Visual Perception: Underlying Processes

Visual perception seems effortless but how does it actually occur? What are the building blocks? What are the underlying processes? A number of people in the lab have focussed on answering these sorts of questions and in doing so have developed a better understanding of what it means to “see”. Some of this work has focused on determining the processing architecture underlying change detection. Other studies have investigated attribute amnesia and natural scene recognition. We are also interested in the degree to which top-down attention affects visual perception.

Selected Journal Articles

• Blunden, AG, Howe, PDL, & Little, DL (In press). Evidence that within-dimension features are processed coactively. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics. [PDF]
• Chen, W. & Howe, PDL (2017). Attribute amnesia is greatly reduced with novel stimuli. PeerJ, e4016. [PDF]
• Howe, PDL (2017). Natural scenes can be identified as rapidly as individual features. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 79(6), 1674-1681. [PDF]
• Howe PDL & Carter, OL (2016). Hallucinations and mental imagery demonstrate ‘top-down’ effects on visual perception. Behavioural and Brain Sciences. 39:2. [PDF]