Biomedical subjects

Catherine L Reed

Publications and source records attributed to Catherine L Reed.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2003

The body-inversion effect.

Researchers argue that faces are recognized via the configuration of their parts. An important behavioral finding supporting this claim is the face-inversion effect, in which inversion impairs recognition of faces more than nonface objects. Until recently, faces were the only class of objects producing the inversion effect for untrained individuals. This study investigated whether the inversion effect extends to human body positions, a class of objects whose exemplars are structurally similar to each other. Three experiments compared the recognition of upright and inverted faces, houses, and body positions using a forced-choice, same/different paradigm. For both reaction time and error data, the recognition of possible human body postures was more affected by inversion than the recognition of houses. Further, the recognition of possible human body postures and recognition of faces showed similar effects of inversion. The inversion effect was diminished for impossible body positions that violated the biomechanical constraints of human bodies. These data suggest that human body positions, like faces, may be processed configurally by untrained viewers.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Trunk orientation induces neglect-like lateral biases in covert attention.

The purpose of this study was to resolve a paradox in the literature on the effects of body orientation on spatial attention. Neuropsychological studies have found that real or simulated trunk rotation relieves contralesional inattention in patients with unilateral neglect, suggesting that trunk orientation affects how attention is allocated to space. However in two previous studies, trunk orientation did not affect spatial attention in other populations. In this study we investigated the effects of trunk orientation on the performance of a covert attention task by neurologically intact adults. The covert attention task allowed the evaluation of the effects of trunk orientation on both the allocation of attention to space and the ability to shift that attention to new locations. As in previous research, trunk orientation did not affect participants' response times (RTs) to validly cued targets. However rotating participants' trunks to the left increased their RTs to invalidly cued targets on the right and decreased their RTs to invalidly cued targets on the left. These results indicate that trunk orientation induces directional biases in the ability to shift attention. Thus, for intact participants, trunk rotation created lateral biases in the covert attention task similar to those seen in neglect patients.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Chronometric comparisons of imagery to action: visualizing versus physically performing springboard dives.

Motor imagery research emphasizes similarities between the mental imagery of an action and its physical execution. In this study, temporal differences between motor imagery and its physical performance as a function of performer expertise, skill complexity, and spatial ability were investigated. Physical execution times for springboard dives were compared with visualized execution times. Results indicate that physical and visualized performance times were not identical: Their relation is a function of dive complexity and diver expertise, but not their interaction. Relative to physical time, visualization time increased with increased complexity, suggesting the involvement of capacity-limited working memory. A nonmonotonic relation was found for expertise: Unlike experts or novices, visualization time for intermediates was significantly slower than physical time. These temporal differences are most consistent with schematic differences in skill representation. Intermediates may be relatively slowed by greater amounts of nonautomatized knowledge, as compared with the automatized knowledge of experts or the sparse knowledge of novices.

Adolescent↗