Subject: Attention as inference: Selection is probabilistic; responses are all-or-none samples.

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Theories of probabilistic cognition postulate that internal representations are made up of multiple simultaneously held hypotheses, each with its own probability of being correct (henceforth, “probability distributions”). However, subjects make discrete responses and report the phenomenal contents of their mind to be all-or-none states rather than graded probabilities. How can these 2 positions be reconciled? Selective attention tasks, such as those used to study crowding, the attentional blink, rapid serial visual presentation, and so forth, were recast as probabilistic inference problems and used to assess how graded...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: General - November 3, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Vul, Edward; Hanus, Deborah; Kanwisher, Nancy Source Type: journals