Visual Attention and MovementThe human observer is quite good at detecting movement. If a target is detectable when stationary, it becomes even more so when it is moving. The brain uses several signals to help us perceive movement, including information from all of our senses. This article will focus on the visual system and how movement is perceived visually. Movement is partly perceived by changes in light on the retina. However, this cannot explain total motion perception, because we can perceive motion while keeping a stable image on our retina or create changes in these light patterns by moving our head and eyes. In order to transform these spatial patterns of light into information about movement, we need to integrate and interpret the visual information. We use movement as a cue to group objects in the environment and the movement of one thing can have an effect on how other things are perceived to move. Objects that move together are seen as belonging together, and objects near moving objects can be seen as being in motion themselves. Next, we use movement to interpret visual information from our environment. For example, dots moving together in different patterns can create a perception of a 3D object; dots moving in certain patterns can create the perception of a human or animal moving, even without the lines connecting to create the shape. You can also change the perception of how an object moves by changing the focus of your attention. (Mather, 1998)AttentionAttention is one of those words like "antisocial" whose common usage may or may not have any relationship to its use in the field of psychology. On any given day, we are likely to be told or be told to “be careful.” It is...... middle of paper...... 63, 476-489.Thornton, T., & Gilden, D.L. (2001). Attentional limitations in detecting movement direction. Cognitive Psychology, 43, 23-52.Treisman, A. (1986). Features and objects in visual processing. Scientific American, 97-110. Treisman, A. and Gelade, G. (1980). A feature integration theory of attention. Cognitive Psychology, 12, 97-1336. Watamaniuk, SNJ and McKee, SP (1995). See the movement behind the shutters. Nature, 377, 729-730. Watamaniuk, SNJ and McKee, SP (1998). Simultaneous coding of direction at local and global scales. Perception and Psychophysics, 60(2), 191-200. Watamaniuk, SNJ, McKee, SP and Grzywacs, NM (1995). Detection of a trajectory embedded in movement noise in a random direction. Vision Research, 35(1), 65-77.Wolfe, J.M. (1994). Guided search 2.0: A revised model of visual search. Psychonomic Bulletin, 1, 202-238.