Five experiments investigated children's understanding that expectations based on prior experience may influence a person's interpretation of ambiguous visual information. Results suggest that understanding of interpretation begins at approximately six years of age. (HTH)

Examined effects on duration of gaze of infant- and adult-directed (ID and AD) speech signalling presentation of adult faces. Found that, when ID speech segments signaled presentation of a smiling, sad, fearful, or angry face, significant and comparable conditioning occurred with the smiling and sad faces, whereas nonsignificant and more variable…

Notes that in phonetic categorization, listeners hear a range of speech sounds forming a continuum of ambiguous sounds between two endpoints and are required to identify the sounds as one or other of the endpoints. Points out that this task has been used in phonetics and in psycholinguistics to study categorical perception, selective adaptation,…

Three studies investigated whether eye gaze cueing in 4-month-old infants is the result of a domain-specific module or reflects the activity of domain-general processes. In two of three experiments, infants perceived apparent motion of the pupils, and this directly elicited saccades, but only when this motion was preceded by a period of direct…

Discusses why public perceptions of the importance of Kettlewell's investigations on the phenomenon of industrial melanism diverge from those of researchers who actually work on the phenomenon. Explains the important role photographic and film depictions of differential bird predation play in Kettlewell's popularizations. (Author/SOE)

Discussion of multimedia libraries and the need for storage, indexing, and retrieval techniques focuses on the combination of computer vision and data mining techniques to model high-level concepts for image retrieval based on perceptual features of the human visual system. Uses fuzzy set theory to measure users' assessments and to capture users'…

Administered phonological awareness and phoneme identification tasks to dyslexic children and chronological age (CA) and reading-level (RL) comparison groups. Found no real differences in categorical perception between dyslexic and RL groups; however, more dyslexics (7 of 25) had abnormal identification functions. Results suggest that some…

A new qualitative scoring system for the Rey Visual Memory Test was tested for its ability to distinguish between malingerers and nonmalingerers. The new system, based on the types of errors made, was able to distinguish between 53 psychiatrically disabled and 64 normal nonmalingerers, and between nonmalingerers and 91 possible malingerers. (SLD)

Experiments involving a total of 114 college students from Indiana and Israel demonstrate that the initial analysis of visual objects into features from different dimensions strongly constrains postperceptual processes of response selection. A model of response selection is proposed to account for the findings. (SLD)

Used a habituation-dishabituation procedure to test ability of 4-, 5-, and 7-month-olds to differentiate between a subjective ellipse and a nonsubjective pattern that were constructed by displacing the inducing elements of the illusory figure. Found that even 4-month-olds discriminated between the subjective ellipse and nonillusory display. This…

Examines Tomlin and Villa's (1994) analysis of attention and Leow's (1998) attempt to operationalize this model. Argues that Leow's efforts to provide empirical support for the model fall short of that goal. (Author/VWL)

Explores the possibility of multimodal bivariate thematic maps by utilizing auditory and haptic (sense of touch) displays. Measured completion time of tasks and the recall (retention) rate in two experiments, and findings confirmed the possibility of using auditory and haptic displays in geographic information systems (GIS). (Author/LRW)

"Sine-wave speech" sentences contain only four frequency-modulated sine waves, lacking many acoustic cues present in natural speech. Adults with (n=19) and without (n=14) dyslexia were asked to reproduce orally sine-wave utterances in successive trials. Results suggest comprehension of sine-wave sentences is impaired in some adults with…

This study identifies four patterns of how college presidents (N=32) interpret their own leadership roles and defines them in terms of a president's target of attention, mode of action, and relatedness to college life. It concludes that the presidency is not a singular, objective event but a subjective construction that may be experienced in…

The commentary to EC 232 373 and EC 232 374 discusses whether stuttering is really what the listener perceives, the stutterer senses, or the dictionary states. It concludes that stuttering can probably be defined in appropriate contexts as any or all of these three things. (JDD)