Although human infants demonstrate early competence to retain visual information, memory capacities during infancy remain largely undocumented. In three experiments, we used a Visual Paired Comparison (VPC) task to examine abilities to encode identity (Experiment 1) and spatial properties (Experiments 2a and 2b) of unfamiliar complex visual…

Previous research on dual-tasks has shown that, under some circumstances, actions impair the perception of action-consistent stimuli, whereas, under other conditions, actions facilitate the perception of action-consistent stimuli. We propose a new model to reconcile these contrasting findings. The planning and control model (PCM) of motorvisual…

The magnitude of the association between developmental dyslexia (DD) and motion sensitivity is evaluated in 35 studies, which investigated coherence motion perception in DD. A first analysis is conducted on the differences between DD groups and age-matched control (C) groups. In a second analysis, the relationship between motion coherence…

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…

Impressions of force are commonplace in the visual perception of objects interacting. It is proposed that these impressions have their source in haptically mediated experiences of exertion of force in actions on objects. Visual impressions of force in interactions between objects occur by a kind of generalization of the proprioceptive impression…

How do capuchin monkeys learn to use stones to crack open nuts? Perception-action theory posits that individuals explore producing varying spatial and force relations among objects and surfaces, thereby learning about affordances of such relations and how to produce them. Such learning supports the discovery of tool use. We present longitudinal…

The idea of visual complexity, the history of its measurement, and its implications for behavior are reviewed, starting with structuralism and Gestalt psychology at the beginning of the 20th century and ending with visual complexity theory, perceptual learning theory, and neural circuit theory at the beginning of the 21st. Evidence is drawn from…

The present study evaluated the effects of both a traditional lecture and the conservative dual-criterion (CDC) judgment aid on the ability of 6 university students to visually inspect AB-design line graphs. The traditional lecture reliably failed to improve visual inspection accuracy, whereas the CDC method substantially improved the performance…

The effectiveness of training procedures which used visual-visual arbitrary matching, blocked-trial matching-to-sample, and successive discrimination training to teach visual-visual discrimination of two-dimensional forms was evaluated with two men having severe mental retardation. Results indicated that the procedures did establish conditional…

Eight crows were taught to discriminate overlapping pairs of visual stimuli (A+ B-, B+ C-, C+ D-, and D+ E-). For 4 birds, the stimuli were colored cards with a circle of the same color on the reverse side whose diameter decreased from A to E (ordered feedback group). These circles were made available for comparison to potentially help the crows…

People categorized pairs of perceptual stimuli that varied in both category membership and pairwise similarity. Experiments 1 and 2 showed categorization of 1 color of a pair to be reliably contrasted from that of the other. This similarity-based contrast effect occurred only when the context stimulus was relevant for the categorization of the…

This study was designed to investigate the effects of certain aspects of the outdoor environment on the spatial perceptions of the occupants of residential settings. Among the findings were data suggesting that a dormitory room is more territorial for females than for males; thus females are more susceptible to crowding effects. (DS)

An experiment on children's perception of urban distance is described, focusing on the study's methodology and analyses. Suggests that the methodology/analyses could be used by sixth-formers providing a means by which sixth-formers can develop their own examinations of urban distance perception. (JN)