Research on visual perception in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) tries to reveal the underlying mechanisms of aberrant local and global processing. Global motion perception is one way to study this aspect of ASD. We used plaid motion stimuli, which can be perceived as a coherently moving pattern, requiring feature integration, or as two transparent…

A sparse mask that persists beyond the duration of a target can reduce its visibility, a phenomenon called "object substitution masking". Y. Jiang and M. M. Chun (2001a) found an asymmetric pattern of substitution masking such that a mask on the peripheral side of the target caused stronger substitution masking than on the central side.…

Visual information can specify spatial layout with respect to the observer (egocentric) or with respect to an external frame of reference (allocentric). People can use both of these types of visual spatial information to guide their hands. The question arises if movements based on egocentric and movements based on allocentric visual information…

When the bottom halves of two faces differ, people's behavioral judgment of the identical top halves of those faces is impaired: they report that the top halves are different, and/or take more time than usual to provide a response. This behavioral measure is known as the composite face effect (CFE) and has traditionally been taken as evidence that…

Objective assessment of memory functioning is an important part of evaluation for Dementia of Alzheimer Type (DAT). The revised Picture Recognition Memory Test (r-PRMT) is a test for visual recognition memory to assess memory functioning of persons with intellectual disabilities (ID), specifically targeting moderate to severe ID. A pilot study was…

The validity of Baddeley's working memory model within the typically developing population, was tested. However, it is not clear if this model also holds in children and adolescents with mild to, borderline intellectual disabilities (ID; IQ score 55-85). The main purpose of this study was therefore, to explore the model's validity in this…

Psychological research has placed great emphasis on inhibitory control due to its integral role in normal cognition and clinical disorders. The stop-signal task and associated measure--stop-signal reaction time (SSRT)--provides a well-established paradigm for measuring response inhibition. However, motivational influences on stop-signal…

In recent years, some researchers have proposed that a fundamental component of the word recognition process is that each fovea is divided precisely at its vertical midline and that information either side of this midline projects to different, contralateral hemispheres. Thus, when a word is fixated, all letters to the left of the point of…

The aim of this study is to investigate whether newborns detect a face on the basis of a Gestalt representation based on first-order relational information (i.e., the basic arrangement of face features) by using Mooney stimuli. The incomplete 2-tone Mooney stimuli were used because they preclude focusing both on the local features (i.e., the fine…

The authors present neuropsychological evidence distinguishing binding between form, color, and size (cross-domain binding) and binding between form elements. They contrasted conjunctive search with difficult feature search using control participants and patients with unilateral parietal or fronto/temporal lesions. To rule out effects of task…

In 2 experiments, eye movements were examined during searches in which elements were grouped into four 9-item clusters. The target (a red or blue "T") was known in advance, and each cluster contained different numbers of target-color elements. Rather than color composition of a cluster invariantly guiding the order of search though…

Two experiments examined developmental changes in children's visual recognition of common objects during the period of 18 to 24 months. Experiment 1 examined children's ability to recognize common category instances that presented three different kinds of information: (1) richly detailed and prototypical instances that presented both local and…

Macular degeneration has a severe impact on a person's ability to perform activities of daily living. This study investigated the impact of in-home training in eccentric viewing on near acuity and performance of activities of daily living. The results suggest that eccentric viewing can ameliorate the impact of the loss of vision that is due to…

Previous research suggests individuals with autism may be less influenced by a three-dimensional interpretation when copying line drawings (Sheppard et al. "J Autism Dev Disord" 37:1913-1924, 2007). The current research aimed to determine whether this reduced dimensionality effect extends to drawings of an actual object. Twenty-four children and…

In a study of optical cues to the visual perception of stress, three American English talkers spoke words that differed in lexical stress and sentences that differed in phrasal stress, while video and movements of the face were recorded. The production of stressed and unstressed syllables from these utterances was analyzed along many measures of…