# The perceptual boost of visual attention is task-dependent in naturalistic settings

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.00882 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.00882/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 22 Feb 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Understanding top-down attention using task-oriented ablation design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.11339/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Top-down attention allows people to focus on task-relevant visual information. Is the resulting perceptual boost task-dependent in naturalistic settings? We aim to answer this with a large-scale computational experiment. First, we design a collection of visual tasks, each consisting of classifying images from a chosen task set (subset of ImageNet categories). The nature of a task is determined by which categories are included in the task set. Second, on each task we train an attention-augmented neural network and then compare its accuracy to that of a baseline network. We show that the perceptual boost of attention is stronger with increasing task-set difficulty, weaker with increasing task-set size and weaker with increasing perceptual similarity within a task set.