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09:00 - 10:30
Parallel sessions 4
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09:00 - 10:30
Room: C-Building - N14
Chair/s:
Kathrin Finke, Ingrid Scharlau, Jan Tünnermann
The Theory of Visual Attention (TVA) continues to be developed as a powerful quantitative framework for understanding attentional selection and capacity. Current research applies TVA across diverse contexts and methodologies. This symposium presents new theoretical developments, methodological advances, and applied perspectives that extend TVA’s reach and precision and sometimes challenge its present state. Estela Carmona investigates how self-relevant information shapes attentional parameters, offering insights into the role of personal significance in visual selection. Anders Petersen follows by introducing advances in modeling enumeration data within the TVA framework, extending the set of tasks that can be used with TVA. Kai Biermeier, Ngoc Chi Banh, and Ingrid Scharlau test the applicability of TVA to online scenarios and identify methodological challenges in the online estimation of attentional processing speed. Tobias Peters, Kai Biermeier, and Ingrid Scharlau apply TVA measures of attention to human–AI interaction, examining whether attentional signatures can indicate adaptive distrust. Finally, Jan Tünnermann and Ingrid Scharlau revisit lateral asymmetries in visual processing, presenting updated findings on left–right visual field differences within TVA. Together, these contributions demonstrate the continuing vitality of TVA research and its capacity to inform theoretical, methodological, and applied perspectives on visual attention but also challenges that have to be addressed. Part 2 of the symposium will turn to attentional changes in diverse populations. 
Submission 496
A TVA-Based Model of the Enumeration Task
SymposiumTalk-02
Presented by: Anders Petersen
Anders Petersen
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
The ability to accurately enumerate visual items provides a window into the mechanisms and limits of visual attention. In this study, I model performance in a dot enumeration task using the Theory of Visual Attention (TVA). Participants reported the number of dots briefly presented on a screen, with exposure duration systematically manipulated and precisely controlled by backward masking. Accuracy was near perfect for displays containing one to four dots but declined progressively as the number of dots increased, reflecting the transition from subitizing to counting. The model captured individual differences in attentional efficiency by explicitly accounting for both correct and incorrect responses across exposure durations, providing a very detailed characterization of performance. In addition, the model incorporated grouping processes, revealing how the perceptual organization of dots shapes enumeration accuracy. This approach demonstrates how TVA can be modified to capture not only capacity limits in visual attention, but also the emergent structure of perceptual grouping during enumeration.