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Cognitive Processes in the Perception of Actions and Agents

Sensory input from the social world is often bustling and chaotic, and yet human beings typically comprehend events with ease. Evidence suggests that the perceptual system uses social cues to guide awareness to relevant actions, objects and spatial locations. In three studies, I demonstrate some of the cognitive processes involved in the perception of actions and agents. Chapter 1 tests the limitations of our ability to perceive ongoing activity, finding that event perception requires limited-capacity resources that tax encoding of properties when viewing two events in parallel. Chapter 2 explores the limits of a proposed system that rapidly calculates anotherâs perspective, revealing a heuristic signal that oneâs visuospatial access to an attended set of objects may be privileged. Chapter 3 then tests whether social agents guide visual attention, finding a curious tendency to search regions of space unseen by another agent. Combined, these studies illustrate mechanisms that guide awareness in the real world.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-05262016-145734
Date29 June 2016
CreatorsBaker, Lewis John
ContributorsDaniel T. Levin, John J. Rieser, Brandon A. Ally, Megan M. Saylor
PublisherVANDERBILT
Source SetsVanderbilt University Theses
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-05262016-145734/
Rightsunrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report.

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