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Localizing contours defined by more than one attribute.

Two experiments were run in order to test how information from different attributes is combined to localize contours. In Expt 1 the apparent position of a contour defined by one attribute was measured while a contour defined by another attribute was presented beside it. Interactions were found between all pairings of luminance, color, motion and texture. These results suggested that the information associated with each contour is integrated at a common site. In Expt 2 the precision of localization was measured for contours defined by one, two or three attributes (combinations of luminance, color and texture). The improvement in precision with additional attributes again supported an integration of contour information at a common site prior to a decision of localization.

Color Perception↗

Two-dimensional constraints on three-dimensional structure from motion tasks.

Can humans recover metric structure from motion sequences or, as has been claimed by Todd and Bressan [(1990) Perception & Psychophysics, 48, 419-430], are they limited to recovering only relief structure? Two experiments were carried out to investigate this question. In a metric-structure task, the angular thresholds for discriminating two rotating bi-planar structures were approximately 91 deg. By contrast, in a relief-structure task, the angular thresholds for discriminating a planar from a non-planar structure, both undergoing simple rotational motion, were only approximately 11 deg. A computational model is proposed to examine the image motion sensitivity required to perform discriminations of both three-dimensional metric and relief structure from motion. When the experimental data were re-plotted in terms of this two-dimensional sensitivity, the thresholds were found to be the same for both tasks. This finding is related to the model's revelation that recovering metric structure from motion is inherently more noise-sensitive than is recovering relief structure from motion. The conclusion is that the differences in angular thresholds reflect the differing nature of the two tasks. There is no evidence that the visual processes themselves are preferentially sensitive to non-metric over metric structure from motion.

Depth Perception↗

Non-visual information in structure-from-motion.

We examined whether non-visual signals improve visual perception of three-dimensional structure-from-motion. Observers discriminated curvature in quadratic surfaces defined by random dot cinematograms with limited lifetime. They either explored visually a static surface by making head movements that were fed back to the display (HM condition) or they viewed statically the same surface which now rotated (NHM condition). Both conditions showed a clear build-up of performance as lifetime increases, but with different time constants for the HM and NHM condition. A second experiment showed that these differences could not be caused by differences in motion detection for the HM and NHM conditions. We suggest that non-visual information is combined with visual information at a high stage of visual processing, and that it does not mainly serve as input for a retinal stabilization process.

Depth Perception↗

Abnormalities of fine motor control in schizophrenia.

Response time and fine motor control during a classification task were examined in schizophrenics and nonschizophrenics. The task involved decisions about either the sensory characteristics of auditory and visual stimuli or the referential meanings of spoken words and viewed pictures. Nonschizophrenics responded more quickly and exhibited a smoother and faster motor response on all tasks. Response time and motor control were influenced by stimulus modality and the complexity of the classification task in both groups. In the analysis of motor control, the schizophrenics differed from the nonschizophrenics in exhibiting a pattern suggestive of a specific difficulty with decisions involving referential meaning. The observed motor control dysfunction in schizophrenics is a psychomotor deficit similar to previously reported abnormalities in smooth pursuit eye movement. Further, the interaction of group and task variables in the motor response suggests that decisions about the abstract referential meaning of words and pictures produce greater cognitive loads in schizophrenics than in nonschizophrenics.

Adult↗

Colour-spatial vision.

A critical survey is made of neurophysiological and psychophysiological investigations of colour vision. A neuronal model of colour-spatial vision is suggested. The model allows a unified explanation of the whole range of psychophysiological phenomena: the mixing of colours of high-frequency image components, the McCollough type colour after-effects, the simultaneous and successive colour contrast, the hue constancy perception, the appearance of non-spectral colours by mixing of monochromatic lights. A suggestion is made as to the existence of two main mechanisms of colour vision. The first of these, by means of Fourier transforms, gives a set of coefficients which describes the spatial distribution of light (quantity of energy) and hue (quality of energy) in the visual field. The second mechanism establishes colour names in each chromatically homogenous area of the field described by the first mechanism. Both mechanisms cooperate on the basis of their common spatial organization.

Color Perception↗

Stimulus categorization by brain-damaged patients.

Patients with localized insult to the right hemisphere, or to either the anterior or the posterior portion of the left hemisphere, as well as neurologically intact controls, evaluated stimuli on a seven-point rating scale for their degree of category membership. The stimuli were taken from one of two continua, one composed of fruit and vegetable items, and the other of items differing in hue and shape. Different subsets of stimuli provided different contexts for the judgments of category membership. The two left-hemisphere groups showed anomalies in categorizing the fruit and vegetable items but not the perceptual items, while the reverse was true for the right-hemisphere patients. Moreover, both left-hemisphere groups demonstrated context effects in their judgments of the representativeness of the fruit and vegetable items, but differed in the way in which they responded to changing contexts. Left posterior patients demonstrated weak category boundaries and even reclassified items. In contrast, patients with left anterior damage showed highly categorical responses and less differentiation of items within a category. All groups showed striking context effects in judgments of perceptual items in terms of changes in representativeness ratings and the location of a category boundary. Alternative interpretations of the results are offered.

Brain Damage, Chronic↗

Bilateral EEG differentiation of stimuli.

The EEG of both right and left hemispheres was monitored while subjects were presented with words, music, arithmetical problems and abstract pictures, (15 trials of each treatment, 9 sec per trial). The left side of the brain was most activated during presentation of words and arithmetic, whilst the right side of the brain was most activated during presentation of music. In addition, the right side was more activated during exposure to arithmetic than to words. The pictures were not differentiated by either side of the brain and it is possible that they had the effect of deactivating or relaxing subjects, since they yielded high abundance values compared with other stimuli. This study confirms earlier findings showing significant between-hemisphere ratios for arithmetic and words. In addition, however, the within-hemisphere analyses show that music affects the right hemisphere (without inducing between-hemisphere changes) and that arithmetic also activates the right hemisphere if compared with the non-activating effects of words.

Adult↗

Deficits in achromatic phantom contour perception in poor readers.

In a previous study [Sperling, A. J., Lu, Z. L., Manis, F. R., & Seidenberg, M. S. (2003). Selective deficits in magnocellular processing: A "phantom contour" study. Neuropsychologia, 41, 1422-1429] we found that dyslexic children were relatively slower in processing achromatic phantom contours. The maximum temporal frequency at which they could identify achromatic phantom contours was correlated with reading ability and orthographic skill in particular. Here we investigated whether similar deficits could be identified in adults. Poor readers were chosen who scored below the 25th percentile on either a standardized test of word identification or nonword pronunciation. Good readers were chosen who scored above the 40th percentile on both reading tasks. We replicated the findings of the child study: poor readers had slower processing in the achromatic version of the task, but not in the chromatic version. Achromatic performance correlated with several measures of reading and reading-related skills, including exception word reading and phonological awareness. We discuss the possibility that the deficits may indicate impairment in noise exclusion that is more readily apparent at higher temporal frequencies.

Child, Preschool↗

The aperture problem in egocentric motion.

When only a featureless straight contour of a moving object is visible, one cannot tell its true velocity and the object seems to be moving perpendicularly to its orientation. Using psychophysics and brain imaging, Goltz et al. have now demonstrated that this aperture problem also occurs in visual representations in egocentric coordinates. An afterimage of inclined lines that is perceived to move with smooth-pursuit eye movements appears to move perpendicularly to the lines rather than in the tracking direction.

Afterimage↗

Effects of light and dark adaptation of rods on specific-hue threshold.

Specific-hue threshold as a function of absolute rod threshold was measured with long-, middle-, and short-wavelength monochromatic test lights presented 17 deg extrafoveally. The measurements were obtained both during the rod phase of long-term dark adaptation and under conditions where the rod receptor system was gradually light adapted from a dark-adapted state by a scotopic background field of increasing retinal illumination. The results show that change in specific-hue threshold with change in absolute rod threshold is not, in general, identical for light and dark adaptation of the rod receptor system. Thus, in the long- and middle-wavelength test regions, the specific-hue threshold could be obtained at higher intensities under the light- as compared to the dark-adaptation condition when absolute rod thresholds were the same. Just the opposite was found for the short-wavelength tests. It is concluded that change in specific-hue threshold with light and dark adaptation of the rod receptor system is not, in general, controlled by the same mechanism.

Color Perception↗

Binary and ternary textures containing higher-order spatial correlations.

A quantitative method is presented for creating a large number of classes of binary (256) and ternary (7.62 x 10(12)) textures. The binary textures are presented as black and white (contrasts -1 and 1). The ternary textures have three levels: black, white and the mean luminance gray (contrasts -1, 0 and 1). The ternary patterns in particular display a wide variety of properties, including depth cues from disparity and lighting. Given the very large number of ternary patterns, we present guidelines and analytical methods for selecting sets of textures with particular image qualities and/or nonlinear relationships between pixels. The second- and third-order correlation functions of several thousand examples were examined to reveal patterns that are functionally isotrigon with other textures and or with uniformly distributed noise patterns.

Contrast Sensitivity↗

Visual discrimination of local surface structure: slant, tilt, and curvedness.

In four experiments, observers were required to discriminate interval or ordinal differences in slant, tilt, or curvedness between designated probe points on randomly shaped curved surfaces defined by shading, texture, and binocular disparity. The results reveal that discrimination thresholds for judgments of slant or tilt typically range between 4 degrees and 10 degrees; that judgments of one component are unaffected by simultaneous variations in the other; and that the individual thresholds for either the slant or tilt components of orientation are approximately equal to those obtained for judgments of the total orientation difference between two probed regions. Performance was much worse, however, for judgments of curvedness, and these judgments were significantly impaired when there were simultaneous variations in the shape index parameter of curvature.

Depth Perception↗

A pet study of visual and semantic knowledge about objects.

The distinctiveness of temporal lobe regions activated during the retrieval of knowledge regarding structural, colour and associative (encyclopaedic) aspects of familiar objects was investigated using PET. These three types of knowledge were contrasted using well matched tasks requiring the detection, in a series of coloured-in line drawings, of occasional anomalous objects (in the three conditions: structurally incorrect chimeras composed of parts of real objects; inappropriately coloured objects; familiar objects that do not exist in the modern world). Relative to a resting baseline condition, all semantic retrieval tasks yielded extensive bilateral activations in occipital and temporal areas, extending anteriorly on the ventral surface of the brain, plus an area in the right superior parietal lobe. In direct semantic-task comparisons focussing on the temporal lobe: (i) structural relative to associative decisions activated the right posterior middle/inferior temporal gyrus; (ii) colour decisions relative to structural judgements were associated with a region in the right superior temporal gyrus; (iii) the associative decision task selectively activated the left anterior middle/superior temporal gyrus and temporal pole relative to both object structure and colour, and also the homologous right temporal pole relative to colour only. These results indicate that each type of stored knowledge involves at least partially distinct cortical areas, and suggest that both anterior/posterior and left/right temporal regions have specialised roles.

Adult↗