Models of Perceptual Learning in Vernier Hyperacuity

Performance of human subjects in a wide variety of early visual processing tasks improves with practice. HyperBF networks (Poggio and Girosi 1990) constitute a mathematically well-founded framework for understanding such improvement in performance, or perceptual learning, in the class of tasks known as visual hyperacuity. The present article concentrates on two issues raised by the recent psychophysical and computational findings reported in Poggio et al. (1992b) and Fahle and Edelman (1992). First, we develop a biologically plausible extension of the HyperBF model that takes into account basic features of the functional architecture of early vision. Second, we explore various learning modes that can coexist within the HyperBF framework and focus on two unsupervised learning rules that may be involved in hyperacuity learning. Finally, we report results of psychophysical experiments that are consistent with the hypothesis that activity-dependent presynaptic amplification may be involved in perceptual learning in hyperacuity.