Decision-makers effortlessly balance the need for urgency against the need for caution. Theoretical and neurophysiological accounts have explained this tradeoff solely in terms of the "quantity" of evidence required to trigger a decision (the "threshold"). This explanation has also been used as a benchmark test for evaluating…

The type of visual information needed for categorizing faces and nonface objects was investigated by manipulating spatial frequency scales available in the image during a category verification task addressing basic and subordinate levels. Spatial filtering had opposite effects on faces and airplanes that were modulated by categorization level. The…

Butler (1980) compared errors representing intrusions and mislocalizations on 3x3 letter displays under pattern-mask versus no-mask conditions and found that pattern masking increased character mislocalization errors (naming a character in the display but not in the target position as being the target) over intrusion errors (naming a character not…

To measure how the complexity of a television image affects the viewer's ability to identify or recognize visual details within the image, two coders rated the form complexity of 30 public service announcements, basing their evaluation on the familiarity of the images in the announcements, the rate at which they presented new information, and the…