Three experiments on tachistoscopic perception of visual stimuli demonstrate that the visual system is sensitive to global topological properties. The results indicate that extraction of global topological properties is a basic factor in perceptual organization. (Author)

Image size, viewing angle, and contrast affect performance of a visual discrimination task. Further, the three factors interaction in their effect on performance. (Author)

The ability to interpret emotions in facial expressions is crucial for social functioning across the lifespan. Facial expression recognition develops rapidly during infancy and improves with age during the preschool years. However, the developmental trajectory from late childhood to adulthood is less clear. We tested older children, adolescents…

Three experiments were carried out to investigate hemispheric asymmetry in color processing among normal participants. In Experiment 1, it was shown that the reaction times (RTs) of the dominant and non-dominant hands assessed using a visual target presented at the central visual field, were not significantly different. In Experiment 2, RTs of…

J. S. Joseph, M. M. Chun, and K. Nakayama (1997) found that pop-out visual search was impaired as a function of intertarget lag in an attentional blink (AB) paradigm in which the 1st target was a letter and the 2nd target was a search display. In 4 experiments, the present authors tested the implication that search efficiency should be similarly…

To examine the ontogeny of emotional face processing, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from adults and 7-month-old infants while viewing pictures of fearful, happy, and neutral faces. Face-sensitive ERPs at occipital-temporal scalp regions differentiated between fearful and neutral/happy faces in both adults (N170 was larger for fear)…

Purpose: This research examined how the color distribution of symbols within a visual aided augmentative and alternative communication array influenced the speed and accuracy with which participants with and without Down syndrome located a target picture symbol. Method: Eight typically developing children below the age of 4 years, 8 typically…

Many everyday matching tasks taught to persons with developmental disabilities are visual-visual non-identity matching (VVNM) tasks, such as matching the printed word DOG to a picture of a dog, or matching a sock to a shoe. Research has shown that, for participants who have failed a VVNM prototype task, it is very difficult to teach them various…

Infants five- and seven-months-old were sequentially shown three stimulus arrays of visual elements, only one of which was capable of producing subjective contours. An infant habituation control procedure was used to test infants' abilities to discriminate the arrays. (Author/RH)

Results suggest that when the internal element of a compound stimulus is a highly preferred or salient stimulus, young infants will process information about its characteristics. (Author/DB)

Suggests that in tasks requiring the spatial coding of visual information children's performance depends on the degree of congruence between alternative spatial reference axes. (Author/MP)

In visual search tasks, if a set of items is presented for 1 s before another set of new items (containing the target) is added, search can be restricted to the new set. The process that eliminates old items from search is visual marking. This study investigates the kind of memory that distinguishes the old items from the new items during search.…

By definition children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) experience difficulty understanding and using language. Accordingly, visual and picture-based strategies such as the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) show promise in ameliorating speech and language deficits. This study reports the results of a multiple baseline across…

Previous research has shown that the appearance of task-irrelevant abrupt onsets influences saccadic eye movements during visual search and may slow down manual reactions to target stimuli. Analysis of reaction time distributions in the present study offers evidence suggesting that top-down inhibition processes actively suppress oculomotor or…