In visual metaphor processing, one object, the target, is compared to and understood in terms of another object, the source. Several studies suggest that perceptual similarity between two objects enhances a conceptual link between the two. However, little is known about how perceptual features contribute to the establishment of this link. In the present experiment we investigated the processing...

Although variationist studies of sociolinguistic performance have greatly enhanced our understanding of speakers’ use of linguistic variables and their correspondence with social and contextual factors, these works have largely overlooked the perceptual complement of the production behavior they capture. This paper reports the results of a study which uses multidimensional scaling (MDS) to mode...

Perceptual organization represents a basic and essential function that occurs at an intermediate level of visual processing. Much of the previous research on perceptual organization in schizophrenia employed indirect measurements, or included factors beyond sensory processing. The aims of the present study were to determine the integrity of perceptual organization in schizophrenia, as well as t...

Behavioral studies suggest that perceptual grouping by proximity occurs earlier than grouping by similarity. This notion is supported by recent electrophysiological evidence that proximity grouping generates earlier occipital activation relative to grouping by shape similarity. The current work further investigated neural substrates that differentiate grouping by proximity and grouping by colou...

The literature contains a disconnect between accounts of how humans learn lexical semantic representations for words. Theories generally propose that lexical semantics are learned either through perceptual experience or through exposure to regularities in language. We propose here a model to integrate these two information sources. Specifically, the model uses the global structure of memory to ...

Efficient management of basal cell carcinomas (BCC) requires reliable assessments both tumors and post-treatment scars. We aimed to estimate image similarity metrics that account for BCC’s perceptual color texture deviation from perilesional skin. In total, 176 clinical photographs BCC were assessed by six physicians using a visual scale. Internal consistency inter-rater agreement estimated Cro...

As children gain knowledge about the world, the organization of their conceptual knowledge becomes increasingly complex, as reflected by the successive emergence of sensitivity to different types of similarity over the course of development. At the start, when judging the similarity of two objects, infants rely on perceptual similarity. By age 3, children often make these judgments based on obj...