Eric Taylor

• PhD
• PostDoc Position at The Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence

Decades of research have shown that the orienting of attention follows a reliable pattern of facilitation then inhibition following a peripheral cue. However, the literature lacks a high resolution spatiotemporal map of this pattern. Moreover, the use of visual placeholders to highlight potential stimulus locations is inconsistent. This is puzzling...

The visual system allocates attention in object-based and location-based modes. However, the question of when attention selects objects and when it selects locations remains poorly understood. In this paper, we present variations on two classic paradigms from the object-based attention literature, where object-based effects are observed only when t...

Whole-integer ratios in musical rhythm are culturally universal. The reliable periodicity of rhythm inspired us to determine whether time perception, which is foundational to and inherently less structured than rhythm, is subject to similar biases. We created a random-interval generation task that exploits the nonrandom tendencies in perception and...

Dominant methods of investigating exogenous orienting presume that attention is captured most effectively at locations containing new events. This is evidenced by the ubiquitous use of transient stimuli as cues in the literature on exogenous orienting. In the present study, we showed that attention can be oriented exogenously toward a location cont...

The low-prevalence effect in visual search occurs when rare targets are missed at a disproportionately high rate. This effect has enormous significance for health and public safety and has proven resistant to intervention. In three experiments ( Ns = 41, 40, and 44 adults), we documented a dramatic reduction of the effect using a simple cognitive s...

The low prevalence effect in visual search occurs when rare targets are missed at a disproportionately high rate. This effect has enormous significance in health and public safety and has proven resistant to intervention. In three experiments (Ns = 41, 40, 44), we document a dramatic reduction of the effect using a simple cognitive strategy requiri...

This chapter sheds light on why relatively salient visual information does not obligatorily attract or sustain attention, and in doing so explains why interventions that use this tactic to drive consumer choice will not always work.

In neuroscience, a tuning dimension is a stimulus attribute that accounts for much of the activation variance of a group of neurons. These are commonly used to decipher the responses of such groups. While researchers have attempted to manually identify an analogue to these tuning dimensions in deep neural networks, we are unaware of an automatic wa...

Artificial intelligence powered by deep neural networks has reached a level of complexity where it can be difficult or impossible to express how a model makes its decisions. This black-box problem is especially concerning when the model makes decisions with consequences for human well-being. In response, an emerging field called explainable artific...

In neuroscience, a tuning dimension is a stimulus attribute that accounts for much of the activation variance of a group of neurons. These are commonly used to decipher the responses of such groups. While researchers have attempted to manually identify an analogue to these tuning dimensions in deep neural networks, we are unaware of an automatic wa...

Attentional allocation is flexibly altered by action-related priorities. Given that tools – and specifically weapons – can affect attentional allocation, we asked whether training with a weapon or holding a weapon during search would affect change detection. In three experiments, participants searched for changes to agents, shootable objects, or en...

Confirmation bias has recently been reported in visual search, where observers who were given a perceptual rule to test (e.g. “Is the p on a red circle?”) search stimuli that could confirm the rule stimuli preferentially (Rajsic, Wilson, & Pratt, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 41(5), 1353–1364, 2015). In this...

Popular frameworks of attention propose that visual orienting occurs through a combination of bottom-up (stimulus-driven) and top-down (goal-directed) processes. Much of the basic research on these processes adheres paradigmatically to experimental methods that introduce salient but task-irrelevant stimuli (objects or transients) to the visual envi...

Owing to errors made by the authors, Jessica K. Witt, J. Eric T. Taylor, Mila Sugovic, and John T. Wixted, the main conclusion of the article was reached using the wrong formula. A reevaluation with the correct formula confirmed the main conclusion. Jessica K. Witt, J. Eric T. Taylor, Mila Sugovic, and John T. Wixted (2015)

A common conceptualization of signal detection theory (SDT) holds that if the effect of an experimental manipulation is truly perceptual, then it will necessarily be reflected in a change in d′ rather than a change in the measure of response bias. Thus, if an experimental manipulation affects the measure of bias, but not d′, then it is safe to conc...

Embodied cognition holds that abstract concepts are grounded in perceptual-motor simulations. If a given embodied metaphor maps onto a spatial representation, then thinking of that concept should bias the allocation of attention. In this study, we used positive and negative self-esteem words to examine two properties of conceptual cueing. First, we...

The Ternus effect is a robust illusion of motion that produces element motion at short interstimulus intervals (ISIs; < 50 ms) and group motion at longer ISIs (> 50 ms). Previous research has shown that the nature of the stimuli (e.g., similarity, grouping), not just ISI, can influence the likelihood of perceiving element or group motion. We examin...

The visual system treats the space near the hands with unique, action-related priorities. For example, attention orients slowly to stimuli on the hands (Taylor and Witt, 2014). In this article, we asked whether jointly attended hands are attended in the same way. Specifically, we examined whether ownership over the hand mattered: do we attend to ou...

A growing body of evidence demonstrates that human vision operates differently in the space near and on the hands; for example, early findings in this literature reported that rapid onsets are detected faster near the hands, and that objects are searched more thoroughly. These and many other effects were attributed to enhanced attention via the rec...

Musicians sometimes report twitching in their fingers or hands while listening to music. This anecdote could be indicative of a tendency for auditory-motor co-representation in musicians. Here, we describe two studies showing that pianists (Experiment 1), but not novices (Experiment 2) automatically generate spatial representations that correspond...

Observed actions are covertly and involuntarily simulated within the observer's motor system. It has been argued that simulation is involved in processing abstract, gestural paintings, as the artist's movements can be simulated by observing static brushstrokes. Though this argument is grounded in theory, empirical research has yet to examine the cl...

According to the action-specific account of perception, perceivers see the environment relative to their ability to perform the intended action. For example, in a modified version of the computer game Pong, balls that were easier to block looked to be moving slower than balls that were more difficult to block (Witt & Sugovic, 2010). It is unknown,...

Through training, skilled parkour athletes (traceurs) overcome everyday obstacles, such as walls, that are typically insurmountable. Traceurs and untrained novices estimated the height of walls and reported their anticipated ability to climb the wall. The traceurs perceived the walls as shorter than did novices. This result suggests that perception...

Action-specific effects on perception are apparent in terrestrial environments. For example, targets that require more effort to walk, jump, or throw to look farther away than when the targets require less effort. Here, we examined whether action-specific effects would generalize to an underwater environment. Instead, perception might be geometrica...