmentation by recording Event-related potentials which allow to investigate processing also when no overt response is given. Three experiments investigated the role of attention in texture segmentation by varying task relevance of the texture stimuli. Participants had to either discriminate homogeneous or inhomogeneous textures or had to perform a different primary task of varying complexity. Two components were found to be sensitive to texture segmentation, a posterior N2 and a positivity within the P3 time interval. Both components were also observed when texture segmentation was task-irrelevant. However, while the posterior N2 was not affected by the complexity of the primary task and thus showed some degree of automaticity, the P3 was found to be dependent on the attentional resources left over by the primary task.

Learning to ignore the mask in texture segmentation tasks.

Although traditionally texture segmentation has been regarded as an automatic, preattentive process, participants confronted with texture segmentation in experimental settings (i.e., with brief presentation time and subsequent masking) are initially unable to perform the task. According to perceptual learning concepts, participants must learn to fine-tune their sensory channels before perception improves under restricted viewing conditions. The present article proposes an alternative perspective that emphasizes the role of the mask. Four experiments showed that the amount of observed learning depends on the structural and temporal homogeneity or heterogeneity of the mask. The authors suggest that learning consists of separating the task-relevant signal stemming from the texture from the task-irrelevant signal of the mask and of ignoring the mask.

Interactions between perception and action in a reaction task with overlapping S-R assignments.

We have used a novel task to study relationships between perception and action. Four experiments studied stimulus-response (S-R) relationships under conditions in which stimuli and responses were functionally unrelated (i.e., not assigned to each other by instruction) and merely overlapped in time. On each trial, participants carried out movements on a graphic tablet while observing motions displayed on a computer screen. The movement on trial n was specified by the motion observed on the previous trial n-1, whereas the motion observed on trial n specified the movement to be performed on trial n + 1. Results showed that stimulus motion had a contrast-like impact on response movement. Watching a small motion while performing a medium-sized movement increased movement size, whereas watching a large motion led to a decrease (Experiment 1). Further experiments showed that the contrast pattern was not affected by the mode of motion presentation (Experiment 2), or by the interval between motion and movement execution (Experiment 3). Contrast was also observed in the reverse direction, i.e., from action to perception (Experiment 4). We propose that the contrast effect is due to a mechanism for selective code modification. This mechanism acts to increase the distinctiveness of simultaneously activated perception and action codes in a common representational domain.