Feature-Based Attention and Feature-Based Expectation

Foreknowledge of target stimulus features improves visual search performance as a result of 'feature-based attention' (FBA). Recent studies have reported that 'feature-based expectation' (FBE) also heightens decision sensitivity. Superficially, it appears that the latter work has simply rediscovered (and relabeled) the effects of FBA. However, this is not the case. Here we explain why.

[1]  Martin Rolfs,et al.  Stimulus competition mediates the joint effects of spatial and feature-based attention. , 2015, Journal of vision.

[2]  Janneke F. M. Jehee,et al.  Less Is More: Expectation Sharpens Representations in the Primary Visual Cortex , 2012, Neuron.

[3]  M. Carrasco,et al.  How spatial and feature-based attention affect the gain and tuning of population responses , 2009, Vision Research.

[4]  Christopher Summerfield,et al.  Dissociable prior influences of signal probability and relevance on visual contrast sensitivity , 2011 .

[5]  Jan Theeuwes,et al.  Feature-based attention: it is all bottom-up priming , 2013, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[6]  C. Summerfield,et al.  Expectation in perceptual decision making: neural and computational mechanisms , 2014, Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

[7]  Tobias Egner,et al.  Feature expectation heightens visual sensitivity during fine orientation discrimination. , 2015, Journal of vision.

[8]  Marius V Peelen,et al.  Journal of Experimental Psychology : General Content-Specific Expectations Enhance Stimulus Detectability by Increasing Perceptual Sensitivity , 2015 .

[9]  Joshua A Solomon,et al.  Noise reveals visual mechanisms of detection and discrimination. , 2002, Journal of vision.

[10]  John H. R. Maunsell,et al.  Feature-based attention in visual cortex , 2006, Trends in Neurosciences.

[11]  Scott D. Brown,et al.  Perceptual consequences of feature-based attentional enhancement and suppression. , 2012, Journal of vision.

[12]  Nicholas A. Steinmetz,et al.  Visual Space is Compressed in Prefrontal Cortex Before Eye Movements , 2014, Nature.

[13]  R N Henson,et al.  Mechanisms of top-down facilitation in perception of visual objects studied by FMRI. , 2007, Cerebral cortex.