Training visual processes
Training visual processes
- November 12, 2015
- Cognitive scientist Barbara Dosher receives more than $1 million to study how to optimize visual processing
Barbara Dosher, UCI Distinguished Professor of cognitive sciences, has received a
$1.14 million renewal grant from the National Eye Institute – part of the National
Institutes of Health – to study how human perceptual learning operates and whether
training can help overcome limitations in order to improve performance.
"Perceptual training has demonstrated a remarkable ability to enhance perception and
perceptual judgments that are used in many of our day to day activities from the most
basic of tasks such as seeing and listening to the more complex tasks and decisions
based on perceptual inputs,” Dosher says.
"Only a small fraction of the complex, visual information in the world can be fully
processed for recognition and action," she says. “The objective of the current research
is to develop theoretical principles and training methods that will improve the amount
and the generality of the benefits of visual training.”
Her long-term goal is to apply the improved methods of training tested in standard
populations to improve training used in clinical applications, rehabilitation and
the development of perceptual expertise.
Learning or practice improves our ability to perceive and remember what we see, she
says, adding that there is some evidence that perceptual learning may be used to counteract
functional losses in trained tasks.
With renewed financial support, she is continuing her career-long research into the
topic using behavioral and computational methods to identify the effects of training
in visual tasks and the distinct mechanisms of attention in improving performance
limits. Funding began in September and will run through August 2018.
Dosher received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of California,
San Diego and her master’s and doctorate degrees in experimental psychology from the
University of Oregon. She was a professor of psychology at Columbia University for
15 years before she joined the faculty of UC Irvine in 1992. She served as dean of
the School of Social Sciences 2002-13. She is a fellow of the Society for Experimental
Psychologists and the American Psychological Society, and in 2011, she was elected
to the National Academy of Sciences. She is a past recipient of the Howard Crosby
Warren Medal and the UCI Distinguished Faculty Research Award, among the top honors
bestowed by the Society of Experimental Psychologists and UCI Academic Senate, respectfully.
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