Anne Treisman facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Anne M. Treisman
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Treisman in 2011, Princeton University, recipient of the National Medal of Science
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Anne Marie Taylor
27 February 1935 |
| Died | 9 February 2018 (aged 82) New York City, US
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| Alma mater | Newnham College, Cambridge Somerville College, Oxford |
| Known for | Feature integration theory, Attenuation theory |
| Spouse(s) | Michel Treisman (1960–1976, divorced) Daniel Kahneman (1978–2018, her death) |
| Children | Deborah Treisman |
| Awards | Golden Brain Award (1996) Grawemeyer Award in Psychology (2009) National Medal of Science (2011) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Psychology |
| Institutions | Princeton University |
| Doctoral advisor | Richard C. Oldfield |
| Notable students | Postdoctoral fellows Nancy Kanwisher and Nilli Lavie |
Anne Marie Treisman (born Taylor; 27 February 1935 – 9 February 2018) was an English psychologist. She was an expert in cognitive psychology, which studies how our minds work.
Treisman studied how we pay attention, how we see objects, and how our memory works. One of her most famous ideas is the feature integration theory of attention. She first wrote about this idea with Garry Gelade in 1980. Treisman taught at several universities, including University of Oxford and Princeton University.
In 2013, President Barack Obama gave Treisman the National Medal of Science. This award was for her important work on how we pay attention. Throughout her career, Treisman helped us understand how our brains choose and combine information. This helps us form meaningful objects that guide our thoughts and actions.
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Early Life and Education
Anne Treisman was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire, England. When she was two, her family moved to a village near Rochester, Kent. Her father, Percy Taylor, worked there during World War II. Her mother, Suzanne Touren, was French.
At age 11, Treisman moved to Reading, Berkshire. She went to Kendrick School, a girls' grammar school. In her last two years of high school, she focused on languages and history. She studied French, Latin, and History.
In 1954, Treisman earned her first degree in French Literature. She studied at Newnham College, Cambridge. She did so well that she received a scholarship. She used it to get a second degree in psychology. During this year, she learned from Richard Gregory. He taught her how to study the mind through experiments.
In 1957, Treisman went to Somerville College, Oxford. She worked on her PhD with her advisor, Carolus Oldfield. She first studied aphasia, a language disorder. But she soon became interested in how attention works in everyone. Her research was inspired by Donald Broadbent's book, Perception and Communication. Treisman finished her PhD in 1962. Her thesis was about how we selectively listen and understand speech.
Understanding Attention
When Treisman was doing her PhD, psychology was changing. People started to think that our actions come from how we process information. Donald Broadbent and Colin Cherry had just introduced the idea of selective listening. This is like the "cocktail party effect". You can focus on one conversation even in a noisy room.
Broadbent suggested a "Filter Model" of attention. It said that our brains filter out sounds we don't pay attention to. This means we don't even process them. But this idea couldn't explain why we sometimes hear important things even when we're not listening. For example, hearing your name in a crowd.
After her PhD, Treisman worked on selective listening. In 1964, she came up with her "Attenuation Theory". This theory changed Broadbent's idea. Treisman said that unattended information is not completely filtered out. Instead, it's just "turned down" or weakened.
She tested this using a "dichotic listening task". People listened to different messages in each ear. She found that it was hard to completely ignore one message. Her work showed that our brains analyze some features of all incoming messages. Then, we choose which message to focus on. This happens while we are still processing the information. Her theory had a huge impact on the study of attention.
How We See Objects
In 1980, Treisman and Garry Gelade published their important paper. It was about the Feature Integration Theory (FIT). This theory explains how we see objects. It says that when we look at an object, our brain first breaks it down into simple features. These features include color, shape, and how it's angled.
Feature Integration Theory
Treisman's theory has two main steps for how we see objects:
Automatic Feature Processing
The first step is called "pre-attentive". This means it happens automatically, without us even trying. In this step, an object is broken down into its basic parts. These parts are things like its color, texture, and shape. Treisman believed we don't realize this step is happening. It's very fast and happens before we are fully aware.
Treisman did studies to show this automatic processing. In one study, she showed people four objects and two black numbers very quickly. Then, a random pattern appeared to clear the screen. People were asked to say the numbers first. Then, they had to say what objects they saw.
Sometimes, people reported seeing "illusory conjunctions". This means they combined features from different objects. For example, they might see a red triangle and a blue circle. But they would report seeing a "red circle" and a "blue triangle". This happened because the objects flashed quickly. Also, people's attention was on the numbers. This meant the brain didn't have time to properly combine the features. When people focused on the objects, these mistakes didn't happen.
Focused Attention and Object Perception
The second step needs our attention. In this step, the brain combines all the separate features. This creates a complete object in our mind. Treisman thought this combining process is linked to brain activity. She noted that seeing an object activates different parts of the brain. These parts process information about "what" the object is (like color and shape) and "where" it is (like its location and movement).
According to Treisman, attention is like the "glue". It combines all this information from different brain areas. This makes us see all the features of an object together in one place. It's easy to see one object clearly. But when there are many objects, it's harder. Our brain needs to connect each feature to the right object. The Feature Integration Theory says we need to focus our attention on each object one by one. When we focus on a certain spot, the features there combine. They become linked to the object at that spot.
The Binding Problem
Scientists wondered how our brains combine different features into one clear image. This is called the "binding problem". For example, when you see a red ball roll, different brain cells react. Some react to the red color, others to the ball's shape, and others to its movement. But you don't see separate colors, shapes, and movements. You see one red ball rolling.
Treisman's work helped explain this. She studied people with brain damage. She found that damage to certain brain areas made it harder to combine features correctly. This showed a link between attention and how our brains combine what we see. Her ideas led to thousands of experiments in psychology and brain science.
Honors and Awards
Anne Treisman received many honors for her work. She was chosen to be a member of important groups. These include the Royal Society of London in 1989. She also joined the US National Academy of Sciences in 1994.
In 2009, she received the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Psychology. This was for her explanation of how our brains create meaningful images from what we see. As mentioned earlier, in 2013, she received the National Medal of Science from President Barack Obama.
Selected Publications
Some of her key works include:
- Treisman, A., & Gelade, G. (1980). A feature integration theory of attention. Cognitive Psychology, 12(1), 97–136.
- Treisman, A. (1991). Search, similarity and the integration of features between and within dimensions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 17(3), 652–676.
- Treisman, A. (1986). Features and Objects in Visual Processing. Scientific American, 255(5), 114–125.
Personal Life
Anne Treisman married Michel Treisman in 1960. He was also an Oxford student. They divorced in 1976. In 1978, she married Daniel Kahneman. He later won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002.
She had one daughter from her first marriage, Deborah Treisman. Deborah was born in 1970. She became the Fiction Editor at The New Yorker magazine.
Anne Treisman passed away on 9 February 2018, in Manhattan. She died from a stroke.
See Also
In Spanish: Anne Treisman para niños
- Attention
- Cognitive neuropsychology
- Subitizing and counting
