title: MECHANISMS OF VISUAL ATTENTION
reg no: SF0182717s06
project type: targeted financing
subject: 5.6. Psychology
status: accepted
institution: University of Tartu
head of project: Talis Bachmann
duration: 01.01.2006 - 31.12.2011
description: The experimental cognitive psychology project deals with visual attention, aiming to understand the principles and mechanisms of visual information processing -- the nature, functioning and interrelations of different attention mechanisms. Continuing and extending our previous research we:
Compare the principal characteristics of involuntary (stimulus-driven) and voluntary (task-dependent) attention and explore the models of different spatial-attentional mechanisms and interrelations of spatial and object-based attention.
Find psychophysical measures of attentional operations at different processing stages and find out whether different mechanisms or different effects of the same general-purpose mechanism are involved.
Develop attentional models that in comparison with the traditional ones allow a more adequate description of perceptual capacity limitations, explore the relation of these models with visual awareness mechanisms (including data from neurological patients) and analyse the extent and characteristics of information accessible from brief exposures and with divided attention.
Find the basic factors that explain whether attention and various forms of masking are interdependent or not.

project group
no name institution position  
1.Talis BachmannTartu University, Faculty of Social Sciencesprofessor, chair of cognitive and forensic psychology 
2.Anke HuckaufTartu University, Faculty of Social Sciencesjuniorprofessor 
3.Kairi KreegipuuTartu University, Faculty of Social SciencesExtraordinary Research Fellow 0.75 Senior Specialist 0.25 
4.Endel PõderTartu University, Faculty of Social SciencesResearch fellow 
5.Pille TabaTartu University, Faculty of Social SciencesDocent of neurology