User:Bateshr/sandbox

Postgrad research

This article will be a brief outline/summary of the research area that the user's honours year project at Canterbury University, New Zealand. Below a summary of the area of research, Perceptual Load Theory,will be presented. For more information  has a more detailed summary as well as more sources of information to follow up.

Perceptual Load Timeline

 * Pre 1994: Visual Attention divided into the two processes of Top-Down (determined by the current goals of the observer) and Bottom-up (determined by the physical characteristics of the scene in question)


 * 1994 Nilli Lavie  publishes PHD thesis on perception load. Describes perceptual load theory that attentional memory has limited capacity but operates in automated, involuntary manner on all the information within its capacity and as a hybird theory of traditional top down and bottom up.


 * 1995-1998 Perceptual Load theory begins gather momentum.


 * 2005-2015 Criticisms and failures of Perceptual Load theory are published, with attribution to target and distractor 'salience', 'dillution' effects and other problems in the experiments of Lavie that were published.