Standardized, well-established paper-and-pencil tests, which measure spatial abilities or which measure reasoning abilities, have long been found to be predictive of success in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. Instructors can use these tests for prediction of success and to inform instruction. A comparative…

This article presents a model for understanding the development of visual perception from a dynamic systems theory perspective. It contrasts to a hierarchical or reductionist model that is often found in the occupational therapy literature. In this proposed model vision and ocular motor abilities are not foundational to perception, they are seen…

The rapid visual detection of other people in our environment is an important first step in social cognition. Here we provide evidence for selective sensitivity of the human visual system to upright depictions of conspecifics. In a series of seven experiments, we assessed the impact of stimulus inversion on the detection of person silhouettes,…

Many visual search experiments measure response time (RT) as their primary dependent variable. Analyses typically focus on mean (or median) RT. However, given enough data, the RT distribution can be a rich source of information. For this paper, we collected about 500 trials per cell per observer for both target-present and target-absent displays…

Caparos and Linnell (2009, 2010) used a variable-separation flanker paradigm to show that (a) when cognitive load is low, increasing perceptual load causes spatial attention to focus and (b) when perceptual load is high, decreasing cognitive load causes spatial attention to focus. Here, we tested whether the effects of perceptual and cognitive…

Perceptual grouping has traditionally been thought to be governed by innate, universal principles. However, recent work has found differences in Japanese and English speakers' non-linguistic perceptual grouping, implicating language in non-linguistic perceptual processes (Iversen, Patel, & Ohgushi, 2008). Two experiments test Japanese- and…

In this paper, we consider theories about processes of visual perception and perception-based knowledge representation (VPR) in order to explain difficulties encountered in figural processing in junior high school geometry tasks. In order to analyze such difficulties, we take advantage of the following perspectives of VPR: (1) Perceptual…

Williams syndrome (WS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder associated with impaired visuospatial representations subserved by the dorsal stream and relatively strong object recognition abilities subserved by the ventral stream. There is conflicting evidence on whether this uneven pattern in WS extends to working memory (WM). The present studies…

In both behavior and neuroscience research, it is debated whether the processing of identity and location is closely bound throughout processing. One aspect of this debate is the possibly privileged processing of identity or location. For example, processing identity may have unlimited capacity, while processing location does not. The authors have…

Adults have little difficulty perceiving objects as complete despite occlusion, but newborn infants perceive moving partly occluded objects solely in terms of visible surfaces. The developmental mechanisms leading to perceptual completion have never been adequately explained. Here, the authors examine the potential contributions of oculomotor…

Four experiments addressed the question of whether attention may be captured when the visual system is in the midst of an attentional blink (AB). Participants identified 2 target letters embedded among distractor letters in a rapid serial visual presentation sequence. In some trials, a square frame was inserted between the targets; as the only…

This report summarizes the work conducted for the Artificial Intelligence Measurement System (AIMS) Project which was undertaken as an exploration of methodology to consider how the effects of artificial intelligence systems could be compared to human performance. The research covered four areas of inquiry: (1) natural language processing and…

The technique developed in this research paper for analyzing the information in charts and graphs is designed to reveal design flaws in the display that may prevent them from conveying information effectively. This analytic scheme requires isolating four types of constituents in a display and specifying their structure and interrelations at the…

The aim of the 2018 International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS) Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA) conference was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There have been advances in both cognitive…

The spatial layout of visual displays was evaluated by means of three magnitude estimation tasks and one reproduction task. Each stimulus display consisted of 16 randomly-drawn, two-digit numbers. Six different spatial layouts, or display types, were used: systematic vs. random spatial order of numbers; regular vs. irregular boundaries of the…