Recent work has shown that perceptual training can be used to improve the performance of novices in real-world visual classification tasks with medical images, but it is unclear which perceptual training methods are the most effective, especially for difficult medical image discrimination tasks. We investigated several different perceptual…

The present study aims to analyse the perceptions of reality of 5-6 year old children about the cartoons they watch. The study group of the research includes pre-schoolers. Within the scope of the study, a private pre-school and a public preschool which volunteered to be a part of the study were determined, and the study was carried out with 101…

Visual expertise covers a broad range of types of studies and methodologies. Many studies incorporate some measure(s) of observer performance or how well participants perform on a given task. Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis is a method commonly used in signal detection tasks (i.e., those in which the observer must decide whether…

Previous research has shown that processing words with an up/down association (e.g., bird, foot) can influence the subsequent identification of visual targets in congruent location (at the top/bottom of the screen). However, as facilitation and interference were found under similar conditions, the nature of the underlying mechanisms remained…

Autistic people are better at perceiving details. Major theories explain this in terms of bottom-up sensory mechanisms or in terms of top-down cognitive biases. Recently, it has become possible to link these theories within a common framework. This framework assumes that perception is implicit neural inference, combining sensory evidence with…

Contour interpolation is a perceptual process that fills-in missing edges on the basis of how surrounding edges (inducers) are spatiotemporally related. Cognitive encapsulation refers to the degree to which perceptual mechanisms act in isolation from beliefs, expectations, and utilities (Pylyshyn, 1999). Is interpolation encapsulated from belief?…

We measured looking times and ERPs to examine the cognitive and brain bases of perceptual category learning in 6-month-old infants. In Experiment 1, we showed that categorization and exemplar discrimination rely on different cortical processes. Specifically, the repetition of individual exemplars resulted in differential cortical processing at…

Signal detection theory (SDT) parameters can describe a learner's ability to discriminate (d[prime symbol]) normal from abnormal and the learner's criterion ([lambda]) to under or overcall abnormalities. To examine the serial changes in SDT parameters with serial exposure to radiological cases. 46 participants were recruited for this study: 20…

Two experimental series are reported using both reaction time (RT) and a data-limited perceptual report to examine the effects of perceptual load on object-based attention. Perceptual load was manipulated across 3 levels by increasing the complexity of perceptual judgments. Data from the RT-based experiments showed object-based effects when the…

Two experiments investigated categorical perception (CP) effects for affective facial expressions and linguistic facial expressions from American Sign Language (ASL) for Deaf native signers and hearing non-signers. Facial expressions were presented in isolation (Experiment 1) or in an ASL verb context (Experiment 2). Participants performed ABX…

Whether objects are represented as a collection of parts whose relations are coded independently remains a topic of ongoing discussion among theorists in the domain of shape perception. S. M., an individual with integrative agnosia, and neurologically intact ("normal") individuals learned initially to identify 4 target objects constructed of 2…

Perceived position depends on many factors, including motion present in a visual scene. Convincing evidence shows that high-level motion perception-which is driven by top-down processes such as attentional tracking or inferred motion-can influence the perceived position of an object. Is high-level motion sufficient to influence perceived position,…

Great controversy exists on whether associative learning occurs without awareness. In Experiment 1, 31 participants received discrimination training by repeated presentations of two stimulus sequences (S1[subscript A] right arrow S2[subscript A], and S1[subscript B] right arrow S2[subscript B]), S1 being a masked stimulus. S2 were imperative…

Object parts are signaled by concave discontinuities in shape contours. In seven experiments, we examined whether 5- and 6 1/2-month-olds are sensitive to concavities as special aspects of contours. Infants of both ages detected discrepant concave elements amid convex distractors but failed to discriminate convex elements among concave…

A theory on the features of a visual scene and how these features are organized to provide a representational model of the visual scene is presented. (HB)