We investigated infants' ability to recognize the similarity between observed and implied goals when actions differed in surface-level motion details. In two experiments, 10- to 12-month-olds were habituated to an actor manipulating an object and then shown test actions in which the actor contacted the object with a novel hand configuration that…

Observation of human actions influences the observer's own motor system, termed visuomotor priming, and is believed to be caused by automatic activation of mirror neurons. Evidence suggests that priming effects are larger for biological (human) as opposed to non-biological (object) stimuli and enhanced when viewing stimuli in mirror compared to…

In tool use, a transformation rule defines the relation between an operating movement and its distal effect. This rule is determined by the tool structure and requires no explicit definition. The present study investigates how humans represent and apply compatible and incompatible transformation rules in tool use. In Experiment 1, participants had…

The experience of controlling one's own actions, and through them events in the outside world, is a pervasive feature of human mental life. Two experiments investigated the relation between this sense of control and the internal processes involved in action selection and cognitive control. Action selection was manipulated by subliminally priming…

This study aimed to evaluate the effects of cueing in visual search paradigm for people with and without intellectual disabilities (ID). A total of 36 subjects (18 persons with ID and 18 persons with normal intelligence) were recruited using convenient sampling method. A series of experiments were conducted to compare guided cue strategies using…

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…

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…

Walking without vision results in veering, an inability to maintain a straight path that has important consequences for blind pedestrians. In this study, the authors addressed whether the source of veering in the absence of visual and auditory feedback is better attributed to errors in perceptual encoding or undetected motor error. Three…

Neutrophils are white blood cells specialized for scavenging cellular debris and consuming infectious microorganisms in a process called "phagocytosis." What seems to make neutrophils especially voracious is the presence of antibodies (or opsonins) coating the surface of foreign cells. Recently, Dewitt and Hallett (2002) examined the role of…

Preverbal infants can represent the causal structure of events, including distinguishing the agentive and receptive roles and categorizing entities according to stable causal dispositions. This study investigated how infants combine these 2 kinds of causal inference. In Experiments 1 and 2, 9.5-month-olds used the position of a human hand or a…

If a moving stimulus (i.e., launcher) contacts a stationary target that subsequently begins to move, observers attribute motion of the target to the launcher (Michotte, 1946/1963). In experiments reported here, a stationary launcher adjacent to the target appeared or vanished and displacement in memory for the position of the target was measured.…

In 3 experiments, the author investigated 16- to 20-month-old infants' attention to dynamic and static parts in learning about self-propelled objects. In Experiment 1, infants were habituated to simple noncausal events in which a geometric figure with a single moving part started to move without physical contact from an identical geometric figure…

Different asymmetries between expansion and contraction (radial motions) have been reported in the literature. Often these patterns have been regarded as implying different channels for each type of radial direction (outward versus inwards) operating at a higher level of visual motion processing. In two experiments (detection and discrimination…

The authors investigated the role of perceptual attunement in an emergency braking task in which participants waited until the last possible moment to slam on the brakes. Effects of the size of the approached object and initial speed on the initiation of braking were used to identify the optical variables on which participants relied at various…

Dynamic Visual Acuity (DVA) can be measured from two types of equivalently considered movement referred to as drifting-motion and displacement-motion. Displacement motion can be best described as the horizontal displacement of a stimulus, thus implying pursuit eye movements, and involves moving the stimulus from the fixation point of gaze towards…