Selecting, Referring

1
Selecting, Referring Predicating Basic
ingredients of the mind-world connection
2
Outline of Topics 2

• 1 Selection The role of selective attention
• 1.1 Allocating and shifting attention The role
  of objects vs places
• 1.2 Studies in object-based attention
• 2 More on what is selected by FINSTs
• 2.1 Causes and codes
• 2.2 Conceptual and nonconceptual contents
• 2.3 Representing and carrying information
• 3 The relevance of this research to understanding
  sentience
• 3.1 Austen Clark and Feature Placing
• 3.1.1 Feature placing and the binding problem
• 3.1.2 Feature-placing and the causal link
• 3.1.3 Feature-placing and nonconceptual access
• 3.2 Reprise on FINST theory
• 4 Summary

3
The functions of focal attention

• A central notion in the present analysis is the
  notion of picking out or selecting. The usual
  mechanism that is appealed to in explaining
  perceptual selection is attention (sometimes
  called focal attention or selective attention).
• Why must we select anyway? This is a rarely
  asked question to which there are several
  answers
• We need to select because we cant process all
  the information available. This is the
  resource-limitation reason.
• We need to select because certain patterns cannot
  be computed without first marking certain special
  elements of a scene
• We need to select because of the way relevant
  information in the world is packaged (Strawsons
  Collecting Principles). It is a response to the
  Binding Problem
• We need to select because selection is a
  consequence of the first line of causal contact
  between mind and world it precedes all
  conceptualizing and encoding

4
What does visual attention select?

• If attention is selection, what does visual
  attention select?
• One obvious answer is places. We can select
  places by moving our eyes so our gaze lands on
  different places.
• Must we always move our eyes to change what we
  attend to?
• Studies of Covert Attention-Movement Posner
  (1980).
• How does attention switch from one place to
  another?
• When a place is selected, is selection automatic
  (exogenous) or voluntary (endogenous)?

5
Exogenous movements of attention
Example of an experiment using a cue-validity
paradigm for showing that the locus of attention
moves without eye movements and for estimating
its speed. Posner, M. I. (1980). Orienting of
Attention. Quarterly Journal of Experimental
Psychology, 32, 3-25.
6
Endogenous movements of attention
7
Exogenous endogenous control of attention

• Attention shifted in exogenous and endogenous
  ways differs in a number of ways
• Only exogenous attention shift leads to
  Inhibition of Return
• Automatic attention shifts are faster and the
  attention effects are stronger.
• Voluntary attention shifts can be interrupted by
  exogenous cues, so it is considered secondary to
  automatic control
• With voluntary attention control the person only
  knows which direction to move attention, so it
  may occupy intermediate locations

8
Exogenous endogenous control of attention

• Attention shifted by exogenous and endogenous
  ways differs in other ways as well
• With automatic shift, the apparent attention
  increase at intermediate locations can be
  explained by decreasing attention at the source
  and increasing attention at the target (Sperling
  Weichselgarter, 1995).
• It is doubtful that there is attentional
  selection of empty regions empty space does not
  have the causal power to attract exogenous
  attention and voluntary control is special (also
  some doubt that voluntary movements are
  continuous Pylyshyn Cohen, 1999)
• If attentional selection is to play the role of
  initial nonconceptual contact between mental
  representations and the world, it must be
  exogenously driven attention the world must
  impose itself on the perceptual system.

9
Evidence that attention is object-based

• Although the earliest evidence showed that
  attention moves through space (covert movement)
  there is now evidence that attention attaches to
  objects as a whole
• The main source of evidence initially was based
  on same object superiority

10
Single object superiority even when the shapes
are controlled
Pay attention to the blue object. Which vertex
is higher, the left or the right? Pay attention
to the red object. Which vertex is higher, the
left or the right?
11
Attention spreads over perceived objects
Spreads to B and not C
Spreads to C and not B
Spreads to B and not C
Spreads to C and not B
Using a priming method (Egly, Driver Rafal,
1994) showed that the effect of a prime spreads
to other parts of the same visual object compared
to equally distant parts of different objects.
12
Inhibition of return

• Inhibition-of-return is the phenomenon whereby an
  object that has been attended is less likely to
  attract attention again in a period of 300 ms to
  900 ms after it is first attended. The attended
  item is said to be inhibited.
• This is thought to help in visual search since it
  prevents previously visited objects from being
  revisited
• IOR is Object-Based (the only counter-evidence
  involves easily-marked locations like between
  two objects)

13
But IOR appears to be object-based (so it travels
with the object that was attended)
14
Objects endure despite changes in location and
they carry their history with them!
Object File Theory of Kahneman Treisman
Letters are faster to read if they appear in the
same box where they appeared initially. Priming
travels with the object. According to the
theory, when an object first appears, a file is
created for it and the properties of the object
are encoded and subsequently accessed through
this object-file.
15
Demo of Object File Experiment
16
Visual neglect syndrome is object-based
When a right neglect patient is shown a dumbbell
that rotates, the patient continues to neglect
the object that had been on the right, even
though It is now on the left (Behrmann Tipper,
1999).
17
Simultanagnosic (Balint Syndrome) patients only
attend to one object at a time
Simultanagnosic patients cannot judge the
relative length of two lines, but they can tell
that a figure made by connecting the ends of the
lines is not a rectangle but a trapezoid (Holmes
Horax, 1919).
18
Balint patients can only attend to one object at
a time even if they are overlapping
Luria, 1959
19
What does attention select preconceptually?

• Although there is now considerable evidence that
  attention attaches itself to objects,
  conventional wisdom insists that to detect
  properties is to detect properties-at-locations
• To reconcile this intuitive view with the
  object-based attention evidence, one might say
  that what is attended is spatiotemporal regions
  or worms and many people do believe that
• But the problem with this argument and the
  problem with most ways of trying to reconcile the
  location view with empirical data is that a
  spatiotemporal worm is simply the region that
  is traced out by a moving object! Without the
  independent notion of object there would be no
  worm!
• This may even be a terminological variant of the
  object view since objects and worms are
  mathematical duals you can always translate one
  into the other.

20
The view that we must encode location when we
detect a property is the standard view in
philosophy, as it is in psychology

• Austen Clark (in A Theory of Sentience),
  following the tradition of Quine and Strawson,
  assumes that location is primary and that in our
  most primitive nonconceptual sensory contact with
  the world, our sensory system detects nothing
  more than Feature F at location L
• Clarks argument appeals to the Binding Problem
  (Treisman). He argues that because we can
  distinguish conjunctions e.g., we can
  distinguish a red square beside a blue circle
  from a blue square beside a red circle then the
  earliest stages of sensation must provide this
  information in a way that does not merge
  properties and their locations, hence
  feature-at-location.
• But we can do the same with objects we can
  evaluate and record Pn(Oi) for some sensory
  predicate Pn so long as the variable Oi is bound
  to the object i by a FINST index.

21
The Binding Problem

• Our perceptual system can distinguish scenes that
  differ by conjunctions of properties, so early
  vision must not fuse together or lose the
  co-occurrence or conjunctiveness of properties it
  detects. In reporting properties early vision
  must bind them together.
• How it binds them together is a central question
  in vision. The most common answer is that it
  binds them according to co-location.

22
The role of attention to location in Treismans
Feature Integration Theory
23
The more elaborate version of Treismans Feature
Integration Theory
24
Austen Clark ( P. Strawson) and feature placing
languages

• What kind of representations are provided by
  (preconceptual) sensations?
• Strawsons answer Just those permitted by
  feature-placing languages

The hypothesis ...is that sensation is
feature-placing a pre-linguistic system of
mental representation. Mechanisms of
spatio-temporal discrimination serve to pick
out or identify the subject-matter of sensory
representation. That subject-matter turns out
invariably to be some place-time in or around the
body of the sentient organism. the various
reasons cited for thinking that sensation is
intentional can also be explained on this
hypothesis. The aboutness of sensation reduces
to its spatial character. (Clark, 2000, p
165) there is a sensory level of
identification of place-times that is more
primitive than the identification of
three-dimensional material objects. Below our
conceptual scheme underneath the streets, so to
speak we find evidence of this more primitive
system. The sensory identification of
place-times is independent of the identification
of objects one can place features even though
one lacks the latter conceptual scheme.
25
Why Objects are a better target than Locations

• It would have to be regions rather than locations
  anyway. Points are irrelevant to the binding
  problem
• The only regions that are relevant are occupied
  regions i.e., objects.
• The boundaries of regions must coincide with the
  boundaries of things, otherwise it does not help
  with the binding problem
• Properties (e.g. features) are properties of
  things, not of space.
• If it is to be the primitive nonconceptual
  contact (the first responder) what is selected
  must capture attention and therefore must have
  causal powers. So it cant be empty regions of
  space.
• There is experimental evidence that attention
  attaches to things rather than places, especially
  for exogenously captured attention (cf Sperling)

26
Solving the binding problem requires not just
picking out places or regions. It requires that
the regions coincide with things (objects) in the
word that have the relevant properties
27
Some philosophical issues that arise from FINST
theory

• Distinguishing causes and codes
• What causes Object Files to be created vs what is
  entered into them
• Conceptual and nonconceptual contents
• Representing and carrying information
• The case of clusters, figure-ground, and
  correspondence
• Can information-carrying properties (e.g.,
  location on the proximal pattern) create clusters
  without representing locations of features that
  are clustered?

28
Illustrative sketch of a FINST network
29
Details of the Winner-take-all and detector
networks
30
The relevance of this research to understanding
sentience

• Austen Clark and Feature Placing
• Feature placing and the binding problem
• Feature-placing and the causal link
• Feature-placing and nonconceptual access

31
FINSTs and nonconceptual representation (a
reprise)

• What does the early vision system deliver to the
  mind in a nonconceptual manner?
• What classes and properties can be recognized
  without the apparatus of concepts?
• Causality? Cardinality (of small sets)?
• 3D object shapes? Shape-from motion? Shape from
  shading? Shape from contours?
• What can be selected in a nonconceptual manner,
  and how does this help with the problem of
  connecting vision with the world?

32
Going beyond nonconceptual representations

• Work with Infantss numerosity judgment
  frequently appeals to Index theory (Leslie,
  Carey, Wynne,)
• Some of these findings appear to implicate
  indexing of nonconceptual properties, but some
  may not the distinction is not easy to draw in
  practice e,g.
• Infants can use certain properties to decide to
  create an new object file but not to recognize if
  an object is the same one that caused the object
  file to be created earlier
• Determination of cardinality in infants appears
  to be sensitive to such properties of individuals
  as whether they can be taken apart, whether they
  were poured, whether their parts moved together,
  etc.
• Such effects may indicate either that infants are
  deploying concepts or it may indicate that the
  mode of arrival of individuals affects whether
  they are indexed and tracked. This appears to be
  true of adult tracking as well!