A Theory of Visual Attention (TVA) can be utilised to isolate specific attentional parameters. While these can reveal particular mechnisms of attention, they may also provide an insight into phenomena that may rely on similar basic mechanisms.
While short-term memory capacity classically have been seen as a set limitation (e.g., Luck & Vogel, 1997), then we have previously demonstrated that short-term memory capacity can be modulated by the degree of familiarity (see Sørensen & Kyllingsbæk, 2012). In fact, for an expert observer familiarity seem to be the main factor affecting processing and attentianal selection, with an increase in C and K, while leaving t₀ unaffected (Dall, et al., 2021). Interestingly, we see similar modulations of individual TVA paramenters in people with colour-grapheme synaesthesia (Ásgeirsson, Nordfang, & Sørensen, 2015) providing supporting evidence to the notion that synaesthesia may be linked to learning and expertise.
There are several different accounts for how synaesthesia may be established, for example through an abnormal pruning process during brain maturation (see Zelazny & Sørensen, 2022). However, a less popular idea is that synaesthesia is linked to learning and expertise. We have suggested that colour-grapheme synaesthesia may establish as a response to learning abstract categories like the alphabeth (Mannix & Sørensen, 2021), and a such provide a benificial strategy for the observer. While a direct link is difficult to demonstrate, TVA provide suporting evidence for the learning hypothesis of synaesthesia.