In 8 experiments, we investigated motion fluency effects on object preference. In each experiment, distinct objects were repeatedly seen moving either fluently (with a smooth and predictable motion) or disfluently (with sudden and unpredictable direction changes) in a task where participants were required to respond to occasional brief changes in…

It is difficult to recognize the identity of a face presented in negative contrast. This difficulty, however, is substantially reduced when only the eye region is contrast positive in an otherwise negative face image, and recognition of these so-called contrast chimeras approaches performance with full positive faces. This apparently similar…

Visual stress (the experience of visual distortions and discomfort during prolonged reading) is frequently identified and alleviated with coloured overlays or lenses. Previous studies have associated visual stress with dyslexia and as a consequence, coloured overlays are widely distributed to children and adults with reading difficulty. However,…

How does executive attentional control contribute to memory for sequences of visual objects, and what does this reveal about storage and processing in working memory? Three experiments examined the impact of a concurrent executive load (backward counting) on memory for sequences of individually presented visual objects. Experiments 1 and 2 found…

In visual search tasks participants search for a target among distractors in strictly controlled displays. We show that visual search principles observed in these tasks do not necessarily apply in more ecologically valid search conditions, using dynamic and complex displays. A multi-element asynchronous dynamic (MAD) visual search was developed in…

Evidence for inhibitory processes in visual search comes from studies using preview conditions, where responses to new targets are delayed if they carry a featural attribute belonging to the old distractor items that are currently being ignored--the negative carry-over effect (Braithwaite, Humphreys, & Hodsoll, 2003). We examined whether…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can process both interpretations of an ambiguous figure (e.g. rabbit/duck) when told about the ambiguity, however they tend not to do so spontaneously. Here we show that although adolescents with ASD can explicitly experience such "reversals", implicit measures suggest they are conceptually…

Mathematicians have proven that four colors are sufficient to color 2-D maps so that no neighboring regions share the same color. Here we consider the psychological 4-color problem: Identifying which 4 colors should be used to make a map easy to use. We build a model of visual search for this design task and demonstrate how to apply it to the task…

This research focused on the observation of infants between the ages of 2 and 18 months with regard to their aesthetic preferences for a variety of visual stimuli. These stimuli included: a black-and-white schematic drawing of a baby, a popular cartoon image, a colorful abstract painting of a baby, and a photographic image of a baby's face. Prior…

Among the findings were that there was no significant difference in performance between Down's syndrome, other mentally handicapped, and normal Ss matched for mental age, when extraneous developmental factors were eliminated; and that there was no relationship between mental age and visual perception in any group. (DLS)

This brief survey of successful visual literacy programs designed for students at the elementary and secondary level outlines projects to teach visual communication skills in Ohio, Indiana (Project Visual Understanding in Education/VUE), Virginia, Iowa (Media NOW), California, Canada, England, and Australia (Visual Education Curriculum Project).…