Selective influence and sequential operations: A research strategy for visual search

• Published in: Visual cognition Vol. 27; no. 5-8; pp. 387 - 415
• Main Authors: Lowe, Kaleb A., Reppert, Thomas R., Schall, Jeffrey D.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hove Routledge 14.09.2019; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Additivity; Cognition & reasoning; Cognitive ability; decision-making; Neural networks; response time; selective influence; stages of processing; systems factorial technology; Visual perception
• ISSN: 1350-6285; 1464-0716
• DOI: 10.1080/13506285.2019.1659896

We discuss the problem of elucidating mechanisms of visual search. We begin by considering the history, logic, and methods of relating behavioural or cognitive processes with neural processes. We then survey briefly the cognitive neurophysiology of visual search and essential aspects of the neural circuitry supporting this capacity. We introduce conceptually and empirically a powerful but underutilized experimental approach to dissect the cognitive processes supporting performance of a visual search task with factorial manipulations of singleton-distractor identifiability and stimulus-response cue discriminability. We show that systems factorial technology can distinguish processing architectures from the performance of macaque monkeys. This demonstration offers new opportunities to distinguish neural mechanisms through selective manipulation of visual encoding, search selection, rule encoding, and stimulus-response mapping.