In a sense, we have to imagine that a blindfold has been removed from the.
eyes and a 'pre-attentive' stage exists when light flood onto the eyes.
After that, the human makes sense of the view.
Treisman et al presented a theory (with experiments to test their.
speculation) that said that only objects within 'focused attention' -.
which I take to be equivalent to the small cone of achievable detailed.
vision[1] - would be analysed first for 'correct perception' and that this.
analysis would then serve to 'fill-in' the understanding of the rest of the.
view in a top-down process. The first action might then be to detect a.
focus (select), understand it in the sense of placing it into a context.
(identify) and then 'painting in the details around it both in terms of the.
view and the context to get a 'picture'. Within that process the rest of.
the view might be blurry to the perception and clearly would be influenced.
by the results from the 'focused attention' and by the individual's.
experience.
An important part of this process that would be the subject of later.
criticism is the idea of 'feature binding' where discrete features such as.
lines are bound together as 'conjunct' objects. As an example a large red.
object in a London street scene might be 'bound' as a bus, although another.
individual might favor another interpretation.
In a later publication [Levitin 2002] Treisman suggested that,.
"certain aspects of visual processing seem to be accomplished.
simultaneously (that is for the entire visual field at once) and.
automatically (that is without attention being focused on any one part.
of the visual field). Other aspects of visual processing seem to.
depend on focused attention and are done serially, or one at a time,.
as if a mental spotlight were being moved from one location to another.
".
The theory also seemed to be supported by the effects of 'practice' in that.
after repetition of the test, individuals become quicker and more efficient.
