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…

Despite a long history of vigilance research, the role of global and local feature discrimination in vigilance tasks has been relatively neglected. In this experiment participants performed a sustained attention task requiring either global or local shape stimuli discrimination. Reaction time to local feature discriminations was characterized by a…

Although traditional methods to collect similarity data (for multidimensional scaling [MDS]) are robust, they share a key shortcoming. Specifically, the possible pairwise comparisons in any set of objects grow rapidly as a function of set size. This leads to lengthy experimental protocols, or procedures that involve scaling stimulus subsets. We…

We evaluated the influence of two different frequencies of data collection on skill acquisition and maintenance within behavioral treatment programs for children with autism spectrum disorders. Six children were taught multiple skills in up to four different behavioral programs. Half of the skills were measured continuously (i.e., trial by trial),…

Takes issue with scientific legibility studies which focus on isolating variables to obtain verifiable results, but which are not useful in the more complex and holistic design of specific type faces. Demonstrates visually the principles and attributes ending with Roxane, a typeface developed with certain principles in mind. (SC)

Boys and girls in second and fourth grades were presented with a two-choice simultaneous form discrimination. The forms were five or ten-sided and symmetrical or asymmetrical. Boys performed better than girls and older children were more accurate than younger ones. (MS)

Is the perception of velocity determined by the prior discrimination of spatial and temporal distances? Two experiments sought to answer this question by comparing the discriminabilities of moving stimuli varied in spatial extent, temporal duration, or in redundant combinations of both variables. (Editor)

Forty preschoolers were directed to mentally rotate a stimulus and to discriminate the rotated stimulus from among a set of alternatives. Results are discussed in light of discrepant findings about children's kinetic imagery ability and the advisability of using this particular paradigm with young children. (Author/BS)

To investigate the possible cue (stimulus) as opposed to motivational functions of drive and reward, this study assessed the effects of problem difficulty, reward magnitude, and drive level on the performance of rats in visual discrimination tasks entailing both choice and speed measures. (Editor/RK)

This study was designed to test two alternate hypotheses regarding the meaning of increased lateral head movements in infants during experiments in which the mothers' voices were displaced from their faces. One interpretation is that the lateral looking responses of the infants are attributable to maturational effects on the infants' physiological…

Adults and children judged mirror and nonmirror pairs of stimuli. The findings in this research suggested a nonperceptual explanation of mirror-image confusions, one involving conceptual and linguistic considerations. (Editor/RK)

Article refers to EJ 045 083. (CB)

The ability of forty 8-week-old infants to discriminate between projected-stereograms with and without retinal disparity was tested with an habituation-dishabituation paradigm. Results were interpreted as indicating that the infants could discriminate between stimuli when the only difference between them was binocular disparity. (MS)