Vision ResearchPub Date : 2025-06-06DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2025.108639
Nicholas Householder , Anahit Simonyan , Weston Park , Nyree Khachikyan , Gianluca Lazzi , Darrin J. Lee , Kimberly K. Gokoffski
{"title":"Electromagnetic stimulation for amblyopia: A systematic review of emerging techniques and their efficacy","authors":"Nicholas Householder , Anahit Simonyan , Weston Park , Nyree Khachikyan , Gianluca Lazzi , Darrin J. Lee , Kimberly K. Gokoffski","doi":"10.1016/j.visres.2025.108639","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.visres.2025.108639","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Amblyopia, long considered untreatable in adults, may be responsive to Electromagnetic Stimulation (EMS) techniques to enhance neural plasticity. This systematic review evaluates the efficacy of EMS in treating adult amblyopia. A systematic literature review was conducted across online databases for prospective studies, clinical trials, or case series evaluating the effects of EMS on animal or human models of amblyopia. The primary outcomes of interest were visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, stereopsis, and visual evoked potentials. Of 34 initially identified studies, 20 met the inclusion criteria. Ten studies focused on transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), seven on repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), and three on transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS). tDCS studies demonstrated improvements in visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, and depth perception in human and animal models. rTMS studies showed positive outcomes in visual acuity and stereoacuity in adult amblyopes. tRNS studies reported improvements in visual acuity and contrast sensitivity in adults. Though current studies are limited by small sample sizes and brief follow-up durations, the observed enhancements in visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, and stereopsis across multiple studies signify that EMS has the potential to transform amblyopia treatment. These findings open new and exciting avenues for treating amblyopia beyond traditional critical periods.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":23670,"journal":{"name":"Vision Research","volume":"234 ","pages":"Article 108639"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144231597","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Vision ResearchPub Date : 2025-06-05DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2025.108629
Yung-Hao Yang , Taiki Fukiage , Zitang Sun , Shin’ya Nishida
{"title":"Temporal dynamics of perceived motion flow in naturalistic movie sequences","authors":"Yung-Hao Yang , Taiki Fukiage , Zitang Sun , Shin’ya Nishida","doi":"10.1016/j.visres.2025.108629","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.visres.2025.108629","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>To visualize the temporal dynamics of human visual motion perception under conditions close to everyday life, we measured the time course of the perceived motion vector when the observers viewed naturalistic movie clips that featured large direction changes of target objects. The spatiotemporal position of the target’s local motion was probed by a flashing dot that appeared within the range of ± 66.7 ms from the direction change. Observers had to report the perceived local motion using a motion vector matching method. The results show that the deviation of the perceived flow from the physical ground truth increased when the probe was presented near the direction changes. The pattern of errors averaged across multiple trials could be described by a Gaussian temporal smoothing of the local motion vectors, with a window size spanning about 120 ms. The results are consistent with previous reports of the sluggish temporal response of visual motion processing revealed by artificial stimuli and different tasks. However, a detailed examination of the response of each trial of our data indicated that the observers did not report a gradual transition from pre-change to post-change vectors but reported either of the two directions in a bimodal fashion with gradually changing response rates over time. This suggests that even though the motion processing may be sluggish, human observers correctly recognize a sudden direction change as a sudden event, not as a gradual transition.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":23670,"journal":{"name":"Vision Research","volume":"234 ","pages":"Article 108629"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144220951","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Vision ResearchPub Date : 2025-05-19DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2025.108610
Alice Price, Petroc Sumner, Georgina Powell
{"title":"Understanding the subtypes of visual hypersensitivity: Four coherent factors and their measurement with the Cardiff Hypersensitivity Scale (CHYPS)","authors":"Alice Price, Petroc Sumner, Georgina Powell","doi":"10.1016/j.visres.2025.108610","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.visres.2025.108610","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Subjective visual sensitivity or discomfort has been reported in many separate literatures, and includes a wide range of visual triggers (e.g., repeating patterns, bright lights, motion, flicker) across a wide range of neurological, psychiatric, mental health, and developmental conditions and areas of neurodiversity (e.g., migraine, traumatic brain injury, functional neurological disorder, PPPD, PTSD, anxiety, depression, anorexia, OCD, autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, synaesthesia). To unite this research across disciplines and to allow progress in mechanistic understanding, we aimed to provide a definitive answer to whether there are different subtypes (factors) of visual hypersensitivity. In Study 1, we generated questions from a large qualitative dataset (n = 765), existing literatures, questionnaires, and iteratively from participant feedback. We found four theoretically coherent factors replicated across five cohorts (n’s = 349, 517, 349, 417, 797 and 1817). These factors were: brightness (e.g., sunlight), repeating patterns (e.g., stripes), strobing (e.g., flashing, screen motion), and intense visual environments (e.g., supermarkets, traffic). There was also a general factor. Based on this we produced a novel 20-item questionnaire (the Cardiff Hypersensitivity Scale, CHYPS), with good reliability (<strong>α</strong> > 0.8, ω > 0.8) and convergent validity (correlations with other visual scales r > 0.6). We discuss how these factors can be related to causal theories of hypersensitivity.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":23670,"journal":{"name":"Vision Research","volume":"233 ","pages":"Article 108610"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144083934","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Vision ResearchPub Date : 2025-05-17DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2025.108620
Elizabeth A.G. Watson, Louise Ewing, George L. Malcolm
{"title":"When children get the gist: The development of rapid scene categorisation","authors":"Elizabeth A.G. Watson, Louise Ewing, George L. Malcolm","doi":"10.1016/j.visres.2025.108620","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.visres.2025.108620","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Research surrounding adult recognition of scene gist is extensive; however, very little is known of its development. Behavioural studies of scene processing tend to broadly support a protracted developmental trajectory, with a quantitative and perhaps also qualitative shift towards more adultlike processing across middle childhood. Here we sought to better understand the very early stages of children’s scene processing by targeting gist perception. Children aged 5–10 years categorised backwards-masked scenes presented at very brief durations. We drew inferences about the <em>processing speed</em> with which each age group extracted category-diagnostic information by varying presentation durations, and the <em>quality of information</em> extracted by varying the level they were prompted to make their judgments (superordinate-level indicative of coarse global information, basic-level indicative of more detailed information). Children across all ages demonstrated a remarkably sophisticated ability to extract scene gist, with 5–6-year-old children performing above chance for scenes presented for as little as 32 ms for both superordinate and basic-level judgements. Categorisation performance also became more efficient with age. Overall, our novel findings indicate that young children possess an impressive ability to process a scene’s gist, which is followed by a protracted development towards expertise across middle childhood.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":23670,"journal":{"name":"Vision Research","volume":"233 ","pages":"Article 108620"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144072058","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Vision ResearchPub Date : 2025-05-16DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2025.108621
Tadas Surkys, Arūnas Bielevičius, Vilius Marma
{"title":"Effects of repeated stimulus presentations on Oppel-Kundt and Müller-Lyer illusions","authors":"Tadas Surkys, Arūnas Bielevičius, Vilius Marma","doi":"10.1016/j.visres.2025.108621","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.visres.2025.108621","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We present a post-hoc analysis examining whether repeated trials and multiple sessions affect the measured strength of two length illusions, Oppel-Kundt (O-K) and Müller-Lyer (M-L), as well as a non-illusory control stimulus. Data were taken from earlier studies in which participants adjusted a variable segment to match a reference segment. Short sessions featured five trials per figure, whereas extended sessions contained 24 or 26 trials for O-K and M-L. Linear mixed-effects models tested how trial number, session number, initial interval length, and figure subtype influenced illusion magnitude. O-K illusion magnitude tended to decline across sessions in the extended sessions, although individual observers displayed varying trends—some increased, others decreased. M-L illusions did not show the pronounced adaptation reported in previous work. These findings highlight the need to manage repeated presentations: controlling viewing durations, inter-session intervals, and participant strategies can help limit adaptation. Methodologically, mixing different stimuli, randomizing key parameters, and scheduling breaks appear to yield more stable measurements of illusion magnitudes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":23670,"journal":{"name":"Vision Research","volume":"233 ","pages":"Article 108621"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144072057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Vision ResearchPub Date : 2025-05-15DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2025.108619
Idris Shareef , Nasif Zaman , Michael Webster , Alireza Tavakkoli , Fang Jiang
{"title":"Effects of brief and prolonged blur adaptation on visual search and discrimination","authors":"Idris Shareef , Nasif Zaman , Michael Webster , Alireza Tavakkoli , Fang Jiang","doi":"10.1016/j.visres.2025.108619","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.visres.2025.108619","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Adaptation to blurred or sharpened images has a large and rapid effect on perceived image focus and at longer durations has also been reported to impact acuity and blur sensitivity, but the dynamics and functional consequences of the adaptation remain poorly characterized. We tested the effects of blur adaptation on visual performance for two tasks and two adapting durations. Specifically, we measured the effects of brief (12 s) vs. prolonged (2 h) blur adaptation on visual search and discrimination performance. Our results show that adaptation improved search accuracies for novel blur levels after prolonged but not brief adapting duration, while neither duration improved blur discrimination. The improvements in visual search could reflect the role of adaptation in increasing the salience of novel properties in the visual environment.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":23670,"journal":{"name":"Vision Research","volume":"233 ","pages":"Article 108619"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143946653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Conducting online visual psychophysics experiments: A replication assessment of two face processing studies","authors":"Caroline Blais , Daniel Fiset , Laurianne Côté, Vicki Ledrou-Paquet, Isabelle Charbonneau","doi":"10.1016/j.visres.2025.108617","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.visres.2025.108617","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In vision sciences, researchers rigorously control the testing environment and the physical properties of stimuli, making it challenging to conduct visual perception experiments online. However, online research offers key advantages, including access to larger and more diverse participant samples, helping to address the problem of underpowered studies and to enhance the generalizability of results. In face recognition research, increasing diversity is essential, especially considering evidence that cultural and geographical factors influence basic visual face processing. The present study tested a new online platform, Pack & Go from VPixx Technologies, that supports experiments written in MATLAB and Python. Two face recognition experiments based on a data-driven psychophysical method involving real-time stimulus manipulation and relying on functions from the Psychtoolbox were tested. In Experiment 1, the visual information used for face recognition was compared across four conditions that gradually reduced experimental control over the testing environment and stimulus properties. In Experiment 2, the association between face recognition abilities and information utilization was measured online and compared to lab-based results. In both experiments, results obtained in the lab and online were highly similar, demonstrating the potential of online research for vision science.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":23670,"journal":{"name":"Vision Research","volume":"233 ","pages":"Article 108617"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143936165","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Vision ResearchPub Date : 2025-05-09DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2025.108618
Wiktor Więcławski, Aleksandra Smus Marek Binder
{"title":"Does pseudoneglect influence pupillary light or dark response?","authors":"Wiktor Więcławski, Aleksandra Smus Marek Binder","doi":"10.1016/j.visres.2025.108618","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.visres.2025.108618","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Pupillary light response (PLR) is modulated by the allocation of spatial attention. Larger pupil constrictions for bright stimuli presented on the left side are considered indicative of pseudoneglect, a subtle attentional bias observed in neurotypical populations. This study aimed to replicate this effect using the split-screen method—a newly introduced measure of spatial attentional bias—while accounting for factors such as contraction anisocoria by recording from both pupils. Additionally, we introduced conditions with and without competing stimuli (a black patch on the opposite side to the original white patch that is supposed to elicit pupil contraction) to investigate the role of visual competition in PLR modulation and explored the pupillary dark response (PDR) to assess whether attentional biases affect pupil dilation. Contrary to our hypothesis, we did not observe a significant pseudoneglect effect, as pupil constriction was not consistently greater for left-sided stimuli. We found clear evidence for contraction anisocoria, whereby ipsilateral stimuli produce stronger constrictions than contralateral stimuli, thus highlighting the need to account for this physiological effect in future studies. Regarding PDR, we did not find significant attentional modulation or evidence of dilation anisocoria as pupil dilation amplitudes were similar across both hemifields. These findings suggest that although the split-screen method may reveal physiological asymmetries like anisocoria, its sensitivity to attentional biases in neurotypical populations still requires further investigation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":23670,"journal":{"name":"Vision Research","volume":"232 ","pages":"Article 108618"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143928327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Vision ResearchPub Date : 2025-05-08DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2025.108616
Yingyu Huang , Chaolun Wang , Xiang Wu
{"title":"Could an auditory equivalent to a continuously varying visual stimulus improve beat synchronization? Evidence supporting vision as a trustworthy modality in sensorimotor timing","authors":"Yingyu Huang , Chaolun Wang , Xiang Wu","doi":"10.1016/j.visres.2025.108616","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.visres.2025.108616","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Although synchronization to a perceived regular beat in time has been established to be much less variable for discrete auditory stimuli, such as tones, than for discrete visual stimuli, such as flashes, recent advances in beat synchronization research have demonstrated that visual beat synchronization can be substantially improved and become comparable to auditory tones when employing continuously moving visual stimuli. It therefore has been suggested that the difference in modality is an important but not necessarily dominant factor for beat synchronization. However, doubts exist in favoring auditory dominance, as comparing continuously varying visual stimuli with discrete auditory stimuli is considered unfair. Here, based on a periodically contracting ring for which the spatial displacement continuously varied with a constant acceleration, we devised an equivalent in the auditory domain: an amplitude-modulated sound whose amplitude continuously varied with an acceleration of the same magnitude. The results showed that beat synchronization performance of the amplitude-modulated sound was not greater than that of the tone or the contracting ring. The present finding supports that vision is a trustworthy modality for sensorimotor timing processing.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":23670,"journal":{"name":"Vision Research","volume":"232 ","pages":"Article 108616"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143921786","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Vision ResearchPub Date : 2025-05-04DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2025.108612
Krista R. Kelly , Yi Pang , Benjamin Thompson , Ewa Niechwiej-Szwedo , Carolyn D. Drews-Botsch , Ann L. Webber
{"title":"Functional consequences of amblyopia and its impact on health-related quality of life","authors":"Krista R. Kelly , Yi Pang , Benjamin Thompson , Ewa Niechwiej-Szwedo , Carolyn D. Drews-Botsch , Ann L. Webber","doi":"10.1016/j.visres.2025.108612","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.visres.2025.108612","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Amblyopia (lazy eye) is the most common cause of monocular vision loss, affecting up to 4% of children and often persisting into adulthood. While treating the visual acuity deficit is often the focus of treatment, there is a pressing need for researchers, educators, and clinicians to understand the effects of amblyopia that extend beyond visual acuity. This review article highlights recent advances in understanding the impact of amblyopia on everyday life functioning. Amblyopia can significantly interfere with contrast sensitivity, attention, reading, eye-hand coordination, body composition, physical activity, and health-related quality of life. A deeper understanding of the functional consequences of amblyopia can be applied to patient management and inform amblyopia treatment, as well as support research into more effective interventions to prevent or rehabilitate deficits that can hinder children’s physical, social, and academic success.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":23670,"journal":{"name":"Vision Research","volume":"231 ","pages":"Article 108612"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143901923","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}