Visual complexity in letter-by-letter reading: "pure" alexia is not pure.

Standard accounts of pure alexia have favoured the view that this acquired disorder of reading arises from damage to a left posterior occipital cortex mechanism dedicated to the processing of alphanumeric symbols. We challenge these accounts in two experiments and demonstrate that patients with this reading deficit are also impaired at object identification. In the first experiment, we show that a single subject, EL, who shows all the hallmark features of pure alexia, is impaired at picture identification across a large set of stimuli. As the visual complexity of pictures increases, so EL's reaction time to identify the stimuli increases disproportionately relative to the control subjects. In the second experiment, we confirm these findings with a larger group of five pure alexic patients using a selected subset of high- and low-visual complexity pictures. These findings suggest that the deficit giving rise to pure alexia is not restricted to orthographic symbols per se but, rather, is a consequence of damage to a more general-purpose visual processing mechanism.

An unreported size illusion.

A previously unreported size illusion in some commonly used stimuli--a large (global) letter made up of small (local) letters (eg a large H made up of small Es) is described: the size of the local letters forming the horizontal component of the global letter appears to be over-estimated. Global and local letters made up of horizontal and vertical components (E, F, T, and H) were employed as stimulus material. The first experiment showed that the illusion was consistently perceived, and was present for most of the stimuli tested; ie for all global letters and for all local letters except H. A second experiment showed that the size distortion is not specific to a particular dimension: instructing observers to focus on the height or the width of the local letters did not affect the extent of the illusion. The effect of some stimulus manipulations was also investigated.

How the visual system detects changes in the direction of moving targets.

To determine how the visual system represents information about change in target direction, we studied the detection of such change under conditions of varying stimulus certainty. Target direction was either held constant over trials or was allowed to vary randomly. When target direction was constant the observer could be certain about that stimulus characteristic; randomizing the target direction rendered the observer uncertain. We measured response times (RTs) to changes in target direction following initial trajectories of varying time and distance. In different conditions, the observer was uncertain about either the direction of the initial trajectory, or the direction of change or both. With brief initial trajectories in random directions, uncertainty about initial direction elevated RTs by 50 ms or more. When the initial trajectories were at least 500 ms, this directional uncertainty ceased to affect RTs; then, only uncertainty about the direction of change affected RTs. We discuss the implications of these results for (i) schemes by which the visual system might code directional change; (ii) the visual integration time for directional information; and (iii) adaptational processes in motion perception.