Noah Sulman’s research while affiliated with University of South Florida and other places

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Publications (5)


Complex Dynamic Scene Perception: Effects of Attentional Set on Perceiving Single and Multiple Event Types
  • Article
  • Publisher preview available

November 2012

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32 Reads

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5 Citations

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance

Thomas Sanocki

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Noah Sulman

Three experiments measured the efficiency of monitoring complex scenes composed of changing objects, or events. All events lasted about 4 s, but in a given block of trials, could be of a single type (single task) or of multiple types (multitask, with a total of four event types). Overall accuracy of detecting target events amid distractors was higher for single event types relative to multiple types. Multiple event types were processed reasonably well when each event type was restricted to its own region, and much worse when event types were mixed in location. In most task conditions, observers reached an optimal level of performance (optimal attentional set). After one target was identified, performance for other targets dropped markedly and then recovered to optimal levels. However, set was not optimized when task locations were intermixed. The results support the idea that attentional set determines the efficiency of event perception in complex scenes. Although single event set was most efficient, there can be a reasonably efficient set for multiple event types. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

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Color Relations Increase the Capacity of Visual Short-Term Memory

June 2011

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729 Reads

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17 Citations

Perception

Do color relations such as similarity or harmony influence the ease with which colored patterns can be perceived and held in mind? We tested the influence of a relation supported in research on color harmony--similarity of hue--on the capacity of visual short-term memory (VSTM) for colors in patterns. Palettes of 4 similar-hue colors were rated as more pleasant (harmonious) than dissimilar-color palettes. The palettes were used in a VSTM color task. Patterns of 9 to 15 colored squares were presented, and accuracy of color change detection was measured. Memory performance was higher overall for similar-color palettes than for dissimilar-color palettes (experiments 1 and 3). Is this due to color similarity per se, or due to the harmony between colors in similar palettes? A final experiment provided strong support for the importance of color similarity as opposed to harmony. Overall, the advantages for color similarity, in terms of number of color squares held in memory (memory capacity) were 26% to 45% over dissimilar colors. The results indicate that color relations can have a strong impact on the capacity for perceiving and retaining color patterns.


Figure 1. Stimuli (panels A-D) and results (panel E) for Experiment 1. Panels A and B show the prototype stimulus patterns. Panels C and D show stimulus examples with a display size of eight. Panel E shows the mean percentage correct in each condition. 
Figure 2. Stimuli (panels A-D) and results (panel E) for Experiment 2. Panels A and B show the prototype stimulus patterns. Panels C and D show stimulus examples with a display size of 16. Panel E shows the mean percentage correct in each condition. 
Figure 3. Stimuli (panels A-D) and results (panel E) for Experiment 3. Panels A and B show the prototype stimulus patterns. Panels C and D show stimulus examples with a display size of 16. Panel E shows the mean percentage correct in each condition. 
Figure 4. Stimuli (panels A-D) and results (panel E) from Experiment 4. Panel A shows the dollhouse with all locations filled. Panel B shows the 12 regions. Panels C and D show an eight-region stimulus pair in which the changing regions were the inner-lower left-rear and the inner-lower right-front. 
Overall Percentages Correct (PC) and Estimates of Sensitivity (d′ , A′), Bias (c, b), and Capacity (k), Averaged Over the regularity Condition for Each Display Size in Experiment 1

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How high is visual short-term memory capacity for object layout?

May 2010

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168 Reads

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12 Citations

Attention Perception & Psychophysics

Previous research measuring visual short-term memory (VSTM) suggests that the capacity for representing the layout of objects is fairly high. In four experiments, we further explored the capacity of VSTM for layout of objects, using the change detection method. In Experiment 1, participants retained most of the elements in displays of 4 to 8 elements. In Experiments 2 and 3, with up to 20 elements, participants retained many of them, reaching a capacity of 13.4 stimulus elements. In Experiment 4, participants retained much of a complex naturalistic scene. In most cases, increasing display size caused only modest reductions in performance, consistent with the idea of configural, variable-resolution grouping. The results indicate that participants can retain a substantial amount of scene layout information (objects and locations) in short-term memory. We propose that this is a case of remote visual understanding, where observers' ability to integrate information from a scene is paramount.


Priming of Simple and Complex Scene Layout: Rapid Function From the Intermediate Level

June 2009

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54 Reads

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13 Citations

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance

Three experiments examined the time course of layout priming with photographic scenes varying in complexity (number of objects). Primes were presented for varying durations (800-50 ms) before a target scene with 2 spatial probes; observers indicated whether the left or right probe was closer to viewpoint. Reaction time was the main measure. Scene primes provided maximum benefits with 200 ms or less prime duration, indicating that scene priming is rapid enough to influence everyday distance perception. The time course of prime processing was similar for simple and complex scene primes and for upright and inverted primes, suggesting that the prime representation was intermediate level in nature.


How effective is human video surveillance performance?

December 2008

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883 Reads

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82 Citations

In surveillance situations, computer vision systems are often deployed to help humans perform their tasks more effectively. In a typical installation human observers are required to simultaneously monitor a number of video signals. Psychophysical research indicates that there are severe limitations in the ability of humans to monitor simultaneous signals. Do these same limitations extend to surveillance? We present a method for evaluating human surveillance performance in a situation that mimics demands of real world surveillance. A single computer monitor contained either nine display cells or four display cells. Each cell contained a stream of 2 to 4 moving objects. Observers were instructed to signal when a target event occurred - - when one of the objects entered a small square ldquoforbiddenrdquo region in the center of the display. Target events could occur individually or in groups of 2 or 3 temporally close events. The results indicate that the observers missed many targets (60%) when required to monitor 9 displays and many fewer when monitoring 4 displays (20%). Further, there were costs associated with target events occurring in close temporal succession. Understanding these limitations would help computer visions researchers to design algorithms and human-machine interfaces that result in improved overall performance.

Citations (5)


... Geng, Leber, and Shomstein [21] recently called for research articles on attention and perception and published what they termed 40 different views. Research has also begun to address the complexity of realworld situations, which magnifies the importance of attention and priority (e.g., [6,[22][23][24]). Situations that approach real-world complexity are emphasized here. ...

Reference:

Attention-Setting and Human Mental Function
Complex Dynamic Scene Perception: Effects of Attentional Set on Perceiving Single and Multiple Event Types

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance

... A human expert observer seems to be capable of monitoring the scene for unusual events in real-time and taking immediate reactions [14] accordingly. Nevertheless, psychological research demonstrates that humans have a significantly limited capacity to monitor multiple signals simultaneously [17]. In a situation like an extremely crowded scene, with multiple individuals doing different behaviors, monitoring poses a significant challenge even for a human observer. ...

How effective is human video surveillance performance?
  • Citing Conference Paper
  • December 2008

... To be clear, it is not that more similar stimuli are easier to distinguish, it's that the precision with which a stimulus is remembered is higher when it is presented in the context of more similar (as opposed to less similar) stimuli. For example, a particular red stimulus will be remembered with greater precision when encoded in the context of other reddish stimuli, as opposed to when it is presented among dissimilar, say, green and yellow, colors (Lin & Luck, 2009;Sanocki & Sulman, 2011). Similarly, experiments on line length and orientation (Sims et al., 2012), and shape (Mate & Baqués, 2009) showed that precision was higher in a condition with lower variance among stimuli. ...

Color Relations Increase the Capacity of Visual Short-Term Memory
  • Citing Article
  • June 2011

Perception

... However, it is commonly suggested that memory representations are the sustained maintenance of perceptual representations (Harrison & Tong, 2009;Serences et al., 2009;Sreenivasan et al., 2014). Furthermore, working memory for location information tends to have better performance than for other features (Rajsic & Wilson, 2014;Sanocki et al., 2010). Indeed, most tests of visual working memory rely on spatial cues to indicate the to-be-tested item (as opposed to feature cues) due to superior performance for spatial cues (e.g., Heuer et al., 2016;Li & Saiki, 2015). ...

How high is visual short-term memory capacity for object layout?

Attention Perception & Psychophysics

... Trial timing was chosen to match previous spatial congruency bias paradigms (Golomb et al, 2014). The 500ms presentation time should enable sufficient time to process the depth cue and accumulate accurate information for depth perception from binocular disparity 1 (Adam et al., 1993;Sanocki & Sulman, 2009;Uttal, Davis, & Welke, 1994). Masks were included to ensure visual afterimages were not used to help with the same/different location task. ...

Priming of Simple and Complex Scene Layout: Rapid Function From the Intermediate Level

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance