The significance of spatial factors on an initial segmentation and an active attentional phase was demonstrated by briefly exposing spatial configurations of elements, and then asking the subjects to reproduce the patterns or to search them for a target letter. The stimulus displays consisted of small o's forming different spatial configurations,…

Visual acuity as a function of target position and density was measured in a letter recognition task. A homogeneous pattern of equally-spaced elements was tachistoscopically exposed, where the target was never located at the boundaries of the pattern. The target was marked with a spatial cue to control attentional processes. With such a spatial…

The current research investigates infants' perception of a novel object from a category that is familiar to young infants: key rings. We ask whether experiences obtained outside the lab would allow young infants to parse the visible portions of a partly occluded key ring display into one single unit, presumably as a result of having categorized it…

The attentional blink refers to the finding that the 2nd of 2 targets embedded in a stream of rapidly presented distractors is often missed. Whereas most theories of the attentional blink focus on limited-capacity processes that occur after target selection, the present work investigates the selection process itself. Identifying a target letter…

This study provides evidence that eye movements reflect the positions of objects while participants listen to a spoken description, retell a previously heard spoken description, and describe a previously seen picture. This effect is equally strong in retelling from memory, irrespective of whether the original elicitation was spoken or visual. In…