Cognitive Neuroscience Arena

Successfully completing many forms of behaviour requires that humans look in the right place at the right time: This has generated a large volume of research aimed at understanding how the eyes are guided. This special issue demonstrates that the decision about where to look involves a large number

Visual processing acts as a prism, splitting visual information from the retinal image into separately processed features such as color, shape, and orientation. Binding refers to the set of cognitive and neural mechanisms that re-integrate these features to create a holistic representation of the

The notion that certain mental or physical events can capture attention has been one of the most enduring topics in the study of attention owing to the importance of understanding how goal-directed and stimulus-driven processes interact in perception and cognition. Despite the clear theoretical and

This special issue of Visual Cognition collects some 30 articles on Visual Search and Attention by leading experts from a variety of disciplines, including experimental psychology, neuropsychology, neurophysiology and computational modelling. The articles are updated versions of papers presented at

Models of word and object processing have been informed by experimental data relating to the effects of important marker variables, particularly word frequency. In recent times, however, the role of word frequency has come to be questioned due to the demonstration of the impact of a correlated

The current volume, a special issue of Visual Cognition, brings together an eclectic group of investigators, all of whom study critical issues in the perception of true real-world scenes. Topics include the rapid acquisition of scene gist; scene recognition; spatial layout and

It is widely recognized that visual processes modulate many social interactions. For example, the eye-gaze of another person is a powerful cue to guide attention to a particular part of the visual field. Conversely, a direct gaze may indicate potential threat or the opportunity for a sexual

Vision is not an end in itself. Instead, it has evolved to assure survival in a dynamic environment. Vision - as well as the other senses - evolved from the necessity to act in this environment. Therefore, perceptual processes and action planning are much more interlocked than evident at first

The remarkable complexity and sophistication of our perceptual systems have evolved for ultimately one purpose - to promote efficient and effective action within a constantly changing environment. Traditionally, the route from perception to action has often been viewed as a single, one-directional

Some of the central problems to be solved by the brain, such as figure-ground coding and object recognition, concern the binding of separately coded feature elements into coherent object representations. The binding problem has recently been approached by a variety of disciplines, notably

A central goal in the study of object and scene perception is to understand how visual information is integrated across views to provide a stable, continuous experience of our environment. Research on issues ranging from visual masking to priming across saccades to the representation of spatial

In order to produce coherent behaviour in a complex world, forms of visual attention are necessary in order for us to select appropriate objects for action. Over the past ten years, there have been considerable advances in research into visual attention, with many of these advances linked to