Meaningful visual experience requires computations that identify objects as the same persisting individuals over time, motion, occlusion, and featural change. This article explores these computations in the tunnel effect: When an object moves behind an occluder, and then an object later emerges following a consistent trajectory, observers…

The efficacy of gating in the processing of simple, multidimensional stimuli was investigated. In Experiment 1, a continuous classification task was used, with subjects sorting cards according to binary dimensions of line orientation and location. Results suggested that orientation and location are integral dimensions, facilitation occurring with…

Experiment conducted to determine the different effects of a mediational method of verbal learning and visual-discrimination verbal learning. (Author/MM)

Reports effects of context that are entirely perceptual. Visual discrimination was enhanced when line segments were flashed in a region that was perceived as a figure. Discrimination was substantially degraded when the same region was seen as ground although the physical stimulus remained identical throughout figure-ground reversals. (Author/JN)

Investigated ability of young children to interpret aerial photographs and maps, sought age and/or cognitive development differences, and probed whether or not some environmental features were more consistently recognized than others. (Author/DB)

The holistic-discriminability model of object-space perception recognizes various classes of stimuli having different task requirements, with few assumptions. The alternative analytic model, contrary to Dykes and Cooper, is inadequate; it involves many assumptions, predicts only a limited set of data and makes some incorrect predictions.…

Developmental studies of face processing have revealed age-related changes in how infants allocate neurophysiological resources to the face of a caregiver and an unfamiliar adult. We hypothesize that developmental changes in how infants interact with their caregiver are related to the changes in brain response. We studied 6-month-olds because this…

Recent visual marking studies have shown that the carry-over of distractor inhibition can impair the ability of singletons to capture attention if the singleton and distractors share features. The current study extends this finding to first-order motion targets and distractors, clearly separated in time by a visual cue (the letter X). Target…

Groups of eight- and ten-year-olds and adults visually searched for the presence of a target letter or number in fields of items that were either of the same or a different category (letter or number) than the target. (JMB)

Analyzes sex-related differences between mental rotation rate and spatial ability among adults, 14-year-olds, and 9.5-year-olds to determine the extent to which rotation rate is a correlate of various abilities. (HOD)

Testing Pollack's hypothesis that decreases in effective contour contrast (resulting from a decrease in receptor sensitivity with age or from a change in actual stimulus contrast) lead to decreases in illusion magnitude. Conclusions are questioned by Sjostrom and Pollack (PS 501 740). (Author/MB)

Effects of target-noise similarity on the ability to discriminate between two target letters were investigated. Performance was low when the noise letter shared the same name as the target. Thus, interletter interference effects cannot be explained in terms of inhibition between visual features. A "cognitive masking" hypothesis is proposed.…