Read and Imagine: Visual Imagery Experience Evoked by First versus Second Language.

This research examined visual imagery evoked during reading in relation to language. Following the previous reports that bilinguals experience less vivid imagery in their second language (L2) than first language (L1), we studied how visual imagery is affected by the language in use, characteristics of text, and readers' individual differences. In L1 and L2, 382 bilinguals read describing pictorial properties of objects such as color and shape, describing spatial properties such as spatial relations and locations, and excerpts from novels.

Masked emotions: Do face mask patterns and colors affect the recognition of emotions?

Previous research has shown that face masks impair the ability to perceive social information and the readability of emotions. These studies mostly explored the effect of standard medical, often white, masks on emotion recognition. However, in reality, many individuals prefer masks with different styles.

The shape of the pill: Perceived effects, evoked bodily sensations and emotions.

Current research examined the differential effects of pills' shape (angular vs. curvy) on the perceived efficacy of the medicine, evoked bodily sensations and emotions. We investigated these effects by using different types of angular vs.

Individual differences in visualization and childhood play preferences.

Our research explored the structure of childhood visual play preferences, and examined different types of visual play in relation to individual differences in visualization and aptitudes in academic specializations requiring visualization skills. Principal component analysis dissociated visual-object play (e.g.

Angular Versus Curved Shapes: Correspondences and Emotional Processing.

The present work aimed to systematically examine sensory and higher level correspondences to angular and curved shapes. Participants matched angular and curved abstract shapes to sensory experiences in five different modalities as well as to emotion, gender, and name attributes presented as written labels (Study 1) and real experiences (Study 2). The results demonstrated nonarbitrary mapping of angular and curved shapes to attributes from all basic sensory modalities (vision, audition, gustation, olfaction, and tactation) and higher level attributes (emotion, gender, and name).

Boundary Extension in Face Processing.

Boundary extension is a common false memory error, in which people confidently remember seeing a wider angle view of the scene than was viewed. Previous research found that boundary extension is scene-specific and did not examine this phenomenon in nonscenes. The present research explored boundary extension in cropped face images.

Vividness of Object and Spatial Imagery.

Vividness is one of the fundamental characteristics of visual mental imagery. The first research goal was to examine whether vividness that refer to imagery of pictorial object (color, texture, or shape) versus spatial (three dimensional structure, location, or mechanism) properties constitute separate vividness dimensions. The second goal was to develop a vividness questionnaire separately assessing dimensions of imagery vividness.

Creativity, visualization abilities, and visual cognitive style.

Background: Despite the recent evidence for a multi-component nature of both visual imagery and creativity, there have been no systematic studies on how the different dimensions of creativity and imagery might interrelate.

Aims: The main goal of this study was to investigate the relationship between different dimensions of creativity (artistic and scientific) and dimensions of visualization abilities and styles (object and spatial). In addition, we compared the contributions of object and spatial visualization abilities versus corresponding styles to scientific and artistic dimensions of creativity.

Visual-object ability: a new dimension of non-verbal intelligence.

The goal of the current research was to introduce a new component of intelligence: visual-object intelligence, that reflects one's ability to process information about visual appearances of objects and their pictorial properties (e.g., shape, color and texture) as well as to demonstrate that it is distinct from visual-spatial intelligence, which reflects one's ability to process information about spatial relations and manipulate objects in space.

Trade-off in object versus spatial visualization abilities: restriction in the development of visual-processing resources.

Previous research indicates relative independence between the ventral and dorsal visual pathways, associated with object and spatial visual processing, respectively. The present research shows that, at the individual-differences level, there is a trade-off, rather than independence, between object and spatial visualization abilities. Across five different age groups with different professional specializations, participants with above-average object visualization abilities (artists) had below-average spatial visualization abilities, and the inverse was true for those with above-average spatial visualization abilities (scientists).