Analyses of Perceptual Learning

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My research examines the factors that determine how we perceive visual patterns, and the way those factors are affected by perceptual learning. Perceptual learning refers to the fact that our ability to detect, discriminate, and identify patterns improves as a result of practice. Studying perceptual learning can provide insights into the general principles of learning and memory, and into the ways our brain adapts and changes as a function of experience. This knowledge could be used to devise ways of improving skills in applied areas requiring a high degree of visual skill (e.g., radiology and medical imaging), or perhaps alleviate visual deficits associated with neural disorders such as amblyopia, brain injuries, or the effects of aging. Many experiments examine how perceptual learning improves our ability to perform simple tasks that require us to discriminate two patterns that differ on a single dimension (e.g., orientation). However, my research examines how learning alters our ability to identify spatially complex patterns like textures and faces. One obvious reason for using more complex patterns is that they may provide better insights into the way learning affects our perception of naturalistic patterns, textures, and objects (as well as important classes of "artificial" patterns such as radiographic images). Also, investigating learning with progressively more complex stimuli and/or tasks is necessary to determine how theories of learning must be altered to account for learning in a variety of conditions. Therefore, the current proposal describes several projects that examine the factors that influence how our perception of complex patterns is altered by learning, and how that learning can be generalized or transferred to new patterns that were not seen during practice