Walking without vision results in veering, an inability to maintain a straight path that has important consequences for blind pedestrians. In this study, the authors addressed whether the source of veering in the absence of visual and auditory feedback is better attributed to errors in perceptual encoding or undetected motor error. Three…

Six experiments assessed 4- to 8-month-old infants' reactions to probable and improbable orientation positions following invisible transformations from an original orientation. Availability of orientation cues, objects' path of motion, and amount of invisible spatial transformation were varied. Results indicated that infants as young as 4 months…

Assessed 14-week-olds' attention to green or red target objects moving in a field of distracting objects that varied in color. Found that infants' detection of green moving targets was masked in the presence of mixed red and green objects. Masking was not observed for red targets or for green targets in a field of green objects. (BC)

A flashed stimulus is perceived as spatially lagging behind a moving stimulus when they are spatially aligned. When several elements are perceptually grouped into a unitary moving object, a flash presented at the leading edge of the moving stimulus suffers a larger spatial lag than a flash presented at the trailing edge (K. Watanabe. R. Nijhawan.…

Human observers demonstrate impressive visual sensitivity to human movement. What defines this sensitivity? If motor experience influences the visual analysis of action, then observers should be most sensitive to their own movements. If view-dependent visual experience determines visual sensitivity to human movement, then observers should be most…

The real impact of cinema consists in its ability to translate symbols, the mind's form of language, into dynamic moving images. Man's visual orientation produces both his positive reaction to motion--a key element in cinema--and his perceptions of coded, visual information--symbols. The complex relationship between symbols and rhythmic motion…

A study was devised to determine whether, if color is found superior to black-and-white for communicating dynamic picture content, that superiority can be attributed to the realism of authentic color, or whether that superiority is the effect of the simple presence of color. A sample of 90 sixth grade students were shown slides, half of which…

James J. Gibson (1954) viewed perception as a system that picks up information which supports coordination of the agent's actions with the systems the environment provides. This led him to develop the idea of affordances, characteristics of objects and the environment that support their contributions to interactive activity. (SLD)

Prior studies of time-to-contact (TTC) focused on judgments of unoccluded approaching objects. P. R. DeLucia, M. K. Kaiser, J. M. Bush, L. E. Meyer, and B. T. Sweet (2003) showed that partial occlusion decreases an object's optical size and expansion rate and that the value of tau derived from the reduced optical size (relative rate of accretion;…

In 4 experiments, the authors varied the extent and nature of participant movement in a virtual environment to examine the influence of action on estimates of geographical slant. Previous studies showed that people consciously overestimate hill slant but can still accurately guide an action toward the hill (D. R. Proffitt, M. Bhalla, R.…

Real-world situations involve attending to spatially extended objects, often under conditions of motion and high processing load. The present experiments investigated such processing by requiring observers to attentionally track a number of long, moving lines. Concurrently, observers responded to sporadic probes as a measure of the distribution of…

Discusses how to stop a spinning object (such as rotating fan blades) by humming and the perception of curious blue arcs around a light. Background information, relevant research, and activities related to these two topics are provided. (JN)