Séminaire Pr Yaffa Yeshurun "Paying attention to space and time"

Résumé

It is well known that we can allocate attention to both space and time but there are many aspects of the attentional mechanisms that are not well understood. The first part of the talk will focus on spatial attention, particularly, individual differences in the ability to benefit from attention allocation. I will show how internal noise – a fundamental, low-level, characteristic of visual perception – can predict individual differences in the effects of both endogenous and exogenous spatial attention. In the second part of the talk, I will proceed with the corresponding temporal mechanisms: endogenous and exogenous temporal attention. I will start with discussing the time course of endogenous temporal attention (how fast it can be allocated and for how long). I will present evidence suggesting that endogenous temporal attention is a flexible and dynamic mechanism that is twice as fast as its corresponding endogenous spatial attention. Finally, to examine involuntary allocation of attention to time we employed isochronous rhythms, with which past research demonstrated exogenous entrainment of temporal attention. However, as I will describe in the last part of the talk, the situation here is much more muddy.

Bio

Yaffa Yeshurun studied Psychology at New York University, U.S.A from 1994-1999. Her Ph.D. dissertation demonstrated that attention can lead to signal enhancement, particularly enhancement of spatial resolution. In 2000 she joined the Psychology department at the University of Haifa, Israel, and the Institute of Information Processing and Decision Making (IIPDM). Her general research interests include temporal and spatial aspects of visual perception, spatial attention, and temporal attention and how rhythm can entrain attention. Her current research topics include temporal and spatial crowding, objective measurements of visual attention, individual differences in attention allocation, object-based attention, and perceptual load.