Visual Expertise Research Articles

Visual expertise does not predict the composite effect across species: A comparison between spider ( Ateles geoffroyi) and rhesus ( Macaca mulatta) monkeys

Humans are subject to the composite illusion: two identical top halves of a face are perceived as “different” when they are presented with different bottom halves. This observation suggests that when building a mental representation of a face, the underlying system perceives the whole face, and has difficulty decomposing facial features. We adapted a behavioural task that measures the composite illusion to examine the perception of faces in two nonhuman species. Specifically we had spider ( Ateles geoffroyi) and rhesus monkeys ( Macaca mulatta) perform a two-forced choice, match-to-sample task where only the top half of sample was relevant to the task. The results of Experiment 1 show that spider monkeys ( N = 2) process the faces of familiar species (conspecifics and humans, but not chimpanzees, sheep, or sticks), holistically. The second experiment tested rhesus monkeys ( N = 7) with the faces of humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, sheep, and sticks. Contrary to prediction, there was no evidence of a composite effect in the human (or familiar primate) condition. Instead, we present evidence of a composite illusion in the chimpanzee condition (an unfamiliar primate). Together, these experiments show that visual expertise does not predict the composite effect across the primate order.

A high-dimensional feature clustering approach to support knowledge-assisted visualization

The ever-growing arsenal of methods and parameters available for data visualization can be daunting to the casual user and even to domain experts. Furthermore, comprehensive expertise is often not available in a centralized venue, but distributed over sub-communities. As a means to overcome this inherent problem, efforts have begun to store visualization expertise directly with the visualization method and possibly the dataset, to then be utilized for user guidance in the data visualization, suggesting to the user both the visualization method and its best parameters for the data and task at hand. While this is certainly an immensely useful and promising development, one requirement remains – the matching of a newly acquired dataset with the appropriate segment of the library storing the expert knowledge. This requires one to detect and recognize the dataset's category at some level of granularity and then use this information as a library index. We describe a possible framework for accomplishing the first stage of this process, namely the data categorization, using data classification via a rich set of feature vectors sufficiently sensitive to detect critical variations. We demonstrate the utility of our framework by ways of a set of medical and computational datasets and visualize the resulting categorization as a layout in 2D.

Not All Visual Expertise Is Holistic, but It May Be Leftist

We examined whether two purportedly face-specific effects, holistic processing and the left-side bias, can also be observed in expert-level processing of Chinese characters, which are logographic and share many properties with faces. Non-Chinese readers (novices) perceived these characters more holistically than Chinese readers (experts). Chinese readers had a better awareness of the components of characters, which were not clearly separable to novices. This finding suggests that holistic processing is not a marker of general visual expertise; rather, holistic processing depends on the features of the stimuli and the tasks typically performed on them. In contrast, results for the left-side bias were similar to those obtained in studies of face perception. Chinese readers exhibited a left-side bias in the perception of mirror-symmetric characters, whereas novices did not; this effect was also reflected in eye fixations. Thus, the left-side bias may be a marker of visual expertise.

Early involvement of dorsal and ventral pathways in visual word recognition: An ERP study

Visual expertise underlying reading is attributed to processes involving the left ventral visual pathway. However, converging evidence suggests that the dorsal visual pathway is also involved in early levels of visual word processing, especially when words are presented in unfamiliar visual formats. In the present study, event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to investigate the time course of the early engagement of the ventral and dorsal pathways during processing of orthographic stimuli (high and low frequency words, pseudowords and consonant strings) by manipulating visual format (familiar horizontal vs. unfamiliar vertical format). While early ERP components (P1 and N1) already distinguished between formats, the effect of stimulus type emerged at the latency of the N2 component (225–275 ms). The N2 scalp topography and sLORETA source localisation for this differentiation showed an occipito-temporal negativity for the horizontal format and a negativity that extended towards the dorsal regions for the vertical format. In a later time window (350–425 ms) ERPs elicited by vertically displayed stimuli distinguished words from pseudowords in the ventral area, as confirmed by source localisation. The sustained contribution of occipito-temporal processes for vertical stimuli suggests that the ventral pathway is essential for lexical access. Parietal regions appear to be involved when a serial mechanism of visual attention is required to shift attention from one letter to another. The two pathways cooperate during visual word recognition and processing in these pathways should not be considered as alternative but as complementary elements of reading.

Engagement of Fusiform Cortex and Disengagement of Lateral Occipital Cortex in the Acquisition of Radiological Expertise

The human visual pathways that are specialized for object recognition stretch from lateral occipital cortex (LO) to the ventral surface of the temporal lobe, including the fusiform gyrus. Plasticity in these pathways supports the acquisition of visual expertise, but precisely how training affects the different regions remains unclear. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure neural activity in both LO and the fusiform gyrus in radiologists as they detected abnormalities in chest radiographs. Activity in the right fusiform face area (FFA) correlated with visual expertise, measured as behavioral performance during scanning. In contrast, activity in left LO correlated negatively with expertise, and the amount of LO that responded to radiographs was smaller in experts than in novices. Activity in the FFA and LO correlated negatively in experts, whereas in novices, the 2 regions showed no stable relationship. Together, these results suggest that the FFA becomes more engaged and left LO less engaged in interpreting radiographic images over the course of training. Achieving expert visual performance may involve suppressing existing neural representations while simultaneously developing others.

Familiarity effects on categorization levels of faces and objects

It is well established that faces, in contrast to objects, are categorized as fast or faster at the individual level (e.g., Bill Clinton) than at the basic-level (e.g., human face). This subordinate-shift from basic-level categorization has been considered an outcome of visual expertise with processing faces. However, in the present study we found that, similar to familiar faces, categorization of individually-known familiar towers is also faster at the individual level than at the basic-level in naïve participants. In addition, category-verification of familiar stimuli, at basic and superordinate levels, was slower and less accurate compared to unfamiliar stimuli. Thus, the existence of detailed semantic information, regardless of expertise, can induce a shift in the default level of object categorization from basic to individual level. Moreover, the individually-specific knowledge is not only more easily-retrieved from memory but it might also interfere with accessing more general category information.

The Image and the Expert User: A Qualitative Investigation of Decision-Making

Research on the development of image digital libraries has so far yielded little knowledge about the actual uses of rich visual content. This paper presents initial findings of a study on the decision making strategies that expert users employ in a large scale image digital library to choose and evaluate digitized photographs for specific projects. The paper establishes the foundation for the research in the literature on representation and remediation and describes the methodology of the research project, which includes two-stage semi-structured interviews with seven expert users across the spectrum of factors motivating the sophisticated, project-based use of digitized photographs. Findings presented here highlight the nature of visual expertise and the indicators of a new model of learning in visual collections.

A visual short-term memory advantage for objects of expertise.

Visual short-term memory (VSTM) is limited, especially for complex objects. Its capacity, however, is greater for faces than for other objects; this advantage may stem from the holistic nature of face processing. If the holistic processing explains this advantage, object expertise--which also relies on holistic processing--should endow experts with a VSTM advantage. The authors compared VSTM for cars among car experts and car novices. Car experts, but not car novices, demonstrated a VSTM advantage similar to that for faces; this advantage was orientation specific and was correlated with an individual's level of car expertise. Control experiments ruled out accounts based solely on verbal- or long-term memory representations. These findings suggest that the processing advantages afforded by visual expertise result in domain-specific increases in VSTM capacity, perhaps by allowing experts to maximize the use of an inherently limited VSTM system.

Virtual brain reading: A neural network approach to understanding fMRI patterns.

Event Abstract Back to Event Virtual brain reading: A neural network approach to understanding fMRI patterns. Is the fusiform face area (FFA) a module specialized for processing faces, or does it simply support generic visual expertise? Researchers have investigated this question using Multi-Voxel Pattern Analysis (MVPA) applied to fMRI results. Haxby et al. (2001) showed that patterns of neural activation in object-selective visual cortex can be used to discriminate object categories, even when voxels selective for those categories are removed. This provided evidence for a distributed neural code, in which information about faces exists outside the FFA. In contrast, Spiridon and Kanwisher (2002) showed that activation patterns seen in face-selective cortex were more effective for making face vs. non-face discriminations than for non-face vs. non-face discriminations, whereas this was not true for other object categories, such as man-made objects. This implied FFA neurons contain special information about faces, but that there is no specialized module for other object categories. We present a neurocomputational model of visual processing, in which object representations are organized topographically. Photographic images are subject to Gabor filtering, then PCA, then input to a Kohonen network - a self-organizing neural network that groups similar inputs together, forming a two-dimensional “semantic map” of stimulus space. We present a new method for “virtual MVPA”, in which we assume that activations of units in the Kohonen network layer correspond to neural activity in ventral visual cortex, and may be mapped onto voxel activations measured by fMRI. We trained the model on images of cups, cans, books and faces. The Kohonen network developed a region dedicated to each category. In line with Haxby et al. (2001), each of these dedicated regions still had different response patterns to stimuli from the other categories, such that activation patterns in areas of the semantic map dedicated to one category (e.g., faces) can be used to distinguish between other categories (e.g., cups versus cans). However, in line with Spiridon and Kanwisher, the face area is better at distinguishing faces from non-faces than at distinguishing non-face categories from each other, while non-face areas of the semantic map are, on average, equipotent at both tasks. In the model, this can be explained by lower within-category variability of the representations of faces compared to, say, cups. This is due to higher within-category visual similarity for faces than for other categories. Hence, with a model of visual cortex possessing no special mechanism for face processing, we simulate Spiridon and Kanwisher’s results, casting doubt on their interpretation in favor of a specialized face module. Conference: Computational and systems neuroscience 2009, Salt Lake City, UT, United States, 26 Feb - 3 Mar, 2009. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Poster Presentations Citation: (2009). Virtual brain reading: A neural network approach to understanding fMRI patterns.. Front. Syst. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: Computational and systems neuroscience 2009. doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.06.2009.03.338 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 04 Feb 2009; Published Online: 04 Feb 2009. Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Google Google Scholar PubMed Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Left-lateralized N170 Effects of Visual Expertise in Reading: Evidence from Japanese Syllabic and Logographic Scripts

The N170 component of the event-related potential (ERP) reflects experience-dependent neural changes in several forms of visual expertise, including expertise for visual words. Readers skilled in writing systems that link characters to phonemes (i.e., alphabetic writing) typically produce a left-lateralized N170 to visual word forms. This study examined the N170 in three Japanese scripts that link characters to larger phonological units. Participants were monolingual English speakers (EL1) and native Japanese speakers (JL1) who were also proficient in English. ERPs were collected using a 129-channel array, as participants performed a series of experiments viewing words or novel control stimuli in a repetition detection task. The N170 was strongly left-lateralized for all three Japanese scripts (including logographic Kanji characters) in JL1 participants, but bilateral in EL1 participants viewing these same stimuli. This demonstrates that left-lateralization of the N170 is dependent on specific reading expertise and is not limited to alphabetic scripts. Additional contrasts within the moraic Katakana script revealed equivalent N170 responses in JL1 speakers for familiar Katakana words and for Kanji words transcribed into novel Katakana words, suggesting that the N170 expertise effect is driven by script familiarity rather than familiarity with particular visual word forms. Finally, for English words and novel symbol string stimuli, both EL1 and JL1 subjects produced equivalent responses for the novel symbols, and more left-lateralized N170 responses for the English words, indicating that such effects are not limited to the first language. Taken together, these cross-linguistic results suggest that similar neural processes underlie visual expertise for print in very different writing systems.

How Do Expert Soccer Players Encode Visual Information to Make Decisions in Simulated Game Situations?

The aim of this study was to determine what visual information expert soccer players encode when they are asked to make a decision. We used a repetition-priming paradigm to test the hypothesis that experts encode a soccer pattern's structure independently of the players' physical characteristics (i.e., posture and morphology). The participants were given either realistic (digital photos) or abstract (three-dimensional schematic representations) soccer game patterns. The results showed that the experts benefited from priming effects regardless of how abstract the stimuli were. This suggests that an abstract representation of a realistic pattern (i.e., one that does not include visual information related to the players' physical characteristics) is sufficient to activate experts' specific knowledge during decision making. These results seem to show that expert soccer players encode and store abstract representations of visual patterns in memory.

Action anticipation and motor resonance in elite basketball players

We combined psychophysical and transcranial magnetic stimulation studies to investigate the dynamics of action anticipation and its underlying neural correlates in professional basketball players. Athletes predicted the success of free shots at a basket earlier and more accurately than did individuals with comparable visual experience (coaches or sports journalists) and novices. Moreover, performance between athletes and the other groups differed before the ball was seen to leave the model's hands, suggesting that athletes predicted the basket shot's fate by reading the body kinematics. Both visuo-motor and visual experts showed a selective increase of motor-evoked potentials during observation of basket shots. However, only athletes showed a time-specific motor activation during observation of erroneous basket throws. Results suggest that achieving excellence in sports may be related to the fine-tuning of specific anticipatory 'resonance' mechanisms that endow elite athletes' brains with the ability to predict others' actions ahead of their realization.

Doing Distinctions

The transformations in radiology induced by new imaging technology can be understood as instances of `doing distinctions' by both technology and human actors. This paper combines the analytical frameworks of Gieryn and Bourdieu to understand the reconfigurations engendered by the medical implementation of visualization apparatuses such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). It examines the reactions of radiologists to these transformations, which forced them to renegotiate visual expertise and to reconstitute their professional and disciplinary identity. The paper argues that imaging practices are practices of boundary work and distinction, aimed at regaining professional authority and accumulating symbolic capital within the professional field. Boundary work and distinction practices are thus means to improve both the prestige of the profession and the actors' individual status within the scientific or hospital community. The paper further argues that visualization machines and images are not exclusively used for diagnostic and research purposes but are also material and epistemic resources that are deployed in practices of boundary work and distinction. Technology and pictures serve as tools to demonstrate professional skills and power, to increase one's reputation, and to renegotiate identity. Drawing on interviews, documents and fieldwork in several radiology departments and MRI centres in Europe and the USA, the paper reconstructs processes of `doing distinctions' related to the implementation of MRI and other imaging technologies in medicine. It explores the identity and accumulation strategies of radiologists and other medical specialists through an examination of their boundary work and distinction practices, which are focused on material, social and epistemic resources, and boundaries.

The roles of visual expertise and visual input in the face inversion effect: Behavioral and neurocomputational evidence

Research has shown that inverting faces significantly disrupts the processing of configural information, leading to a face inversion effect. We recently used a contextual priming technique to show that the presence or absence of the face inversion effect can be determined via the top–down activation of face versus non-face processing systems [Ge, L., Wang, Z., McCleery, J., & Lee, K. (2006). Activation of face expertise and the inversion effect. Psychological Science, 17(1), 12–16]. In the current study, we replicate these findings using the same technique but under different conditions. We then extend these findings through the application of a neural network model of face and Chinese character expertise systems. Results provide support for the hypothesis that a specialized face expertise system develops through extensive training of the visual system with upright faces, and that top–down mechanisms are capable of influencing when this face expertise system is engaged.

A study on neural mechanism of face processing based on fMRI

Recently, there were debates about the specificity of lateral middle fusiform in face processing. The debates focused on whether these areas were specialized in face processing or involved in processing of visual expertise and categorization at individual level. The present study aims to investigate the neural mechanism of face processing, using Chinese characters as comparison stimuli. Chinese characters are greatly similar to faces on a variety of dimensions, among which the most significant one is that both faces and Chinese characters not only are extremely familiar to literate Chinese adults but also are processed at individual level. In the present study, faces and Chinese characters activated bilateral middle fusiform with great correlation. Greater activities were observed in the right fusiform face area (FFA) for faces than for Chinese characters. These results demonstrate that FFA is specialized in face processing per se rather than the processing of visual expertise and categorization at individual level.

Tacit knowledge and visual expertise in medical diagnostic reasoning: Implications for medical education

Background: Much education—especially at the university level—has been criticized for having primarily dealt with explicit knowledge, i.e. those aspects of mental activities, which are verbal and conscious. Furthermore, research in medical diagnostic reasoning has been criticized for having focused on the specialty of intern medicine, while specialties with other skills, i.e. perceptive skills within pathology and radiology, have been ignored.Aims: To show that the concept of tacit knowledge is important in medical education—at all levels and in medical diagnostic reasoning.Methods: Describing how tacit knowledge according to Michael Polany, is experienced and expressed in day-to-day life, it is shown that there is a tacit dimension to all knowledge. Reviewing recent literature on medical diagnostic reasoning, it is shown that tacit knowledge is recognized in connection with concepts such as “non-analytical reasoning” and “dual process of reasoning.”Conclusion: It is important that educators are trained in how explicit and implicit knowledge is attained and that tacit knowledge is included in educational programmes of all medical specialties.

Language experience shapes early electrophysiological responses to visual stimuli: The effects of writing system, stimulus length, and presentation duration

How language experience affects visual word recognition has been a topic of intense interest. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), the present study compared the early electrophysiological responses (i.e., N1) to familiar and unfamiliar writings under different conditions. Thirteen native Chinese speakers (with English as their second language) were recruited to passively view four types of scripts: Chinese (familiar logographic writings), English (familiar alphabetic writings), Korean Hangul (unfamiliar logographic writings), and Tibetan (unfamiliar alphabetic writings). Stimuli also differed in lexicality (words vs. non-words, for familiar writings only), length (characters/letters vs. words), and presentation duration (100 ms vs. 750 ms). We found no significant differences between words and non-words, and the effect of language experience (familiar vs. unfamiliar) was significantly modulated by stimulus length and writing system, and to a less degree, by presentation duration. That is, the language experience effect (i.e., a stronger N1 response to familiar writings than to unfamiliar writings) was significant only for alphabetic letters, but not for alphabetic and logographic words. The difference between Chinese characters and unfamiliar logographic characters was significant under the condition of short presentation duration, but not under the condition of long presentation duration. Long stimuli elicited a stronger N1 response than did short stimuli, but this effect was significantly attenuated for familiar writings. These results suggest that N1 response might not reliably differentiate familiar and unfamiliar writings. More importantly, our results suggest that N1 is modulated by visual, linguistic, and task factors, which has important implications for the visual expertise hypothesis.

The Neural Substrates of Visual Perceptual Learning of Words: Implications for the Visual Word Form Area Hypothesis

Abstract It remains under debate whether the fusiform visual word form area (VWFA) is specific to visual word form and whether visual expertise increases its sensitivity (Xue et al., 2006; Cohen et al., 2002). The present study examined three related issues: (1) whether the VWFA is also involved in processing foreign writing that significantly differs from the native one, (2) the effect of visual word form training on VWFA activation after controlling the task difficulty, and (3) the transfer of visual word form learning. Eleven native English speakers were trained, during five sessions, to judge whether two subsequently flashed (100-msec duration with 200-msec interval) foreign characters (i.e., Korean Hangul) were identical or not. Visual noise was added to the stimuli to manipulate task difficulty. In functional magnetic resonance imaging scans before and after training, subjects performed the task once with the same noise level (i.e., parameter-matched scan) and once with noise level changed to match performance from pretraining to posttraining (i.e., performance-matched scan). Results indicated that training increased the accuracy in parameter-matched condition but remained constant in performance-matched condition (because of increasing task difficulty). Pretraining scans revealed stronger activation for English words than for Korean characters in the left inferior temporal gyrus and the left inferior frontal cortex, but not in the VWFA. Visual word form training significantly decreased the activation in the bilateral middle and left posterior fusiform when either parameters or performance were matched and for both trained and new items. These results confirm our conjecture that the VWFA is not dedicated to words, and visual expertise acquired with training reduces rather than increases its activity.

The Narcotrend™ Monitor and the Electroencephalogram in Propofol-Induced Sedation

The Narcotrend (NCT) is a one-channel electroencephalogram (EEG) monitor of the level of sedation. It is based on a visual EEG scoring system, which was developed by Loomis and modified by Kugler, to yield a visual expert classification (VEC) scheme for differentiation of six levels of sedation (A-F), which are subdivided into 16 substages. We designed the present study to test whether results of the automated classification of one-channel NCT input reflect those from VEC of five-channel EEG. Twelve healthy male volunteers received propofol using two different infusion regimens in a randomized, crossover design with concomitant NCT monitoring and VEC. Scoring results of NCT were compared with those of VEC. During the infusion period, score differences of more than three substages were observed in 14 of 24 (= 58%) propofol administrations (4%-7% of total data). Often, the NCT indicated lighter sedation than VEC, which revealed more delta activity from nonfrontal leads. During recovery, NCT reported deeper sedation than VEC in 6 of 24 (= 25%) propofol administrations. Discordant trends (periods of at least five subsequent epochs with monotonic, but opposite trends for both NCT and VEC) were noted in 9 of 24 propofol administrations (37%). Furthermore, NCT had several periods when no staging information was displayed, varying from a few seconds to 10 min. As the algorithm of NCT is proprietary and not accessible to the public, reasons for the observed differences between NCT and VEC cannot be analyzed and explanations must remain speculative.

Why is the fusiform face area recruited for novel categories of expertise? A neurocomputational investigation

What is the role of the Fusiform Face Area (FFA)? Is it specific to face processing, or is it a visual expertise area? The expertise hypothesis is appealing due to a number of studies showing that the FFA is activated by pictures of objects within the subject's domain of expertise (e.g., cars for car experts, birds for birders, etc.), and that activation of the FFA increases as new expertise is acquired in the lab. However, it is incumbent upon the proponents of the expertise hypothesis to explain how it is that an area that is initially specialized for faces becomes recruited for new classes of stimuli. We dub this the “visual expertise mystery.” One suggested answer to this mystery is that the FFA is used simply because it is a fine discrimination area, but this account has historically lacked a mechanism describing exactly how the FFA would be recruited for novel domains of expertise. In this study, we show that a neurocomputational model trained to perform subordinate-level discrimination within a visually homogeneous class develops transformations that magnify differences between similar objects, in marked contrast to networks trained to simply categorize the objects. This magnification generalizes to novel classes, leading to faster learning of new discriminations. We suggest this is why the FFA is recruited for new expertise. The model predicts that individual FFA neurons will have highly variable responses to stimuli within expertise domains.