title: Optimal allocation of cognitive resources to spatial locations.
abstract: From experiments showing that subjects differentially attend to parts of the visual field, psychologists have inferred a limitation on human visual information processing capacity. The model presented describes an optimal way to allocate a limited quantity of "cognitive resources," "attention" or "mental effort". For this model, the sense of optimality is maximizing the probability of finding a target. In an experiment to test the model, subjects searched for a single target letter in an otherwise blank field. Two probability distributions were used to select a target location for a trial, but only one distribution was used for a session. For both distributions, the fit of the model was quite good. It is suggested that the model provides a promising way to test the assumption limited visual processing capacity.
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001288:Attention; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D005556:Form Perception; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011336:Probability; D014794:Visual Fields; D014796:Visual Perception