Objectives. Sensitivity to spatial frequencies changes with age and this may have profound effects on reading. But how the actual contributions to reading performance made by the spatial frequency content of text differs between young (18-30 years) and older (65+ years) adults remains to be fully determined. Accordingly, we manipulated the spatial frequency content of text and used eye movement...

This set of three experiments assessed the influence of different psychophysical factors on the lateralization of the N170 event-related potential (ERP) component to words and faces. In all experiments, words elicited a left-lateralized N170, whereas faces elicited a right-lateralized or nonlateralized N170 depending on presentation conditions. Experiment 1 showed that lateralization for words ...

To understand how different spatial frequencies contribute to the overall perceived contrast of complex, broadband photographic images, we adapted the classification image paradigm. Using natural images as stimuli, we randomly varied relative contrast amplitude at different spatial frequencies and had human subjects determine which images had higher contrast. Then, we determined how the random ...

In this study, we have compared foveal SF discriminations for luminance and color-defined stimuli using two different tasks (criteria): in criterion-A, the discrimination is based on spatial (size of the stimuli) and/or spatial frequency; in criterion-B, it is based on apparent motion (contraction/expansion). We used high contrast (75%) spatially localized D6 stimuli and cosine gratings (0.25-9...

The present study examined the role of high-spatial frequency information in early face processing, as indexed by the N170 face-sensitive ERP component. Participants detected 4 versions of famous faces, including full spectrum faces, and bandpass filtered faces containing predominantly high-spatial frequencies, low-spatial frequencies or both. The power spectra of all stimuli were balanced by s...

This paper addresses the problem of identifying the parameters involved in the formation of spatial patterns in nonlinear two dimensional systems. To this aim, we perform numerical experiments on a prototypical model generating morphogenetic Turing patterns, by changing both the spatial frequency and shape of the patterns. The features of the patterns and their relationship with the model param...

Gratings appear of higher spatial frequency when they are viewed peripherally rather than foveally. To test the hypothesis that this effect is an artefact of particular laboratory conditions, we manipulated the contrast, luminance and presentation duration, manipulations which have also been shown to increase the apparent spatial frequency of foveally presented gratings. It has been argued that...

To assess the effects of spatial frequency and phase alignment of mask components in pattern masking, target threshold vs. mask contrast (TvC) functions for a sine-wave grating (S) target were measured for five types of mask: a sine-wave grating (S), a square-wave grating (Q), a missing fundamental square-wave grating (M), harmonic complexes consisting of phase-scrambled harmonics of a square w...