33 research outputs found
Crowding by Invisible Flankers
BACKGROUND: Human object recognition degrades sharply as the target object moves from central vision into peripheral vision. In particular, one's ability to recognize a peripheral target is severely impaired by the presence of flanking objects, a phenomenon known as visual crowding. Recent studies on how visual awareness of flanker existence influences crowding had shown mixed results. More importantly, it is not known whether conscious awareness of the existence of both the target and flankers are necessary for crowding to occur. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here we show that crowding persists even when people are completely unaware of the flankers, which are rendered invisible through the continuous flash suppression technique. Contrast threshold for identifying the orientation of a grating pattern was elevated in the flanked condition, even when the subjects reported that they were unaware of the perceptually suppressed flankers. Moreover, we find that orientation-specific adaptation is attenuated by flankers even when both the target and flankers are invisible. CONCLUSIONS: These findings complement the suggested correlation between crowding and visual awareness. What's more, our results demonstrate that conscious awareness and attention are not prerequisite for crowding
Coherent methods in the X-ray sciences
X-ray sources are developing rapidly and their coherent output is growing
extremely rapidly. The increased coherent flux from modern X-ray sources is
being matched with an associated rapid development in experimental methods.
This article reviews the literature describing the ideas that utilise the
increased brilliance from modern X-ray sources. It explores how ideas in
coherent X-ray science are leading to developments in other areas, and vice
versa. The article describes measurements of coherence properties and uses this
discussion as a base from which to describe partially-coherent diffraction and
X-ray phase contrast imaging, with its applications in materials science,
engineering and medicine. Coherent diffraction imaging methods are reviewed
along with associated experiments in materials science. Proposals for
experiments to be performed with the new X-ray free-electron-lasers are briefly
discussed. The literature on X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy is described
and the features it has in common with other coherent X-ray methods are
identified. Many of the ideas used in the coherent X-ray literature have their
origins in the optical and electron communities and these connections are
explored. A review of the areas in which ideas from coherent X-ray methods are
contributing to methods for the neutron, electron and optical communities is
presented.Comment: A review articel accepted by Advances in Physics. 158 pages, 29
figures, 3 table
Screening of bat faeces for arthropod-borne apicomplexan protozoa: Babesia canis and Besnoitia besnoiti-like sequences from Chiroptera
Information structure influences depth of syntactic processing: Event-related potential evidence for the Chomsky illusion
Contains fulltext :
102636.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)Information structure facilitates communication between interlocutors by highlighting relevant information. It has previously been shown that information structure modulates the depth of semantic processing. Here we used event-related potentials to investigate whether information structure can modulate the depth of syntactic processing. In question-answer pairs, subtle (number agreement) or salient (phrase structure) syntactic violations were placed either in focus or out of focus through information structure marking. P600 effects to these violations reflect the depth of syntactic processing. For subtle violations, a P600 effect was observed in the focus condition, but not in the non-focus condition. For salient violations, comparable P600 effects were found in both conditions. These results indicate that information structure can modulate the depth of syntactic processing, but that this effect depends on the salience of the information. When subtle violations are not in focus, they are processed less elaborately. We label this phenomenon the Chomsky illusion.9 p