What does visual agnosia tell us about perceptual organization and its relationship to object perception?

Behrmann, Marlene; Kimchi, Ruth

doi:10.1037/0096-1523.29.1.19

Cited by 124 publications

(120 citation statements)

References 105 publications

(172 reference statements)

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“…More recently, evidence suggests that perceptual organization is not developmentally monolithic and that there are multiple processes, which develop along different trajectories [Behrmann & Kimchi, 2003;Kimchi, Hadad, Behrmann, & Palmer, 2005;Scherf, Behrmann, Kimchi, & Luna, 2008]. Of particular relevance for the current study are the findings that the ability to individuate elements within hierarchical displays matures earlier than does the ability to group the elements to perceive a global shape [Kimchi et al, 2005;Scherf et al, 2008].…”

Section: Development Of Perceptual Organization In Typical Individualsmentioning

confidence: 68%

Missing the big picture: impaired development of global shape processing in autism

et al. 2008

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Individuals with autism exhibit hypersensitivity to local elements of the input, which may interfere with the ability to group visual elements perceptually. We investigated the development of perceptual grouping abilities in highfunctioning individuals with autism (HFA) across a wide age range (8-30 years) using a classic compound letter global/ local (GL) task and a more fine-grained microgenetic prime paradigm (MPP), including both few-and many-element hierarchical displays. In the GL task, contrary to the typically developing (TD) controls, HFA participants did not develop an increasing sensitivity to the global information with age. In the MPP, like the TD controls, individuals with autism at all three age groups evinced a bias to individuate the few-element displays. However, contrary to the TD controls, the HFA group failed to show age-related improvements in the ability to encode the global shape of the many-element displays. In fact, across the age range, the HFA group was consistently faster than the TD controls at perceiving the local elements in these displays. These results indicate that in autism the full process of garnering shape information from perceptual grouping, which is essential for the ability to do fast and efficient object recognition and identification, never matures, and this is especially evident in adolescence when this ability begins to improve in TD individuals. The atypical development of these perceptual organizational abilities may disrupt processing of visually presented objects, which may, in turn, fundamentally impede the development of major aspects of the social and emotional behaviors in individuals with autism.

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Section: Development Of Perceptual Organization In Typical Individualsmentioning

confidence: 68%

Missing the big picture: impaired development of global shape processing in autism

et al. 2008

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“…Indeed, individuals with integrative visual agnosia who experience difficulty in deriving configural information, are also impaired both at recognizing known faces and at discriminating novel faces. The reverse finding is also reported: individuals who are impaired at face processing either as a result of a brain damage (acquired prosopagnosia) (Barton, Press, Keenan, & O'Connor, 2002;Behrmann & Kimchi, 2003) or as a result of a congenital problem are also impaired at extracting configurations from local elements (Behrmann et al, in pressBehrmann, Avidan, Marotta, & Kimchi, 2005;Le Grand, Mondloch, Maurer, & Brent, 2004). A further indication of the relationship between faces and configurations comes from comparisons of performance on upright versus inverted faces, relative to objects.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 82%

“…At the intermediate durations, the elements themselves are individuated and finally, at long durations (690 ms), both the configuration and the elements are available to the observer. By varying the timing of the prime in relation to the probe, we can tap earlier and later internal representations (Behrmann & Kimchi, 2003;Kimchi, 1998Kimchi, , 2000Sekuler & Palmer, 1992). The question addressed here is whether the same effects of number and relative size of elements influence the perception of the autistic individuals, as normal individuals, and if so, how early in time.…”

Section: Microgenetic Analysis Of the Perceptual Organization Of Hiermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The speed of same responses to the test figures depends on the representational similarity between the prime and the test figures: responses are faster when the test figures are similar to the prime than when they are dissimilar to it. For example, it is now well-known that, in neurotypical individuals (Behrmann & Kimchi, 2003;Kimchi, 1998), the availability of elements and configuration depends on the number and relative size of the elements. For few, relatively large elements, the component elements are available early on in processing (ES advantage) and, only, with more time, are they configured or grouped into a global configuration.…”

Section: Microgenetic Analysis Of the Perceptual Organization Of Hiermentioning

confidence: 99%

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Configural processing in autism and its relationship to face processing

et al. 2006

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Studies of the perceptual performance of individuals with autism have focused, to a large extent, on two domains of visual behavior, one associated with face processing and the other associated with global or holistic processing. Whether autistic individuals differ from neurotypical individuals in these domains is debatable and, moreover, the relationship between the behaviors in these two domains remains unclear. We first compared the face processing ability of 14 adult individuals with autism with that of neurotypical controls and showed that the autistic individuals were slowed in their speed of face discrimination. We then showed that the two groups differed in their ability to derive the global whole in two different tasks, one using hierarchical compound letters and the other using a microgenetic primed matching task with geometric shapes, with the autistic group showing a bias in favor of local information. A significant correlation was also observed between performance on the face task and the configural tasks. We then confirmed the prediction that the ability to derive the global whole is not only critical for faces but also for other objects as well, as the autistic individuals performed more slowly than the control group in discriminating between objects. Taken together, the results suggest that the bias for local processing seen in autistic individuals might have an adverse impact on their ability to process faces and objects.

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“…S.M. has participated in many previous studies, and the reader is referred to those for further details (Behrmann & Kimchi, 2003;Behrmann, Marotta, Gauthier, Tarr, & McKeeff, 2005;Gauthier, Behrmann, & Tarr, 1999, 2004Humphreys, Avidan, & Behrmann, in press). In brief, neuro-ophthalmological examination confirmed no visual sensory deficit in S.M.…”

Section: Methods Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Independent representation of parts and the relations between them: Evidence from integrative agnosia.

Behrmann

Peterson

Moscovitch

et al. 2006

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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Whether objects are represented as a collection of parts whose relations are coded independently remains a topic of ongoing discussion among theorists in the domain of shape perception. S.M., an individual with integrative agnosia, and neurologically intact ("normal") individuals learned initially to identify 4 target objects constructed of 2 simple volumetric parts. At test, the targets were mixed with distractors, some of which could be discriminated from the targets on the basis of a mismatching part, whereas the rest could be discriminated only on the basis of the altered spatial arrangements of parts. S.M. learned to identify the target objects, although at a rate slower than that of the normal participants. At test, he correctly rejected distractors on the basis of mismatching parts but was profoundly impaired at rejecting distractors made of the same local components but with mismatching spatial arrangements. These results suggest that encoding the spatial arrangements of parts of an object requires a mechanism that is different from that required for encoding the shape of individual parts, with the former selectively compromised in integrative agnosia.

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What does visual agnosia tell us about perceptual organization and its relationship to object perception?

Cited by 124 publications

References 105 publications

Missing the big picture: impaired development of global shape processing in autism

Missing the big picture: impaired development of global shape processing in autism

Configural processing in autism and its relationship to face processing

Independent representation of parts and the relations between them: Evidence from integrative agnosia.

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