Dr. Mary Hayhoe

University of Texas, Austin

Talk Title:

Visually Guided Action Decisions in Human Natural Behavior

Date:

25 February 2022

Time:

2:00 pm – 3:00 pm (Presentation)

Abstract:

Observation of natural behavior in humans reveal that even the simplest actions involve complex decision processes that depend on the selection of task-relevant visual information, uncertainty about the state of the world, prediction of future state, information stored in memory, and evaluation of the intrinsic costs and benefits of action choices. I will review the properties of the nervous system that underlie these factors, and also explore evidence for these ideas in the context of walking in both natural terrain and virtual environments. I will describe the factors that allow flexible choice of paths and a nuanced trade-off between stability and energetic costs on both the time scale of the next step and longer-range constraints.

Biography:

Mary Hayhoe is a Professor in the Center for Perceptual Systems at the University of Texas Austin. She received her Ph D from the University of California at San Diego and was a member of the Center for Visual Sciences at the University of Rochester from 1984-2006, when she moved to UT Austin. She been a leader in developing virtual environments and experimental paradigms for the investigation of natural visually guided behavior. She has expertise in human eye movements in natural environments, especially how gaze behavior relates to attention, working memory, and cognitive goals. She served on the Board of Directors of the Vision Sciences Society from 2011-2016 and was President in 2015, and was awarded the Davida Teller Award in 2017 for her contributions to vision.