Since the early phenomenological demonstrations of Gestalt principles, one of the major challenges of Gestalt psychology has been to quantify these principles. Here, we show that contextual modulation, i.e. the influence of context on target perception, can be used as a tool to quantify perceptual grouping in the haptic domain, similar to the visual domain. We investigated the influence of targ...

This paper presents an analytical method for modeling the no-load air gap flux density of a surface-mounted and consequent-pole linear Vernier hybrid machine (LVHM). The approach is based on simple magneto-motive force (MMF) permeance functions to account doubly-slotted LVHM. These models are used determine linkage, induced electromotive (EMF) average thrust each machine. accuracy two validated...

Spatio-temporal interpolation reconstructs the (complete) motion path of objects presented discontinuously, e.g. under stroboscopic illumination or in television. Interpolative vernier stimuli were created by presenting two line segments with a temporal delay instead of a spatial offset. Ten amblyopic patients had to indicate whether the lower segment of the moving target was offset to the left...

Human psychophysical studies suggest that strabismic and anisometropic amblyopes may have characteristically different patterns of visual loss. In particular, anisometropic amblyopes often show deficits on spatial localization tasks that scale with their spatial resolution losses, whereas strabismic amblyopes can show localization deficits that are large relative to their losses in spatial reso...

Orientation masking induces changes of discrimination thresholds and perceived orientation. Studies on alignment discrimination of Vernier stimuli concentrated on masking induced changes of discrimination thresholds, without considering possible changes of perceived orientation and/or alignment of the two-line segments. Measuring both parameters in an orientation discrimination task, we confirm...

The shine-through effect occurs when a brief offset vernier target is followed by a grating of non-offset vernier elements. Rather than mask the target, this stimulus sequence produces a percept of the target vernier occluding the mask elements. We analyzed the dynamics of the 3D LAMINART model of depth perception and found that it explains the appearance of shine-through for these stimuli. The...

Human performance on various visual tasks can be improved substantially via training. However, the enhancements are frequently specific to relatively low-level stimulus dimensions. While such specificity has often been thought to be indicative of a low-level neural locus of learning, recent research suggests that these same effects can be accounted for by changes in higher-level areas--in parti...

The visual system constructs a percept of the world across multiple spatial and temporal scales. This raises the questions of whether different scales involve separate integration mechanisms and whether spatial and temporal factors are linked via spatio-temporal reference frames. We investigated this using Vernier fusion, a phenomenon in which the features of two Vernier stimuli presented in cl...

The visual system filters spatial pattern through a range of narrowly tuned spatial mechanisms, but the rules by which the outputs of these mechanisms are combined across time to extract precise geometrical information are not yet clear. One hypothesis is that spatial analysis shifts over time from coarse to finer spatial scales, in order to extract fine spatial information. An alternative hypo...

In order to evaluate the influence of etiology of amblyopia and of age at onset of amblyopia on the resulting constellation of spatial vision deficits, resolution/vernier and recognition/resolution acuity ratios were measured in groups of children with either strabismic amblyopia or anisometropic amblyopia with known ages of onset. Strabismic amblyopia with infantile onset (<9 months) and strab...