Object Perception Research Articles

Osoblyvosti mekhanizmiv psykholohichnoho zakhystu v osib, pozbavlenykh voli pid chas pandemii COVID-19

This article analyzes the literature to define the concept of psychological protection, analyzes the source base and characteristic findings of mechanisms of psychological protection, investigates and presents the features of mechanisms of psychological protection of prisoners and comparisons with mechanisms of psychological protection of prisoners. The study was conducted during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. To date, the study of the mechanisms of psychological protection has not lost relevance, as reality daily proves the axiomatic nature of these views in everyday life and is considered by contemporaries in the context of the instinct of self-preservation and adaptation of personality. At the current pace of functioning, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the individual trains as much as possible the mechanisms of psychological protection that allow him or her to reduce the potential for emotional experiences that can cause mental trauma. The dynamics of the functioning of mechanisms of psychological protection have protagonistic consequences for the psyche and life of the individual. They have their own dichotomy, which can be considered in the context of positive and negative. The positive context is manifested in the liberation of a person from the fear of death, stress, multiple negative emotional experiences (loss of a loved one, terminal illness, job loss, disasters, wars, imprisonment, loss of social status, etc.). Negative contexts deprive a person of reflections on the situation that threatens him or her and thus prevent the most objective perception and the most correct solution. As a result, the problem itself may become more complicated, and the future of a person will become qualitatively worse.

Subjective and objective risk perceptions and the willingness to pay for agricultural insurance: evidence from an in-the-field choice experiment in rural China.

We conducted in-the-field choice experiments in China to investigate farmers’ willingness to pay for crop insurance and to determine how objective and subjective beliefs affect Willingness to Pay (WTP). We deploy three variants of the choice experiment using a priming mechanism on objective and subjective beliefs plus a control. We find that the cuing frame matters in that there are differences in WTP within five attributes and across variants. In terms of practical policy, our results suggest that farmers’ frame of reference toward objective and subjective risks can affect insurance demand.

When perception is stronger than physics: Perceptual similarities rather than laws of physics govern the perception of interacting objects

When several multistable displays are viewed simultaneously, their perception is synchronized, as they tend to be in the same perceptual state. Here, we investigated the possibility that perception may reflect embedded statistical knowledge of physical interaction between objects for specific combinations of displays and layouts. We used a novel display with two ambiguously rotating gears and an ambiguous walker-on-a-ball display. Both stimuli produce a physically congruent perception when an interaction is possible (i.e., gears counterrotate, and the ball rolls under the walker’s feet). Next, we gradually manipulated the stimuli to either introduce abrupt changes to the potential physical interaction between objects or keep it constant despite changes in the visual stimulus. We characterized the data using four different models that assumed (1) independence of perception of the stimulus, (2) dependence on the stimulus’s properties, (3) dependence on physical configuration alone, and (4) an interaction between stimulus properties and a physical configuration. We observed that for the ambiguous gears, the perception was correlated with the stimulus changes rather than with the possibility of physical interaction. The perception of walker-on-a-ball was independent of the stimulus but depended instead on whether participants responded about a relative motion of two objects (perception was biased towards physically congruent motion) or the absolute motion of the walker alone (perception was independent of the rotation of the ball). None of the two experiments supported the idea of embedded knowledge of physical interaction.

Do sensory reviews make more sense? The mediation of objective perception in online review helpfulness

PurposeDo consumers rate reviews describing other consumers' sensory experience of a product (touch, smell, sight, hear and taste) as helpful or do they rate reviews describing more practical properties (product performance and characteristics/features) as more helpful? What is the effect of review helpfulness on purchase intention? Furthermore, why do consumers perceive sensory and non-sensory reviews differently? This study answers these questions.Design/methodology/approachThe authors analyze 447,792 Amazon reviews and perform a topic modeling analysis to extract the main topics that consumers express in their reviews. Then, the topics were used as regressors to predict the number of consumers who found the review helpful. Finally, a lab experiment was conducted to replicate the results in a more controlled environment to test the serial mediation effect.FindingsContrary to the overwhelming evidence supporting the positive effects of sensory elicitation in marketing, this study shows that sensory reviews are less likely to be helpful than non-sensory reviews. Moreover, a key reason why sensory reviews are less effective is that they decrease the objective perception of the review, a less objective review then decreases the level of helpfulness, which decreases purchase intention.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the interactive marketing field by investigating customer behavior and interactivity in online shopping sites and to the sensory marketing literature by identifying a boundary condition, the authors’ data suggest that sensory elicitations might not be processed positively by consumers when they are not directly experienced, but instead communicated by another consumer. Moreover, this study indicates how companies can encourage consumers to share more effective and helpful reviews.

The role of simulated-experience and descriptive formats on perceiving risks of strong opioids: A randomized controlled trial with chronic noncancer pain patients

ObjectivesOpioid prescription rates worldwide suggest miscalibrated risk perceptions among those who prescribe, dispense, and take opioids. Findings from cognitive science show that risk perceptions can differ systematically depending on whether people learn about risks by description or experience. We investigated the effects of descriptive and simulated experience risk formats on patients’ risk perceptions and behavior regarding long-term strong opioid use. Methods300 German patients with chronic noncancer pain were randomly assigned in an exploratory randomized controlled trial to either a descriptive format (fact box) or a simulated experience format (interactive simulation). Primary endpoints were subjective and objective risk perceptions and intended intake behavior. ResultsBoth formats significantly improved patients’ objective risk perception; patients who saw the fact box estimated some outcomes more accurately (p = .031). Formats were equally effective in improving patients’ subjective risk perception in terms of opioids’ harms; however, patients receiving the simulation showed a greater reduction and termination of their opioid intake (p = .030) and a higher uptake of alternative therapies. ConclusionsDescriptive and simulated experience risk formats improve risk perceptions and behavior regarding potent but highly risky drugs. Practice implicationsTo eliminate risky behavior, simulated experience formats may be superior to descriptive formats.

Investigating the relationship between objective measures of sleep and self-report sleep quality in healthy adults: a review.

Sleep is one of the most common factors related to health, yet a standard definition of sleep quality has not been identified. Polysomnography provides important information about objective sleep variables. However, the relationship between objective sleep variables and perception of sleep quality remains unclear. The purpose of this review was to (1) summarize the current methods of measuring objective sleep macrostructure and microstructure, including electroencephalography arousals, spectral frequency, cyclic alternating pattern, and self-report sleep quality, and (2) investigate the relationship between objective measures of sleep physiology and self-report sleep quality in healthy adults. A literature search was conducted using Medline, PubMed, and PsycInfo databases and cited reference searches. Eligible studies included a comparison between self-report sleep quality and polysomnography sleep measures in healthy adults. Thirteen studies were identified. Measurement of self-report sleep quality varied widely across studies. Total sleep time and sleep efficiency were most consistently related to sleep quality, while other objective sleep variables, including electroencephalography spectral analysis, were not reliably predictive of self-report sleep quality in healthy adults. There is preliminary support that microstructural sleep analysis with cyclic alternating pattern may be related to self-reported sleep quality. Further research is needed to define and standardize self-report measures of sleep quality and investigate the microstructure of sleep. Objective measures of sleep and experiences of "quality" sleep are not as closely related as one may expect in healthy individuals, and understanding this relationship further is necessary to improve the clinical utility of sleep physiology. Cudney LE, Frey BN, McCabe RE, Green SM. Investigating the relationship between objective measures of sleep and self-report sleep quality in healthy adults: a review. J Clin Sleep Med. 2022;18(3):927-936.

Self-reported perceptual aberrations in psychosis map to event-related potentials and semantic appraisals of objects.

Psychotic disorders have been associated with visual deficits and deviant semantic processing, making it unclear whether object detection abnormalities in psychosis originate from low-level or higher-order visual processes. The current study investigated how high-level visual processing is affected in psychosis by presenting object stimuli with equivalent low-level visual features. Outpatients with affective and nonaffective psychotic disorders, first-degree biological relatives, and psychiatrically unaffected individuals (N = 130) completed the Fragmented Ambiguous Object Task (FAOT) to assess recognition of objects in ambiguous stimuli. During the task, we recorded electroencephalography, quantified event-related potential (ERP) components (P1, N1, negative closure [NCL], N400), and derived four spatiotemporal event-related potential factors using principal components analysis (PCA). In addition to traditional diagnoses, psychosis was characterized using a dimensional measure of individual differences in self-reported sensory experiences (perceptual absorption) calculated from scales that tap the psychotic domain of the hierarchical structure of psychopathology. Rates of detecting objects within fragmented stimuli failed to differ across diagnostic groups or significantly predict perceptual absorption (p = .057). PCA factors that reflected smaller N1 and larger NCL amplitudes were associated with detecting objects. Exploratory analyses revealed that higher perceptual absorption was associated with reductions in the N400 and a late positive PCA factor. Although early and midlatency brain responses modulate during object detection, late brain responses tied to semantic appraisal of objects are related to perceptual aberrations often reported by individuals with severe psychopathology. Dimensional measures of personality appear sensitive to variation in biological systems relevant to psychotic symptomatology and object perception. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Re-reading Whitehead Through the Pre‑reflective Experience of Atmospheric Processes

This article explores new perspectives on Alfred N. Whitehead’s process philosophy through a micro-phenomenological investigation of the experience of atmospheres. Whitehead’s philosophy and micro-phenomenology are both interested in something before it becomes a perceivable quality, yet from a different angle. Atmospheres, always at the brink of our awareness, are taken as a field of possible experiences that opens up when the perception of objects is replaced by processes. An exploration of sensual experience and meaning-making enabled by atmospheric media through process philosophy and micro-phenomenology helps situate new conceptual attempts at the relationship between humans and their environments. I will pay special attention to those parts of experience that impact assumptions about the relationship between humans and their environments and will suggest that atmospheric awareness offers opportunities for critical reflection and acceptance of difference. I propose that a new perspective on Whitehead’s philosophy through micro-phenomenology provides fruitful connections to contemporary research on experience and meaning-making. In explicating my subjective experience with atmospheric processes, I make a first step towards tracing the processes of experience as described by Whitehead in my own experience and thereby offer a way to acknowledge subjective experience that might inspire a wider range of scholarship.

РЕТРОСПЕКТИВА СТАНОВЛЕННЯ ФОНОСЕМАНТИЗМУ ТА ФОНОСЕМАНТИЧНІ РЕАЛІЇ В АНГЛІЙСЬКІЙ МОВІ

The scientific search for phonosemantic realities, carried out in modern promising areas of linguistic research, contributes to the determination of language cognitive capabilities. In the study of language, linguists actively use new principles, which require integration from different sciences to understand language carrier and diverse aspects of the human thinking process, to extensively analyse a wide range of language functions, and to profoundly explain linguistic phenomena. Phonosemantics is now a certain linguistic branch of psycholinguistics, which has gone through several stages of its formation. In practice, its foundation and principles have become the cornerstone of linguistic reasoned searches for the connection between sound and meaning in a multi-genre discourse. There are two approaches to the study of phonosemantism. Researchers' experiments confirm the existence of primary or elementary phonosemantism, showing the dependence of symbolic meaning on the acoustic-articulatory characteristics of sound. Secondary sound-symbolism arises as a result of the speaker's desire to reveal the correlation between the sonority of a word, develops in accordance with the phonetic laws of a particular language and its meaning. Both points of view need to be analyzed only in conjunction, since secondary, or contextually, phonosymbolism is possible due to the existence of the so-called primary, or elementary phonosymbolism. This phenomenon is due to the ability of the human brain to establish an associative relationship between sound and meaning, between objectivity and polymodality of human perception. Experiments have shown that the subject image is polymodal. The polymodal nature of object perception, in turn, presupposes the emergence of auditory images based on the action of only visual stimuli, and vice versa: visual images are born on the basis of auditory stimuli. The results of this study are well-argued evidence of the constancy of the associative meanings of the phonemes of the modern English language.

Familiar size affects the perceived size and distance of real objects even with binocular vision.

Although the familiar size of real-world objects affects size and distance perception, evidence is mixed about whether this is the case when oculomotor cues are available. We examined the familiar size effect (FSE) on both size and distance perception for real objects under two viewing conditions with full or restricted oculomotor cues (binocular viewing, which provides vergence and accommodation cues, and monocular viewing through a 1-mm pinhole, which removes those cues). Familiar objects (a playing die versus a Rubik's cube) were manufactured in their typical (1.6-cm die and 5.7-cm Rubik's cube) and reverse (5.7-cm die and 1.6-cm Rubik's cube) sizes and shown at two distances (25 cm versus 91 cm) in isolation. Small near and large far objects subtended equal retinal angles. Participants provided manual estimates of perceived size and distance. For every combination of size and distance, Rubik's cubes were perceived as larger and farther than the dice, even during binocular viewing at near distances (<1 meter), when oculomotor cues are particularly strong. For size perception but not distance perception, the familiar size effect was significantly stronger under monocular pinhole viewing than binocular viewing. These results suggest that (1) familiar size affects the accuracy of perception, not just the speed; (2) the effect occurs even when oculomotor cues are available; and (3) size and distance perception are not perfectly yoked.

Topological dominance in peripheral vision.

The question of what peripheral vision is good for, especially in pattern recognition, is one of the most important and controversial issues in cognitive science. In a series of experiments, we provide substantial evidence that observers’ behavioral performance in the periphery is consistently superior to central vision for topological change detection, while nontopological change detection deteriorates with increasing eccentricity. These experiments generalize the topological account of object perception in the periphery to different kinds of topological changes (i.e., including introduction, disappearance, and change in number of holes) in comparison with a broad spectrum of geometric properties (e.g., luminance, similarity, spatial frequency, perimeter, and shape of the contour). Moreover, when the stimuli were scaled according to cortical magnification factor and the task difficulty was well controlled by adjusting luminance of the background, the advantage of topological change detection in the periphery remained. The observed advantage of topological change detection in the periphery supports the view that the topological definition of objects provides a coherent account for object perception in peripheral vision, allowing pattern recognition with limited acuity.

How blurry are echoes? Quantifying the spatial resolution of echoic vs. visual object perception

How blurry are echoes? Quantifying the spatial resolution of echoic vs. visual object perception

The Z-Box illusion: dominance of motion perception among multiple 3D objects.

In the present article, we examine a novel illusion of motion-the Z-Box illusion-in which the presence of a bounding object influences the perception of motion of an ambiguous stimulus that appears within. Specifically, the stimuli are a structure-from-motion (SFM) particle orb and a wireframe cube. The orb could be perceived as rotating clockwise or counterclockwise while the cube could only be perceived as moving in one direction. Both stimuli were presented on a two-dimensional (2D) display with inferred three-dimensional (3D) properties. In a single experiment, we examine motion perception of a particle orb, both in isolation and when it appears within a rotating cube. Participants indicated the orb's direction of motion and whether the direction changed at any point during the trial. Accuracy was the critical measure while motion direction, the number of particles in the orb and presence of the wireframe cube were all manipulated. The results suggest that participants could perceive the orb's true rotation in the absence of the cube so long as it was made up of at least ten particles. The presence of the cube dominated perception as participants consistently perceived congruent motion of the orb and cube, even when they moved in objectively different directions. These findings are considered as they relate to prior research on motion perception, computational modelling of motion perception, structure from motion and 3D object perception.

The PURPLE N study: objective and perceived nutritional status in children and adolescents with cerebral palsy

Purpose To obtain information on characteristics, management, current objective nutritional status and perception of nutritional status of children with cerebral palsy (CP) from healthcare professionals (HCPs) and caregivers. Materials and methods A detailed survey of several items on eight main topics (general characteristics, motor function, comorbidities, therapies, anthropometry, feeding mode and problems and perceived nutritional status) was developed and tested for the study. Correlation between nutritional status and Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS) levels was assessed using continuous variables (Z-scores for weight-for-age, height-for-age, weight-for-height, and body mass index-for-age), and categorical variables (being malnourished, stunted, or wasted). HCP and caregiver perceptions of the child’s nutritional status as well as agreement between perceived and objective nutritional status and agreement between perceived nutritional status and concerns about the nutritional status were analyzed. Results Data were available for 497 participants from eight European countries. Poorer nutritional status was associated with higher (more severe) GMFCS levels. There was minimal agreement between perceived and objective nutritional status, both for HCPs and caregivers. Agreement between HCP and caregiver perceptions of the child’s nutritional status was weak (weighted kappa 0.56). However, the concerns about the nutritional status of the child were in line with the perceived nutritional status. Conclusions The risk of poor nutritional status is associated with more severe disability in children and adolescents with CP. There is a mismatch between HCP and caregiver perceptions of participants’ nutritional status as well as between subjective and objective nutritional status. Our data warrant the use of a simple and objective screening tool in daily practice to determine nutritional status in children and adolescents with CP. Clinical trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03499288 (https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03499288). IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATION Use of the ESPGHAN recommendations and simple screening tools in daily practice is needed to improve nutritional care for individuals with CP. Attention should be paid to the differences in the perception of nutritional status of individuals with CP between professionals and caregivers to improve appropriate referral for nutritional support. Objective measures rather than the professional’s perception need to be used to define the nutritional status of individuals with CP.

Topological change induces an interference effect in visual working memory

The “irrelevant-change distracting effect” refers to the effect of changes in irrelevant features on the performance of the target feature, which has frequently been used to study information processing in visual working memory (VWM). In the current study, we reported a novel interference effect in VWM: the topological-change interference effect (TCIE). In a series of six experiments, we examined the influence of topological and nontopological changes as irrelevant features on VWM using a color change detection paradigm. The results revealed that only topological changes, although task irrelevant, could produce a significant interference effect. In contrast, nontopological changes did not produce any evident interference effect. Moreover, the TCIE was a stable and lasting effect, regardless of changes in locations, reporting methods, particular stimulus figures, the other salient feature dimensions and delay interval times. Therefore, our results support the notion that topological invariance that defines perceptual objects plays an essential role in maintaining representations in VWM.

Faire voir: Études sur l'enargeia de l'Antiquité à l'époque moderne ed. by Florence Klein and Ruth Webb

Reviewed by: Faire voir: Études sur l'enargeia de l'Antiquité à l'époque moderne ed. by Florence Klein and Ruth Webb Flora Iff-Noël Faire voir: Études sur l'enargeia de l'Antiquité à l'époque moderne. Edited by Florence Klein and Ruth Webb. Villeneuve d'Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion. 2021. Pp. 293, ills. This collective volume, which presents the proceedings of a two-day conference at Tourcoing in 2014, analyzes the theory and practice of enargeia and its relationship to visual art through various case studies from archaic Greece to imperial Rome. It contributes to the constantly growing scholarship on text and image studies since the [End Page 375] 1990s, and more precisely on the connections between the Hellenistic concept of enargeia and ancient art and text.1 Indeed, enargeia, defined as the capacity of words to create the impression that absent things are present to the senses, and in particular to the sense of sight (9; see Quint. IO 6.2.29–32), has already been the object of monographs about Hellenistic poetry, imperial rhetoric, and historiography.2 The present volume aims to fill three gaps in the scholarship by considering the following issues (10–11): 1. How can we study enargeia in archaic and classical Greek texts when there are no contemporary theoretical texts on the matter? Can we identify practices specifically associated with particular literary genres? 2. Even after enargeia's theorization and practice in Hellenistic and Roman times, what is the status of word-created images? Are they effective substitutes to the perception of real objects or deceitful illusions? 3. Especially since the 1950s, scholarship interested in descriptions of artworks has isolated such texts and labeled them ekphraseis, changing the meaning of this word, which was originally used in imperial Greek rhetoric to designate texts full of enargeia, i.e., texts that could "place their object as if under the eyes of their reader or audience" (Aelius Theon, Progymnasmata 118). This volume aims to reconsider such texts within the context of enargeia and to explore the role of enargeia within the reception of real artworks and the production of discourse about them. The book focuses especially on Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Zeuxis, Posidippus of Pella, Moschus, Sallust, Pliny, Ovid, Quintilian, and Pseudo-Longinus. Thus, it is of interest to all classicists, as it tackles rhetoric, poetry, historiography, drama, and art history, both in Greece and in Rome. As all quotes are translated, the volume will also be valuable to scholars of modern literature interested in questions of intertextuality, hypotyposis, text and image studies, as well as for historians, art historians, and university students. The Introduction provides a helpful definition of enargeia and a summary of the various chapters. Chapter One by Pierre Judet de La Combe analyzes the description of fountains in the Iliad (22.145–161). How can we explain the presence of a lengthy description of fountains at the precise moment of Hector's defeat, which is the turning point of the war? Judet de La Combe considers it to have a metapoetic meaning, reflecting on the nature of epic. Chapter Two by Deborah Steiner explores the various interactions between objects and texts inscribed on them by comparing the spectator's real vision of the object to the reader's mental vision of the images evoked by the inscribed texts. She focuses on three archaic inscriptions (IG2 I 919 on the oenochoe of Dipylon, Athens, Archeological Museum 192; a funerary epigram on the cenotaph of Ambracia, SEG 41.450; IG I3 833 [End Page 376] bis on an Athenian marble tripod dedicated by a victorious choral poet). Steiner argues that seeing these inscriptions is an anticipation of the images evoked by the inscription's content. For instance, the letters' disposition sometimes seems to represent the shapes of the dance moves evoked in the inscriptions, as when the letters create effects of symmetry that represent the dancers' symmetrical movements, or when the inscription as a whole is placed below representations of dancers and constitutes a wavy line which mimics the dancers' chorus line. The way these inscriptions are written is meaningful for enargeia and...

Smartphone display size can influence perceptual judgments

Classic research in perception has suggested that visual context can impact how individuals perceive object characteristics like physical size. The current set of studies extends this work to an applied setting by examining whether smartphone display size can impact the perception of objects presented on smartphones. Participants viewed several target items, on two different sized virtual device displays based on actual consumer devices and were asked to make simple judgments of the size of presented objects. Results from both experiments confirm that display size impacts perceived size, such that larger displays cause users to significantly underestimate the size of objects moreso than smaller displays. This is the first study to confirm such an effect, and suggests that beyond aesthetics or cost, one’s personal choice of device might have additional performance consequences.

Capturing the objects of vision with neural networks.

Human visual perception carves a scene at its physical joints, decomposing the world into objects, which are selectively attended, tracked and predicted as we engage our surroundings. Object representations emancipate perception from the sensory input, enabling us to keep in mind that which is out of sight and to use perceptual content as a basis for action and symbolic cognition. Human behavioural studies have documented how object representations emerge through grouping, amodal completion, proto-objects and object files. By contrast, deep neural network models of visual object recognition remain largely tethered to sensory input, despite achieving human-level performance at labelling objects. Here, we review related work in both fields and examine how these fields can help each other. The cognitive literature provides a starting point for the development of new experimental tasks that reveal mechanisms of human object perception and serve as benchmarks driving the development of deep neural network models that will put the object into object recognition.

Propping Up Virtual Reality With Haptic Proxies.

Physical props serving as proxies for virtual objects (haptic proxies) offer a cheap, convenient, and compelling way of delivering a sense of touch in virtual reality (VR). To successfully use haptic proxies for VR, they have to be both similar to and colocated with their virtual counterparts. In this article, we introduce a taxonomy organizing techniques using haptic proxies for VR into eight categories based on when the techniques are deployed (offline or real-time), what reality is being manipulated (physical or virtual reality), and the purpose of the techniques (to affect object perception or the mapping between real and virtual objects). Finally, we discuss key advantages and limitations of the different categories of techniques.

Attentional limits in visual search with and without dorsal parietal dysfunction: space-based window or object-based span?

Attentional resource and distribution are specifically impaired in simultanagnosia, and also in the visuo-attentional form of developmental dyslexia. Both clinical conditions are conceived as a limitation of simultaneous visual processing after superior parietal lobule (SPL) dysfunction (review in Valdois et al., 2019). However, a reduced space-based attentional window (i.e. a limited visual eccentricity at which the target object can be identified, Khan et al. 2016) has been demonstrated in simultanagnosia versus a reduced object-based span (i.e. a limited number of objects processed at each fixation, Bosse et al., 2007) in developmental dyslexia. In healthy individuals, the cost in reaction times per item in serial search tasks suggests that a group of objects is processed simultaneously at a time, but this group is also undefined and depends on the visual complexity of the task.Healthy individuals and a patient with simultanagnosia performed serial search tasks involving either symbols (made of separable features) or objects made of non-separable features, and with distractors that were either all identical or all dissimilar. We used a moving window paradigm to determine whether the task was performed with a “working space” versus a “working span” limitation in control group and in patient with bilateral SPL damage.We found that healthy individuals performed search in a color task comprising non-separable feature objects and dissimilar distractors with a limited space-based attentional window; this attentional window, as well as the mean saccade amplitude used to displace it across the visual display, were independent of set size, thus inconsistent with an object-based attentional span. In the symbol task comprising a feature-absent search in which all feature-present distractors were dissimilar, we observed that mean saccade amplitude decreased with set size and that search performance could not be mimicked by a moving window of a single diameter; instead participants seemed to process a fixed number of symbols at a time (object-based span).Following bilateral SPL lesions, patient IG demonstrated a similar space-based search process in the color search task with a normal attentional window. In contrast, her cost-per-item in the symbol task increased dramatically, demonstrating a clear deficit of simultaneous object perception. These results confirmed the specific contribution of the SPL to the visual processing of multiple objects made of separable features (like letters), and more dramatically when they are all different, which explains the specific difficulty for a reading beginner in case of SPL dysfunction.