Using Virtual Environments to Understand Cognitive Processes in More Mission-Relevant Scenarios

The ARL Research Associateship Program (ARL-RAP) offers a research opportunity focused on understanding how visual information is processed by the human brain in immersive, real-world environments. The vast majority of knowledge about visual information processing comes from tightly controlled laboratory experiments. This project aims to transition these results into field-ready technologies by exploring how cognitive mechanisms, well-understood in the lab, operate in more immersive, mission-relevant environments. Successful candidates will apply principles of neural computational models based on desktop paradigms to visual search experiments in immersive virtual environments to test predictions and form foundational theories about how the visual system operates in natural environments. This combination of computational theory and experimentation using cutting-edge technology will inform the design of human-AI teams by providing a better understanding of how the human visual system deploys attentional resources in the environment, thereby allowing the development of complementary AI systems. The research is conducted through the Human Research and Engineering Directorate (HRED), ARL's principal center for research directed toward optimizing Soldier performance and human-autonomy teaming.