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J. Imaging
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Human Attention and Visual Cognition
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Human Attention and Visual Cognition

A special issue of Journal of Imaging (ISSN 2313-433X).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2021) | Viewed by 17775

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Thomas Sanocki

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620, USA
Interests: visual cognition; human perception; scene perception; scene understanding; attention; eye movement guidance; event perception
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Human abilities of attention and visual cognition are now of great interest to researchers in imaging and computer vision; the purpose of this issue is to present these human abilities in an accessible manner that speaks to those researchers and cognitive scientists in general, while providing a showcase for the brain. Ideal papers would provide big-picture insight into functional aspects of human attention and visual cognition. In addition, papers that explore the interplay of high-level human and machine concepts are of interest.

Further Information

Visual Cognition is a set of high-level processes that operate on incoming stimulation to select and extract meaningful information, including processes of visual search and scene perception. Attention refers to energy-related modifications of those processes, including effects of intentions and practice. Papers in all areas of human attention and visual cognition with research achievement and big-picture insight will be considered for this Special Issue. Explorations of the interplay of high-level human and machine concepts will also be of interest.

An ideal paper might present an expert’s view of a problem and theoretical approach, and describe supportive evidence with elegance. The goal is to review human attention and visual cognition, supported by current evidence, for educated readers such as computer imaging scientists and graduate students of all stripes. Length and tone should approximate an accessible chapter from a classic chapter collection, with reasonable explanations, and better pictures.

Many processes of visual cognition evolved for the everyday human activity of perceiving scenes, which is very dynamic, varying markedly with situational and task variables, and changing in size and temporal scale, breadth, content, and product. Research areas that reflect such dynamics are of particular interest.

Inquiries welcome.

Prof. Dr. Thomas Sanocki
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Journal of Imaging is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • attention
  • visual cognition
  • scene perception
  • event  perception
  • categorization
  • task switching
  • high level vision

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Published Papers (6 papers)

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Editorial

Jump to: Research, Review, Other

2 pages, 160 KiB  
Editorial
Human Attention and Visual Cognition: Introduction
by Thomas Sanocki
J. Imaging 2022, 8(12), 318; https://doi.org/10.3390/jimaging8120318 - 28 Nov 2022
Viewed by 1367
Abstract
In a world that is increasingly fast and complex, the human ability to rapidly perceive, comprehend, and act on visual information is extremely important [...] Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Human Attention and Visual Cognition)

Research

Jump to: Editorial, Review, Other

12 pages, 5773 KiB  
Article
Object Categorization Capability of Psychological Potential Field in Perceptual Assessment Using Line-Drawing Images
by Naoyuki Awano and Yuki Hayashi
J. Imaging 2022, 8(4), 90; https://doi.org/10.3390/jimaging8040090 - 26 Mar 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2448
Abstract
Affective/cognitive engineering investigations typically require the quantitative assessment of object perception. Recent research has suggested that certain perceptions of object categorization can be derived from human eye fixation and that color images and line drawings induce similar neural activities. Line drawings contain less [...] Read more.
Affective/cognitive engineering investigations typically require the quantitative assessment of object perception. Recent research has suggested that certain perceptions of object categorization can be derived from human eye fixation and that color images and line drawings induce similar neural activities. Line drawings contain less information than color images; therefore, line drawings are expected to simplify the investigations of object perception. The psychological potential field (PPF), which is a psychological feature, is an image feature of line drawings. On the basis of the PPF, the possibility that the general human perception of object categorization can be assessed from the similarity to fixation maps (FMs) generated from human eye fixations has been reported. However, this may be due to chance because image features other than the PPF have not been compared with FMs. This study examines the potential and effectiveness of the PPF by comparing its performance with that of other image features in terms of the similarity to FMs. The results show that the PPF shows the ideal performance for assessing the perception of object categorization. In particular, the PPF effectively distinguishes between animal and nonanimal targets; however, real-time assessment is difficult. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Human Attention and Visual Cognition)
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15 pages, 7779 KiB  
Article
Exploring Visitors’ Visual Behavior Using Eye-Tracking: The Case of the “Studiolo Del Duca”
by Serena Mandolesi, Danilo Gambelli, Simona Naspetti and Raffaele Zanoli
J. Imaging 2022, 8(1), 8; https://doi.org/10.3390/jimaging8010008 - 9 Jan 2022
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 3782
Abstract
Although the understanding of cognitive disciplines has progressed, we know relatively little about how the human brain perceives art. Thanks to the growing interest in visual perception, eye-tracking technology has been increasingly used for studying the interaction between individuals and artworks. In this [...] Read more.
Although the understanding of cognitive disciplines has progressed, we know relatively little about how the human brain perceives art. Thanks to the growing interest in visual perception, eye-tracking technology has been increasingly used for studying the interaction between individuals and artworks. In this study, eye-tracking was used to provide insights into non-expert visitors’ visual behaviour as they move freely in the historical room of the “Studiolo del Duca” of the Ducal Palace in Urbino, Italy. Visitors looked for an average of almost two minutes. This study revealed which parts of the artefact captured visitors’ attention and also gives interesting information about the main patterns of fruition. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Human Attention and Visual Cognition)
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Review

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18 pages, 651 KiB  
Review
Attention-Setting and Human Mental Function
by Thomas Sanocki and Jong Han Lee
J. Imaging 2022, 8(6), 159; https://doi.org/10.3390/jimaging8060159 - 1 Jun 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3118
Abstract
This article provides an introduction to experimental research on top-down human attention in complex scenes, written for cognitive scientists in general. We emphasize the major effects of goals and intention on mental function, measured with behavioral experiments. We describe top-down attention as an [...] Read more.
This article provides an introduction to experimental research on top-down human attention in complex scenes, written for cognitive scientists in general. We emphasize the major effects of goals and intention on mental function, measured with behavioral experiments. We describe top-down attention as an open category of mental actions that initiates particular task sets, which are assembled from a wide range of mental processes. We call this attention-setting. Experiments on visual search, task switching, and temporal attention are described and extended to the important human time scale of seconds. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Human Attention and Visual Cognition)
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18 pages, 1489 KiB  
Review
To Grasp the World at a Glance: The Role of Attention in Visual and Semantic Associative Processing
by Nurit Gronau
J. Imaging 2021, 7(9), 191; https://doi.org/10.3390/jimaging7090191 - 20 Sep 2021
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3101
Abstract
Associative relations among words, concepts and percepts are the core building blocks of high-level cognition. When viewing the world ‘at a glance’, the associative relations between objects in a scene, or between an object and its visual background, are extracted rapidly. The extent [...] Read more.
Associative relations among words, concepts and percepts are the core building blocks of high-level cognition. When viewing the world ‘at a glance’, the associative relations between objects in a scene, or between an object and its visual background, are extracted rapidly. The extent to which such relational processing requires attentional capacity, however, has been heavily disputed over the years. In the present manuscript, I review studies investigating scene–object and object–object associative processing. I then present a series of studies in which I assessed the necessity of spatial attention to various types of visual–semantic relations within a scene. Importantly, in all studies, the spatial and temporal aspects of visual attention were tightly controlled in an attempt to minimize unintentional attention shifts from ‘attended’ to ‘unattended’ regions. Pairs of stimuli—either objects, scenes or a scene and an object—were briefly presented on each trial, while participants were asked to detect a pre-defined target category (e.g., an animal, a nonsense shape). Response times (RTs) to the target detection task were registered when visual attention spanned both stimuli in a pair vs. when attention was focused on only one of two stimuli. Among non-prioritized stimuli that were not defined as to-be-detected targets, findings consistently demonstrated rapid associative processing when stimuli were fully attended, i.e., shorter RTs to associated than unassociated pairs. Focusing attention on a single stimulus only, however, largely impaired this relational processing. Notably, prioritized targets continued to affect performance even when positioned at an unattended location, and their associative relations with the attended items were well processed and analyzed. Our findings portray an important dissociation between unattended task-irrelevant and task-relevant items: while the former require spatial attentional resources in order to be linked to stimuli positioned inside the attentional focus, the latter may influence high-level recognition and associative processes via feature-based attentional mechanisms that are largely independent of spatial attention. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Human Attention and Visual Cognition)
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Other

16 pages, 959 KiB  
Opinion
When We Study the Ability to Attend, What Exactly Are We Trying to Understand?
by John K. Tsotsos
J. Imaging 2022, 8(8), 212; https://doi.org/10.3390/jimaging8080212 - 31 Jul 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2461
Abstract
When we study the human ability to attend, what exactly do we seek to understand? It is not clear what the answer might be to this question. There is still so much to know, while acknowledging the tremendous progress of past decades of [...] Read more.
When we study the human ability to attend, what exactly do we seek to understand? It is not clear what the answer might be to this question. There is still so much to know, while acknowledging the tremendous progress of past decades of research. It is as if each new study adds a tile to the mosaic that, when viewed from a distance, we hope will reveal the big picture of attention. However, there is no map as to how each tile might be placed nor any guide as to what the overall picture might be. It is like digging up bits of mosaic tile at an ancient archeological site with no key as to where to look and then not only having to decide which picture it belongs to but also where exactly in that puzzle it should be placed. I argue that, although the unearthing of puzzle pieces is very important, so is their placement, but this seems much less emphasized. We have mostly unearthed a treasure trove of puzzle pieces but they are all waiting for cleaning and reassembly. It is an activity that is scientifically far riskier, but with great risk comes a greater reward. Here, I will look into two areas of broad agreement, specifically regarding visual attention, and dig deeper into their more nuanced meanings, in the hope of sketching a starting point for the guide to the attention mosaic. The goal is to situate visual attention as a purely computational problem and not as a data explanation task; it may become easier to place the puzzle pieces once you understand why they exist in the first place. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Human Attention and Visual Cognition)
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