Biomedical subjects

Harry S Orbach

Publications and source records attributed to Harry S Orbach.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Is there a mismatch negativity during change blindness?

The mismatch negativity is an event-related potential that represents a preattentive change detection process. The aim of this study was to determine whether the mismatch negativity was present during 'change blindness', a striking phenomenon in which surprisingly large changes in a complex scene are not seen when they occur during a blink or an eye movement. In this study, large orientation changes elicited a candidate mismatch negativity between 180 and 320 ms that appeared to be independent of participants' performance (uncued 76% correct, miscued 59% correct with chance performance at 50%). This negativity, however, disappeared in the miscued 'change blind' condition. In conclusion, the mismatch negativity does not appear to be present during change blindness suggesting that in complex scenes even large changes may not trigger preattentive change detection processes.

Acoustic Stimulation↗

PubMed2005

Effects of global shape on angle discrimination.

Previous studies have been inconclusive as to whether angle discrimination performance can be predicted by the sensitivity of orientation discrimination mechanisms or by that of mechanisms specialised for angle coding. However, these studies have assumed that angle discrimination is independent of the shape of the object of which the angle is a part. This assumption was tested by measuring angle discrimination using angles that were parts of different triangular shapes. Angle discrimination thresholds were lowest when angles were presented in isosceles triangles (sides forming the angle were of identical length). Performance was significantly poorer when angles were presented in scalene triangles (sides of different lengths) and as much as three times worse when the sides forming the angle varied randomly in length between presentations. Comparing orientation discrimination for single lines with angle discrimination for different stimulus conditions (isosceles, scalene and random triangles) leads to conflicting conclusions as to the mechanisms underlying angle perception: line orientation sensitivity correctly predicts angle discrimination for random triangles, but underestimates angle acuity for isosceles triangles. The fact that performance in angle discrimination tasks is strongly dependant on the overall stimulus geometry implies that geometric angles are computed by mechanisms that are sensitive to global aspects of the stimulus.

Discrimination, Psychological↗

PubMed2003

Factors affecting motion integration.

The perceived direction of motion of a featureless contour inside a circular aperture is always perpendicular to the contour's orientation, regardless of its true motion (the aperture problem). This study investigates the circumstances under which unambiguous feature motion (of line terminators, single dots, or truncations of a D6 pattern) in adjacent apertures can alter the perceived direction of such featureless contours. We find that integration mechanisms responsible for motion capture are fairly robust against misorientations and contrast manipulations of individual components, are sensitive to differences in spatial frequencies, and scale with pattern size. Motion capture is not diminished when a D6 profile is substituted for the square-pulse profile of a line and is independent of the visibility of the apertures, indicating that object interpretations and three-dimensional analyses of a scene are less important than has been postulated previously. These results have strong implications for the neuronal hardware underlying the integration of motion signals across space and provide a framework for global motion models.

Humans↗

PubMed2003

Modeling the integration of motion signals across space.

Experiments by Loffler and Orbach on the integration of motion signals across space [J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 20, 1461 (2003)] revealed that both three-dimensional analysis and object interpretation play a much smaller role than previously assumed. These results motivated the quantitative description of a low-level, bottom-up model presented here. Motion is computed in parallel at different spatial sites, and excitatory interactions operate between sites. The strength of these interactions is determined mainly by distance. Simulations correctly predict behavior for a variety of manipulations on multi-aperture stimuli: aligned and skewed lines, different presentation times, different inter-aperture gaps, and different spatial frequencies. However, strictly distance-dependent mechanisms are too simplistic to account for all experimental data. Mismatches for grossly misoriented lines suggest collinear facilitation as a promising extension. Once incorporated, collinear facilitation not only correctly predicts results for misoriented patterns but also accounts for the lack of motion integration between heterogeneous stimuli such as lines and dots.

Computer Simulation↗