Summary of the paper "Attention and Visual Memory in Visualization and Computer Graphics" written by Cristopher G. Healey and James T. Enns

1. Attention & Visual Memory
in Visualization and Computer Graphics
Christopher G. Healey – James T. Enns
Setareh Sarachi | ses188

2. Setareh Sarachi | ses188
Preattentive Processing
• Set of visual properties that are detected very rapidly and accurately
by the low-level visual system
• Preattentive – Detection precedes focused attention
• Combination of Features – target of combined non-unique features
cannot be detected preattentively (focused attention or serial search)
• Preattentive visual tasks :
• Target detection
• Boundary detection
• Region Tracking
• Counting & Estimation

3. Setareh Sarachi | ses188
Theories of Preattentive Processing
• Feature Integration Theory
• Preattentive features
• Feature map
• Texton Theory
• Difference in textons
• Similarity Theory
• T-N similarity and N-N similarity
• Guided Search Theory
• Peaks in activation map = Bottom-up + Top-down
• Boolean Map Theory
• Selection + Access
• Boolean map constructed in mind

4. Setareh Sarachi | ses188
Take away
• Improving quality and quantity of data presentation needs the
understanding of the power of visual perception
• Visual features should
• Take advantage of visual system’s strength
• Be well-suited to the analysis need of human vision
• Avoid visual confusion that hide desired visual information
• Show information “In a glance”
• As an InfoVis developer, we should decide which properties to use to
show each visualization attribute
- Color - Form - Movement - Spatial Positioning

5. Setareh Sarachi | ses188
Application of Preattentive Processing
Movement – Flicker
Flickering Yellow traffic light effectively warns drivers
to be careful, slow down and be especially alert.
VS.
Over-employing flicker technique in web banners and
advertisement is annoying, distracting and the reason
why ad-blocking software exists !

6. “We thrive in information-thick worlds because of our marvelous and
everyday capacities to select, edit, single out, structure, highlight, group, pair,
merge, harmonize, synthesize, focus, organize, condense, reduce, boil down,
choose, categorize, catalog, classify, list, abstract, scan, look into, idealize,
isolate, discriminate, distinguish, screen, pigeonhole, pick over, sort,
integrate, blend, inspect, filter, lump, skip, smooth, chunk, average,
approximate, cluster, aggregate, outline, summarize, itemize, review, dip into,
flip through, browse, glance into, leaf through, skim, refine, enumerate,
glean, synopsize, winnow the wheat from the chaff, and separate the sheep
from the goats.”
- Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information
Setareh Sarachi | ses188