thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford Approximate Word Count: 50,000 After literary scholars, the group of people who most likely cite Marcel Proust are the niche group of psychologists and neuroscientists researching the topic of memory. The incident of the madeleine and Proust's vibrant re-experiencing of 'times past' highlights how important contextual associations are in our lives. The memories we form are often rich in contextual detail, and it is this type of memory which I aim to explore in this thesis. Specifically, I show how memories of contextual nature are formed, and used to guide behaviour. In the General Introduction (Chapter 1), I review the background literature of attention, and the different sources of information that guide it, as well as how contextual information -the associations between iterns-, specifically in natural scenes, can serve as such a source. Next, I describe in detail the literature to date on memory-based signals for attentional guidance. The next chapter summarizes the methodological approaches used in this thesis (Chapter 2). In Chapter 3, I show that long-term memory can optimize perception in complex natural scenes by modulating preparatory attention as well as target processing, using electroencephalography (EEG). In Chapter 4, exploiting the high temporal and spatial resolution of magnetoencephalography (MEG), I explore the neurophysiological markers of encoding, while participants learned contextual associations. In the final experimental chapter (Chapter 5), in a series of experiments I test the low-level mechanisms through which the long-term memory-bias in attentional guidance comes about. In the General Discussion (Chapter 6), I summarize my Findings and incorporate them into the existing literature, and propose outstanding questions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:572889 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Patai, Eva Zita |
| Contributors | Nobre, Anna Christina (Kia) |
| Publisher | University of Oxford |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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