[CCoE Notice] MS thesis defense announcement

[Geanangel, Jane E]

Master's Thesis Defense



Effect of Distractors on Encoding & Memorization of Direction of Motion Information

Onur Ekiz



October 28th, 2011

10:00 AM

Electrical & Computer Engineering Conference Room





Thesis Defense Committee Members:

Haluk Ogmen, Chair, ECE Department

Srimant Tripathy, Co-chair, University of Bradford

Bhavin Sheth, ECE Department

Harold Bedell, College of Optometry





In this study, we investigated by psychophysical experiments how attentional resources influence the encoding and memorization of direction-of-motion information. We used statistical modeling to assess the accuracy, precision, capacity, and dynamics of visual encoding and memory. Our results show that encoding and memorization of direction-of-motion information remain accurate over a broad range of target and distractor set-sizes. An increase in target set-size causes a linear decay in performance, indicating a limited capacity for encoding and memorization.  On the other hand, distractor set-size influences only the rapidly decaying high-capacity (iconic) memory; it has no effect on the encoding and the visual short-term memory stages.  Iconic memory exhibits an exponential decay as a function of time. The precision parameters for encoding and memory decline gradually as a function of target set-size. In the case of memory, this decline exhibits a lower bound. Taken together, our results argue against the popular discrete-slot models of memory and, instead, suggest a shared resource model where resources are shared until a minimum usable resource level is reached.




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