Our visual system organizes lines, shapes, and colors into groups, objects, and scenes. This dissertation explores how these higher-level organizations arise, focusing on the contribution of feature-based attention, our ability to selectively enhance a color, shape, or orientation across our visual field. I will present evidence that feature-based attention enables...
Recent work using the eye movement monitoring technique has demonstrated that when people are engaged in thought they tend to disengage from the external world by blinking or fixating on an empty portion of the visual field, such as a blank wall, or out the window at the sky. This...