Classic Article: "Features and Objects in Visual Processing" by Anne Treisman

Treisman, A. (1986). Features and objects in visual processing. Scientific American, 255, 114-125.

I read this article—a review of the then-new feature integration theory—early in my first year of grad school.  It totally changed my life.  My first real experiment in grad school was an ERP version of the "circles and lollies" experiment shown in the attached image:

Luck, S. J., & Hillyard, S. A. (1990). Electrophysiological evidence for parallel and serial processing during visual search. Perception & Psychophysics, 48, 603-617.

In that experiment, I discovered the N2pc component (because I followed some smart advice from Steve Hillyard about including event codes that indicated whether the target was in the left or right visual field).  I've ended up publishing dozens of N2pc papers over the years (along with at least 100 N2pc papers by other labs).

The theory presented in this Scientific American paper was also one of the inspirations for my first study of visual working memory:

Luck, S. J., & Vogel, E. K. (1997). The capacity of visual working memory for features and conjunctions. Nature, 390, 279-281.

As you may know, Anne passed away recently (see NY Times obituary).  Anne was my most important scientific role model (other than my official mentors).  I'm sure she had no idea how much impact she had on me. She probably thought that I was an idiot, because I became a blathering fool anytime I was in her presence (even after I had moved on from grad student to new assistant professor and then to senior faculty).  But her intelligence and creativity just turned me to jello...

Anyway, this is a great paper, and very easy to read.  I recommend it to anyone who is interested in visual cognition.