Does perceptual learning affect early stages of visual processing?
” Perception 29 ECVP Abstract Supplement Does perceptual learning affect early stages of visual processing? G Meinhardt, K Folta, Y Grabbe, U Mortensen Theoretical concepts of perceptual learning fall into two classes: Early-stage theories conceive perceptual learning to be due to synaptic modifications at early sensory coding stages [Karni and Sagi, 1991 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 88 4966 – 4970; Kirkwood et al, 1996 Nature (London) 381 526 – 528] while higher-stage concepts conceive the gradual improvement of visual discrimination to be the result of task-dependent attentional focusing and information selection refinement (Beard et al, 1995 Vision Research 35 1679 – 1690). We report results from various pre-test – discrimination learning – post-test experiments which show that (i) learning spatial-frequency discrimination broadens grating-detection tuning functions; (ii) learning Vernier discrimination broadens orientation-detection tuning functions an
