Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Concept Videos

Association Areas of the Cortex01:21

Association Areas of the Cortex

Association areas are regions of the cerebral cortex that do not have a specific sensory or motor function. Instead, they integrate and interpret information from various sources to enable higher cognitive processes such as memory, learning, and decision-making. Some key association areas include the following:
Prefrontal Association Area: This area is located in the frontal lobe and is involved in planning, decision-making, and moderating social behavior. It connects with primary motor areas,...
Depth Perception and Spatial Vision01:15

Depth Perception and Spatial Vision

Depth perception is the ability to perceive objects three-dimensionally. It relies on two types of cues: binocular and monocular. Binocular cues depend on the combination of images from both eyes and how the eyes work together. Since the eyes are in slightly different positions, each eye captures a slightly different image. This disparity between images, known as binocular disparity, helps the brain interpret depth. When the brain compares these images, it determines the distance to an object.
Factors Affecting Perception01:25

Factors Affecting Perception

Perception is influenced by perceptual set, context, motivation, and emotion. Perceptual set, or perceptual expectancy, refers to the tendency to perceive things in a particular way, influenced by previous experiences and expectations. This phenomenon affects the interpretation of stimuli, creating a set of mental tendencies and assumptions that impact sensory perceptions of sound, taste, touch, and sight.
An illustrative example of a perceptual set is the scenario where an airline pilot told...
Visual Agnosia01:12

Visual Agnosia

Visual agnosia is a condition characterized by the inability to recognize visually presented objects despite having normal vision. For instance, a person with visual agnosia can describe the shape and color of an object but cannot identify or name it. This impairment does not affect their visual field, acuity, color vision, brightness discrimination, language, or memory. An example of this condition in a social setting is someone at a dinner party asking for "that silver thing with a round end"...
Somatosensation01:33

Somatosensation

The somatosensory system relays sensory information from the skin, mucous membranes, limbs, and joints. Somatosensation is more familiarly known as the sense of touch. A typical somatosensory pathway includes three types of long neurons: primary, secondary, and tertiary. Primary neurons have cell bodies located near the spinal cord in groups of neurons called dorsal root ganglia. The sensory neurons of ganglia innervate designated areas of skin called dermatomes.
Gestalt Principles of Perception01:21

Gestalt Principles of Perception

Gestalt principles provide a framework for understanding how humans perceive objects as unified wholes within their context. These principles are essential in explaining the cognitive processes that make sense of complex visual stimuli by organizing them into coherent groups. One fundamental principle is proximity, which posits that objects located close to each other are perceived as a collective group. For instance, when dots are positioned near one another, the visual system interprets them...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Does hand position affect orienting when no action is required? An electrophysiological study.

Frontiers in neuroscience·2023
Same author

Learned distractor rejection persists across target search in a different dimension.

Attention, perception & psychophysics·2022
Same author

Testing the underlying processes leading to learned distractor rejection: Learned oculomotor avoidance.

Attention, perception & psychophysics·2022
Same author

Frontal eye fields in macaque monkeys: prefrontal and premotor contributions to visually guided saccades.

Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)·2022
Same author

Learned distractor rejection in the face of strong target guidance.

Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance·2020
Same author

Feature-based statistical regularities of distractors modulate attentional capture.

Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance·2019
Same journal

Does Overconfidence Really Confer Adaptive Benefits to Children's Learning?

Psychological science·2026
Same journal

How Does the Mind Grow? Cross-Cultural Intuitive Theories of Mental Development.

Psychological science·2026
Same journal

Not All Practice Is Created Equal: Longitudinal Evidence From Over 40,000 Chess Players.

Psychological science·2026
Same journal

Eye Glint as a Novel Perceptual Cue in Human Vision.

Psychological science·2026
Same journal

Multitarget Visual Search Flexibly Switches Between Concurrent and Sequential Search Modes.

Psychological science·2026
Same journal

Motive Alignment Promotes Adolescents' Proenvironmental Behavior: A Field Experiment in Two Cultures.

Psychological science·2026
See all related articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 10, 2026

Measuring Attention and Visual Processing Speed by Model-based Analysis of Temporal-order Judgments
13:00

Measuring Attention and Visual Processing Speed by Model-based Analysis of Temporal-order Judgments

Published on: January 23, 2017

Attention affects visual perceptual processing near the hand.

Joshua D Cosman1, Shaun P Vecera

  • 1Departments of Neuroscience and Psychology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242-1407, USA. joshua-cosman@uiowa.edu

Psychological Science
|August 18, 2010
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Attention influences early visual perception, like figure-ground assignment, through integrated visual and tactile (visuo-tactile) brain systems. Hand position near an object biases its perception as foreground, demonstrating attention

More Related Videos

Methods to Explore the Influence of Top-down Visual Processes on Motor Behavior
09:49

Methods to Explore the Influence of Top-down Visual Processes on Motor Behavior

Published on: April 16, 2014

A Gaze-Contingent Display Framework for Perceptual Learning Research with Simulated Central Vision Loss
07:12

A Gaze-Contingent Display Framework for Perceptual Learning Research with Simulated Central Vision Loss

Published on: April 11, 2025

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Jun 10, 2026

Measuring Attention and Visual Processing Speed by Model-based Analysis of Temporal-order Judgments
13:00

Measuring Attention and Visual Processing Speed by Model-based Analysis of Temporal-order Judgments

Published on: January 23, 2017

Methods to Explore the Influence of Top-down Visual Processes on Motor Behavior
09:49

Methods to Explore the Influence of Top-down Visual Processes on Motor Behavior

Published on: April 16, 2014

A Gaze-Contingent Display Framework for Perceptual Learning Research with Simulated Central Vision Loss
07:12

A Gaze-Contingent Display Framework for Perceptual Learning Research with Simulated Central Vision Loss

Published on: April 11, 2025

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Perception

Background:

  • Specialized neural systems integrate visual and tactile information, particularly in peripersonal space (the space near the body).
  • Early visual processing stages, such as figure-ground assignment, are traditionally considered unimodal.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether visuo-tactile representations influence early perceptual processing, specifically figure-ground assignment.
  • To determine if attention, mediated by hand position, can bias visual figure-ground segregation.

Main Methods:

  • Experimental manipulation of visual stimuli and hand position.
  • Psychophysical tasks measuring figure-ground assignment biases.
  • Analysis of how hand proximity and movement influence perceptual decisions.

Main Results:

  • Regions of space that were reached toward were significantly more likely to be perceived as foreground figures.
  • Hand position demonstrably competed with image-based cues to bias figure-ground assignment.
  • Visuo-tactile integration allows attention to modulate early visual processing.

Conclusions:

  • Hand position serves as a mechanism for attention to influence visual perceptual processing.
  • Bimodal visuo-tactile representations can impact visual processes previously thought to be unimodal.
  • This highlights the dynamic interplay between sensory modalities and attentional control in perception.