Humans can use prior information to optimize their haptic exploratory behavior. Here, we investigated the usage of visual priors, which mechanisms enable their usage, and how the usage is affected by information quality. Participants explored different grating textures and discriminated their spatial frequency. Visual priors on texture orientation were given each trial, with qualities randomly varying from high to no informational value. Adjustments of initial exploratory movement direction orthogonal to the textures\' orientation served as an indicator of prior usage. Participants indeed used visual priors; the more so the higher the priors\' quality (Experiment 1). Higher task demands did not increase the direct usage of visual priors (Experiment 2), but possibly fostered the establishment of adjustment behavior. In Experiment 3, we decreased the proportion of high-quality priors presented during the session, hereby reducing the contingency between high-quality priors and haptic information. In consequence, even priors of high quality ceased to evoke movement adjustments. We conclude that the establishment of adjustment behavior results from a rather implicit contingency learning. Overall, it became evident that humans can autonomously learn to use rather abstract visual priors to optimize haptic exploration, with the learning process and direct usage substantially depending on the priors\' quality.

While human vision spans 220°, traditional functional MRI setups display images only up to central 10-15°. Thus, it remains unknown how the brain represents a scene perceived across the full visual field. Here, we introduce a method for ultra-wide angle display and probe signatures of immersive scene representation. An unobstructed view of 175° is achieved by bouncing the projected image off angled-mirrors onto a custom-built curved screen. To avoid perceptual distortion, scenes are created with wide field-of-view from custom virtual environments. We find that immersive scene representation drives medial cortex with far-peripheral preferences, but shows minimal modulation in classic scene regions. Further, scene and face-selective regions maintain their content preferences even with extreme far-periphery stimulation, highlighting that not all far-peripheral information is automatically integrated into scene regions computations. This work provides clarifying evidence on content vs. peripheral preferences in scene representation and opens new avenues to research immersive vision.

Older adults (OAs) are typically slower and/or less accurate in forming perceptual choices relative to younger adults. Despite perceptual deficits, OAs gain from integrating information across senses, yielding multisensory benefits. However, the cognitive processes underlying these seemingly discrepant ageing effects remain unclear. To address this knowledge gap, 212 participants (18-90 years old) performed an online object categorisation paradigm, whereby age-related differences in Reaction Times (RTs) and choice accuracy between audiovisual (AV), visual (V), and auditory (A) conditions could be assessed. Whereas OAs were slower and less accurate across sensory conditions, they exhibited greater RT decreases between AV and V conditions, showing a larger multisensory benefit towards decisional speed. Hierarchical Drift Diffusion Modelling (HDDM) was fitted to participants\' behaviour to probe age-related impacts on the latent multisensory decision formation processes. For OAs, HDDM demonstrated slower evidence accumulation rates across sensory conditions coupled with increased response caution for AV trials of higher difficulty. Notably, for trials of lower difficulty we found multisensory benefits in evidence accumulation that increased with age, but not for trials of higher difficulty, in which increased response caution was instead evident. Together, our findings reconcile age-related impacts on multisensory decision-making, indicating greater multisensory evidence accumulation benefits with age underlying enhanced decisional speed.

Coordination of goal-directed behavior depends on the brain\'s ability to recover the locations of relevant objects in the world. In humans, the visual system encodes the spatial organization of sensory inputs, but neurons in early visual areas map objects according to their retinal positions, rather than where they are in the world. How the brain computes world-referenced spatial information across eye movements has been widely researched and debated. Here, we tested whether shifts of covert attention are sufficiently precise in space and time to track an object\'s real-world location across eye movements. We found that observers\' attentional selectivity is remarkably precise and is barely perturbed by the execution of saccades. Inspired by recent neurophysiological discoveries, we developed an observer model that rapidly estimates the real-world locations of objects and allocates attention within this reference frame. The model recapitulates the human data and provides a parsimonious explanation for previously reported phenomena in which observers allocate attention to task-irrelevant locations across eye movements. Our findings reveal that visual attention operates in real-world coordinates, which can be computed rapidly at the earliest stages of cortical processing.

BACKGROUND: In this study, we used electroencephalogram (EEG) to investigate the activity pattern of the cerebral cortex related to visual pursuit and saccade strategies to predict the arrival position of a visual target. In addition, we clarified the differences in the EEG of those who could predict the arrival position well using the saccade strategy compared to those who were not proficient.
METHODS: Sixteen participants performed two tasks: the \"Pursuit Strategy Task (PST)\" and the \"Saccade Strategy Task (SST)\" while undergoing EEG. For the PST, the participants were instructed to follow the target with their eyes throughout its trajectory and indicate when it reached the final point. For the SST, the participants were instructed to shift their gaze to the end point of arrival once they had predicted it.
RESULTS: Low beta EEG activity at the Oz, Cz, and CP2 electrodes was significantly higher during the SST than during the PST. In addition, low beta EEG activity at P7 electrode was significantly higher in the group showing a small position error (PE) than in the group showing a large PE at response.
CONCLUSIONS: EEG activity at the Oz, Cz, and CP2 electrodes during the SST may reflect visuospatial attention to the moving target, the tracking of moving targets, and the focus on the final destination position. In addition, EEG activity at P7 electrode may more accurately detect the speed and direction of the moving target by the small PE group at response.

Some core knowledge may be rooted in - or even identical to - well-characterized mechanisms of mid-level visual perception and attention. In the decades since it was first proposed, this possibility has inspired (and has been supported by) several discoveries in both infant cognition and adult perception, but it also faces several challenges. To what degree does What Babies Know reflect how babies see and attend?

Why have core knowledge? Standard answers typically emphasize the difficulty of learning core knowledge from experience, or the benefits it confers for learning about the world. Here, we suggest a complementary reason: Core knowledge is critical for learning not just about the external world, but about the mind itself.

Experiments on visually grounded, definite reference production often manipulate simple visual scenes in the form of grids filled with objects, for example, to test how speakers are affected by the number of objects that are visible. Regarding the latter, it was found that speech onset times increase along with domain size, at least when speakers refer to nonsalient target objects that do not pop out of the visual domain. This finding suggests that even in the case of many distractors, speakers perform object-by-object scans of the visual scene. The current study investigates whether this systematic processing strategy can be explained by the simplified nature of the scenes that were used, and if different strategies can be identified for photo-realistic visual scenes. In doing so, we conducted a preregistered experiment that manipulated domain size and saturation; replicated the measures of speech onset times; and recorded eye movements to measure speakers\' viewing strategies more directly. Using controlled photo-realistic scenes, we find (1) that speech onset times increase linearly as more distractors are present; (2) that larger domains elicit relatively fewer fixation switches back and forth between the target and its distractors, mainly before speech onset; and (3) that speakers fixate the target relatively less often in larger domains, mainly after speech onset. We conclude that careful object-by-object scans remain the dominant strategy in our photo-realistic scenes, to a limited extent combined with low-level saliency mechanisms. A relevant direction for future research would be to employ less controlled photo-realistic stimuli that do allow for interpretation based on context.

Words that describe sensory perception give insight into how language mediates human experience, and the acquisition of these words is one way to examine how we learn to categorize and communicate sensation. We examine the differential predictions of the typological prevalence hypothesis and embodiment hypothesis regarding the acquisition of perception verbs. Studies 1 and 2 examine the acquisition trajectories of perception verbs across 12 languages using parent questionnaire responses, while Study 3 examines their relative frequencies in English corpus data. We find the vision verbs see and look are acquired first, consistent with the typological prevalence hypothesis. However, for children at 12-23 months, touch-not audition-verbs take precedence in terms of their age of acquisition, frequency in child-produced speech, and frequency in child-directed speech, consistent with the embodiment hypothesis. Later at 24-35 months old, frequency rates are observably different and audition begins to align with what has previously been reported in adult English data. It seems the initial orientation to verbalizing touch over audition in child-caregiver interaction is especially related to the control of physically and socially appropriate behaviors. Taken together, the results indicate children\'s acquisition of perception verbs arises from the complex interplay of embodiment, language-specific input, and child-directed socialization routines.

What is the relationship between language and event cognition? Past work has suggested that linguistic/aspectual distinctions encoding the internal temporal profile of events map onto nonlinguistic event representations. Here, we use a novel visual detection task to directly test the hypothesis that processing telic versus atelic sentences (e.g., \"Ebony folded a napkin in 10 seconds\" vs. \"Ebony did some folding for 10 seconds\") can influence whether the very same visual event is processed as containing distinct temporal stages including a well-defined endpoint or lacking such structure, respectively. In two experiments, we show that processing (a)telicity in language shifts how people later construe the temporal structure of identical visual stimuli. We conclude that event construals are malleable representations that can align with the linguistic framing of events.