Defining a Link between Perceptual Learning and Attention

Abstract

Experts show amazingly high perceptual skills. Experienced jewelers routinely classify diamonds that appear very similar to the uninitiated into different grades with high precision. Within a few seconds, airport baggage security officers can detect forbidden inconspicuous materials through x-ray images. Such feats are possible because the experts' “eyes” are trained through practice and experience. Long after most aspects of brain development have ceased, repeated exposures or trainings improve our perceptual/sensory abilities, and cause neural reorganizations in the brain. Such experience-induced improvement, called perceptual learning [1], and the accompanying neural changes, called neural plasticity [2–6], underlie not only our ability to master a trade but operate at a more fundamental level to help us make sense of the world. We are constantly exposed to an overwhelming amount of sensory signals, most of which are not noteworthy. To function normally in the world, we must react quickly and precisely to the important signals, while ignoring or discounting the less important, just as organisms must do in the natural environment to survive. By directing attention only to important signals or being repeatedly exposed to signals in an important context, our sensory systems learn to process important signals more efficiently than the less-important signals. Reflecting this fundamental role of perceptual learning, studies have been conducted to examine mechanisms of perceptual learning and neural plasticity with various kinds of tasks and stimuli by using behavioral measurements [2,3] and neurophysiological [7,8] and brain imaging techniques [9,10]. Perceptual learning and neural plasticity have also been studied in all the sensory modalities including vision, hearing [11], and touch perception [12].