Expert-Novice Differences in Perceiving and Processing Visual Classroom Information

In this study, systemic neurophysiological and neuropsychological mechanisms providing processing of visual information in subjects suffering from auditory deprivation were examined. In 30 men (21 to 25 year old) with complete congenital deafness and 30 control normally hearing men of the same age (groups D and C, respectively), cortical visual evoked potentials (VEPs, photostimulation of the right and left eyes by LED flashes, recording from the O1 and O2 loci) and neurodynamic characteristics of processing of visual information within the go/nogo/go paradigm were analyzed. Under conditions of the respective tests, all indices that characterize processing of simple visual information in deaf subjects (including number of processed stimuli, minimum exposure of the signal, and number of errors) were significantly worse than in the control group. It was also found that median values of the latency of the early VEP components (P1, N1, and P2) in group D were significantly smaller than the respective values in group C. At the same time, median latencies of the late VEP waves (N2 and P3) in deaf subjects were significantly greater than the analogous C-group values. Median values of the peak-to-peak amplitudes of all, with no exceptions, VEP components in group D were significantly (two times or even more) smaller than those in control subjects. Patterns of correlations between the indices of visual information processing and time/amplitude parameters of visual VEPs in the examined groups noticeably differed from each other. Thus, specific brain mechanisms responsible for processing of visual information in persons with auditory deprivation and with normal hearing demonstrate significant dissimilarity; central mechanisms of the visual system in deaf subjects undergo considerable cross-modality modifications.

In visual perception and information processing, a cascade of associations is hypothesized to flow from the structure of the visual stimulus to neural activity along the retinogeniculostriate visual system to behavior and action. Do visual perception and information processing adhere to this cascade near the beginning of life? To date, this three-stage hypothetical cascade has not been comprehensively tested in infants. In two related experiments, we attempted to expose this cascade in 6-month-old infants. Specifically, we presented infants with two levels of visual stimulus intensity, we measured electrical activity at the infant cortex, and we assessed infants’ preferential looking behavior. Chromatic saturation provided a convenient stimulus dimension to test the cascade because greater saturation is known to excite increased activity in the primate visual system and is generally hypothesized to stimulate visual preference. Experiment 1 revealed that infants prefer (look longer) at the more saturated of two colors otherwise matched in hue and brightness. Experiment 2 showed increased aggregate neural cortical excitation in infants (and adults) to the more saturated of the same pair of colors. Thus, experiments 1 and 2 taken together confirm a cascade: Visual stimulation of relatively greater intensity evokes relatively greater levels of bioelectrical cortical activity which in turn is associated with relatively greater visual attention. As this cascade obtains near the beginning of life, it helps to account for early visual preferences and visual information processing.

It is recognized that the internal mechanisms for visual information processing are based on semantic inferences where visual information is represented and processed as visual semantic objects rather than direct images or episode pictures in the long-term memory. This article presents a cognitive informatics theory of visual information and knowledge processing in the brain. A set of cognitive principles of visual perception is reviewed particularly the classic gestalt principles, the cognitive informatics principles, and the hypercolumn theory. A visual frame theory is developed to explain the visual information processing mechanisms of human vision, where the size of a unit visual frame is tested and calibrated based on vision experiments. The framework of human visual information processing is established in order to elaborate mechanisms of visual information processing and the compatibility of internal representations between visual and abstract information and knowledge in the brain.

It is recognized that the internal mechanisms for visual information processing are based on semantic inferences where visual information is represented and processed as visual semantic objects rather than direct images or episode pictures in the long-term memory. This article presents a cognitive informatics theory of visual information and knowledge processing in the brain. A set of cognitive principles of visual perception is reviewed particularly the classic gestalt principles, the cognitive informatics principles, and the hypercolumn theory. A visual frame theory is developed to explain the visual information processing mechanisms of human vision, where the size of a unit visual frame is tested and calibrated based on vision experiments. The framework of human visual information processing is established in order to elaborate mechanisms of visual information processing and the compatibility of internal representations between visual and abstract information and knowledge in the brain.

This study explored whether benzodiazepines selectively affect aspects of attention and/or visual information processing, as they do memory. A cued visual-search paradigm was employed, using normal volunteers and a single dose of triazolam. This paradigm provided for a detailed examination of two aspects of visual attention and information processing: 1) controlled versus automatic attention allocation (via central and peripheral cues), and 2) the extent to which processing an item in a non-cued location affects performance (via cue-validity). Triazolam, compared to placebo, significantly increased response time, and Drug Condition interacted with Cue-Validity but not Cue-Type. Based on these data, we argue that triazolam does not affect attention allocation but does affect attentional disengagement and/or attention switching mechanisms.

<p><strong>Context and relevance.</strong> Accuracy of object distance estimation in a distant space is affected by the integration of visual, proprioceptive, and vestibular information. <strong>Objective:</strong> examining the contribution of visual, proprioceptive and vestibular information in estimating the egocentric distance of an object in peripersonal space. <strong>Hypothesis.</strong> Reliance on the integration of visual and proprioceptive information will predominantly affect the accuracy of estimating the distance of objects in peripersonal space. <strong>Methods and materials.</strong> 22 participants were estimating egocentric distances of a stimulus, positioned on 20, 40 and 60 cm. Three tasks were used: the guidance task — GT (including visual information), the verbal assessment task — VAT (visual information and higher cognitive processes), and the motor reproduction task — MRT (visual and proprioceptive information). In half of the experimental situations, the subjects were rotated around their vertical axis, which caused the deprivation of vestibular information. <strong>Results.</strong> Results indicate that the subjects most accurately estimated the stimulus distance when they integrated visual and proprioceptive information (MRT). When relying only on visual information, respondents overestimated stimulus distance (GT), while relying on a combination of visual information and higher cognitive processes when estimating distance (VAT), subjects consistently underestimated distance. Deprivation of vestibular information reduce differences in estimation errors between the three tasks. <strong>Conclusions. </strong>The accuracy of distance estimation relies on the integration of all information available to them from the senses in order to estimate egocentric distance as accurately as possible.</p>

Information processing and reading competencies in hydrocephalic children

In previous studies of human information processing, the visual separate system and the auditory separate system have been frequently studied. However, human related characteristic between visual and auditory systems has not been investigated substantially. If the mechanisms of human visual and auditory parallel information processing are elucidated, the finding will contribute to improving technical systems. In our previous studies, human related characteristic between visual search and speech perception is studied. The results showed the mutual effect between visual information processing and auditory information processing in the visual and the auditory parallel information processing. However, to clarify the cause of many car accidents lies in the use of car-phone on driving, it is necessary to use the same kind of visual and auditory stimuli in psychological experiments. In this paper, characteristic of reaction time in parallel information processing of human visual and auditory system is measured by using the same kind of stimuli. The experimental results show the factors that influence the visual and the auditory reaction time are the difficulty of the visual and the auditory stimuli and the timing of the visual and the auditory inputs. The experimental results also suggest that one of the causes of car accidents (to use car-phone while driving) is that the human visual information processing is affected by the auditory information.

Processing of emotional visual information engages cognitive functions and induces arousal. We aimed to examine the modulatory role of emotional valence on brain activations linked to the processing of visual information and those linked to arousal. Participants were scanned and their pupil size was measured while viewing negative and neutral images. The visual noise was added to the images in various proportions to parametrically manipulate the amount of visual information. Pupil size was used as an index of physiological arousal. We show that arousal induced by the negative images, as compared to the neutral ones, is primarily related to greater amygdala activity while increasing visibility of negative content to enhanced activity in the lateral occipital complex (LOC). We argue that more intense visual processing of negative scenes can occur irrespective of the level of arousal. It may suggest that higher areas of the visual stream are fine-tuned to process emotionally relevant objects. Both arousal and processing of emotional visual information modulated activity within the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Overlapping activations within the vmPFC may reflect the integration of these aspects of emotional processing. Additionally, we show that emotionally-evoked pupil dilations are related to activations in the amygdala, vmPFC, and LOC.

This paper analyzes the parallel and serial information processing structure of visual system and proposes a visual information processing model with three layers: visual receptor layer, visual information conduction and relay layer, and information processing layer of visual information computing and processing area. Based on the analysis, abstraction, and simplification of the biological prototype of each layer in the visual system, a framework model of an artificial neural system corresponding to the visual system is proposed. An artificial neural network model is proposed to simulate the mechanism of visual attention. A network model is formed by introducing the saliency mask map as additional information on the benchmark network, and the selective enhancement operation is performed on the extracted features in different regions according to the mask map. The experimental results show that the visual computing processing network model can effectively improve the classification performance of the network when the appropriate saliency mask is used. The visual information computing and processing model network can work effectively for different data sets and different structures of the benchmark network, which is a universal network model. The complexity of visual information computing and processing model network is very small, and the improvement of network performance is not at the cost of increasing model complexity, but in the way of improving network efficiency. The performance of artificial neural network visual information computation and processing model is directly related to the performance of saliency map used as mask map.

This paper presents a cognitive informatics theory of visual information and knowledge processing in the brain and natural intelligence. A set of cognitive principles of visual perception is reviewed, such as the gestalt principles, the cognitive informatics principles, and the hypercolumn theory. A visual frame theory is developed to explain the visual information processing mechanisms of human vision, where the size of a unit visual frame is tested and calibrated based on vision experiments. Then, the framework of human visual information processing is established. Based on it, the mechanisms of visual information processing and the compatibility of internal representations between visual and abstract information and knowledge are elaborated.

Semantic grasping escapes Weber's law

As an important branch of artificial intelligence, computer vision plays a huge role in the rapid development of artificial intelligence. From a biological point of view, in the acquisition and processing of information, vision is much more important than hearing, touch, etc., because 70% of the human cerebral cortex is processing visual information. Therefore, advances in computer vision technology are critical to the development of artificial intelligence that is designed to allow machines to think and handle things like humans. The acquisition and processing of visual information has always been the focus of computer vision research, and it is also difficult. The main problem of traditional computer vision technology in the processing of visual information is that the extracted image features are less discriminative, the generalization ability of image features in complex background scenes is insufficient, and the recognition ability on object recognition is poor. In response to these problems, based on the visual neural mechanism, this paper establishes an appropriate computer model for the neuronal cells in the human primary visual cortex, models the recognition response mechanism of the visual ventral system, and performs image feature extraction on the training samples. And object recognition. The results show that compared with the traditional methods, the proposed method effectively improves the discrimination of image features, and the image features extracted under complex background scenes have good generalization ability. On this basis, the training samples can be effectively recognized. The results show that the model based on the visual neural mechanism, the recognition of the edge, orientation and contour of the training sample show the advantages of the biological vision mechanism in object recognition.

In this PhD project, the functions of cortical regions that control smooth pursuit eye movements (SPEM) and visual attention were investigated. Combining behavioural (eye movement) measurements and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) the cortical areas participating in the processing of visual information and motor information were investigated. Overlapping cortical Blood Oxygen Level Dependency (BOLD) activations might indicate where the transformation of visual input information into a motor output response takes place. Furthermore, the influence of visual attention on these mechanisms was studied. In a third step, the location and function of subregions of the motion sensitive MT+ complex – which plays a crucial role in the control of SPEM – was explored in more detail. In the final experiment, functional differences between regions of the SPEM network during the processing of visual motion by varying the amount of coherently moving target dots were investigated. In the first study it was shown that visual information processing takes place in the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) and MT+ and that oculomotor output processing takes place in the frontal eye fields (FEF), the supplementary eye fields (SEF), the cingulate gyrus and precuneus in addition to the above mentioned areas. Possible transformation sites were found in MT+ and within the PPC. In the second study it was shown that processing of visual attention during SPEM is fully integrated in the SPEM network, but certain aspects of the control of attention like the dissociation of attention from gaze are especially processed in the PPC. Furthermore it was shown that the ‘premotor theory’ of Rizzolatti (1984) is also valid for SPEM. In the third study two subregions of the motion sensitive MT+ complex, MST (medial superior temporal) and MT (middle temporal), were identified on group level. In contrast to monkey studies in the current study the eccentricity of the flow field relative to the midline played a minor role for the location of the MT+ subregions. These results question the assumed size of MT receptive fields in humans. The fourth study revealed that the visual input signal is modulated by retinal information whereas the oculomotor output is modulated by the eye movement signal or a mixture of visual and oculomotor information. Integration of visual and oculomotor information seems to take place in MST and visual areas V7/LOP. Processing of differential motion of eye and background appears to take place in the PPC. Surprisingly PPC hardly reacted if eye and background moved in phase. Primary visual area V1 probably receives eye movement signals. Its functional connections and exact functional role need further investigation.

SummaryThe human motor system is remarkably proficient in the online control of visually guided movements, adjusting to changes in the visual scene within 100 ms [1–3]. This is achieved through a set of highly automatic processes [4] translating visual information into representations suitable for motor control [5, 6]. For this to be accomplished, visual information pertaining to target and hand need to be identified and linked to the appropriate internal representations during the movement. Meanwhile, other visual information must be filtered out, which is especially demanding in visually cluttered natural environments. If selection of relevant sensory information for online control was achieved by visual attention, its limited capacity [7] would substantially constrain the efficiency of visuomotor feedback control. Here we demonstrate that both exogenously and endogenously cued attention facilitate the processing of visual target information [8], but not of visual hand information. Moreover, distracting visual information is more efficiently filtered out during the extraction of hand compared to target information. Our results therefore suggest the existence of a dedicated visuomotor binding mechanism that links the hand representation in visual and motor systems.