Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Concept Videos

Visual System01:26

Visual System

1.4K
Light enters the eye through the cornea, a transparent, dome-shaped surface covering the surface of the eyeball that helps to direct and focus incoming light. This light is then channeled toward the pupil, an adjustable opening whose size is controlled by the iris. The iris, a pigmented muscle, regulates the amount of light entering the eye by contracting or dilating the pupil, thereby ensuring optimal light levels for clear vision.
Once through the pupil, the light passes through the lens, a...
1.4K
Parallel Processing01:20

Parallel Processing

447
The brain processes sensory information rapidly due to parallel processing, which involves sending data across multiple neural pathways at the same time. This method allows the brain to manage various sensory qualities, such as shapes, colors, movements, and locations, all concurrently. For instance, when observing a forest landscape, the brain simultaneously processes the movement of leaves, the shapes of trees, the depth between them, and the various shades of green. This enables a quick and...
447
Gestalt Principles of Perception01:21

Gestalt Principles of Perception

825
Gestalt principles provide a framework for understanding how humans perceive objects as unified wholes within their context. These principles are essential in explaining the cognitive processes that make sense of complex visual stimuli by organizing them into coherent groups. One fundamental principle is proximity, which posits that objects located close to each other are perceived as a collective group. For instance, when dots are positioned near one another, the visual system interprets them...
825
Vision01:24

Vision

58.6K
Vision is the result of light being detected and transduced into neural signals by the retina of the eye. This information is then further analyzed and interpreted by the brain. First, light enters the front of the eye and is focused by the cornea and lens onto the retina—a thin sheet of neural tissue lining the back of the eye. Because of refraction through the convex lens of the eye, images are projected onto the retina upside-down and reversed.
58.6K
Association Areas of the Cortex01:21

Association Areas of the Cortex

7.8K
Association areas are regions of the cerebral cortex that do not have a specific sensory or motor function. Instead, they integrate and interpret information from various sources to enable higher cognitive processes such as memory, learning, and decision-making. Some key association areas include the following:
Prefrontal Association Area: This area is located in the frontal lobe and is involved in planning, decision-making, and moderating social behavior. It connects with primary motor areas,...
7.8K
Anatomy of the Eyeball01:20

Anatomy of the Eyeball

8.9K
The eye is a spherical, hollow structure composed of three tissue layers. The outer layer — the fibrous tunic, comprises the sclera — a white structure — and the cornea, which is transparent. The sclera encompasses some of the ocular surface, most of which is not visible. However, the 'white of the eye' is distinctively visible in humans compared to other species. The cornea, a clear covering at the front of the eye, enables light penetration. The eye's middle...
8.9K

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Quantifying the relationship between search efficiency and perceptual similarity in color space across different efficient search tasks.

Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance·2025
Same author

Emotional dissociations in temporal associations: opposing effects of arousal on memory for details surrounding unpleasant events.

Cognition & emotion·2023
Same author

Complex background information slows down parallel search efficiency by reducing the strength of interitem interactions.

Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance·2023
Same author

Distractor-distractor interactions in visual search for oriented targets explain the increased difficulty observed in nonlinearly separable conditions.

Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance·2021
Same author

Fixed-target efficient search has logarithmic efficiency with and without eye movements.

Attention, perception & psychophysics·2018

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Nov 26, 2025

Measuring Attention and Visual Processing Speed by Model-based Analysis of Temporal-order Judgments
13:00

Measuring Attention and Visual Processing Speed by Model-based Analysis of Temporal-order Judgments

Published on: January 23, 2017

10.1K

Prioritization in visual attention does not work the way you think it does.

Gavin J P Ng1, Simona Buetti1, Trisha N Patel1

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance
|December 14, 2020
PubMed
Summary

Attention theories often assume similarity guides search, but this study found otherwise. Visual search randomly prioritizes target-similar items after discarding dissimilar ones first.

More Related Videos

Investigating the Deployment of Visual Attention Before Accurate and Averaging Saccades via Eye Tracking and Assessment of Visual Sensitivity
06:46

Investigating the Deployment of Visual Attention Before Accurate and Averaging Saccades via Eye Tracking and Assessment of Visual Sensitivity

Published on: March 18, 2019

7.3K
Measurement of Neurophysiological Signals of Ignoring and Attending Processes in Attention Control
09:37

Measurement of Neurophysiological Signals of Ignoring and Attending Processes in Attention Control

Published on: July 5, 2015

9.3K

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Nov 26, 2025

Measuring Attention and Visual Processing Speed by Model-based Analysis of Temporal-order Judgments
13:00

Measuring Attention and Visual Processing Speed by Model-based Analysis of Temporal-order Judgments

Published on: January 23, 2017

10.1K
Investigating the Deployment of Visual Attention Before Accurate and Averaging Saccades via Eye Tracking and Assessment of Visual Sensitivity
06:46

Investigating the Deployment of Visual Attention Before Accurate and Averaging Saccades via Eye Tracking and Assessment of Visual Sensitivity

Published on: March 18, 2019

7.3K
Measurement of Neurophysiological Signals of Ignoring and Attending Processes in Attention Control
09:37

Measurement of Neurophysiological Signals of Ignoring and Attending Processes in Attention Control

Published on: July 5, 2015

9.3K

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Visual Perception
  • Attention Research

Background:

  • Attention theories commonly propose that visual search prioritizes items based on similarity to the target.
  • This assumption has guided research into attentional mechanisms and search efficiency.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To empirically test the assumption that attention prioritizes search items by similarity to the target.
  • To investigate the role of item similarity and distractor types (candidates and lures) in visual search.

Main Methods:

  • Participants performed visual search tasks with displays containing target-similar candidates and target-dissimilar lures.
  • Displays varied in homogeneity (candidate-homogeneous vs. candidate-heterogeneous) to assess attention allocation.
  • Response times were measured to infer search prioritization strategies.

Main Results:

  • Response times in heterogeneous displays did not favor high-similarity candidates, suggesting random attention allocation among them.
  • Lures incurred a response time cost independent of candidates, indicating prior rejection.
  • Findings contradict the similarity-first prioritization model.

Conclusions:

  • Visual search may involve a 'reverse' prioritization: distributed attention discards least target-similar items first.
  • Focused spatial attention appears to be randomly directed toward remaining target-similar items.
  • This challenges existing attention theories and suggests a more complex search mechanism.