Jarrod Hollis

Physical activity levels, hallucination experiences, sleep quality, and perceived stress were assessed using a survey administered to 57 adults with a confirmed diagnosis of Charles Bonnet Syndrome (CBS). Physical activity demonstrated a significant negative correlation with hallucination severity (r = –0.335, p = 0.011, two-tailed). A significant negative correlation was also observed between physical activity and perceived stress (r = –0.497, p < 0.001, two-tailed). In contrast, no significant association was identified between hallucination frequency and sleep disruption or insomnia. These findings suggest that engaging in appropriate levels of physical activity may help reduce the severity of hallucinations and mitigate stress among individuals with CBS. The observation that higher levels of physical activity are associated with reduced hallucination burden may help the development of evidence-based management strategies for CBS. Additionally, the finding that physical activity was significantly related to hallucination severity, whereas sleep disruption was not, merits deeper exploration in future research.

Purpose: Retinoscopy is a skill that requires the integration of procedural skill and declarative knowledge. Whilst the actual technique is simple, retinoscopy is a complex skill to acquire and is one that students often find challenging. This study compared the strategies that novices, third‐year students and experts use when performing retinoscopy, with the aim of identifying the key stages of learning that may enlighten teaching practice. Method: This study employed a protocol‐based approach in which the verbal protocols and cognitive strategies of novices, students and experts were recorded and then subjected to ‘problem space’ analysis. Results: Clear differences existed when the retinoscopy of novices, students and experts was directly compared using a standardised simulated task. Experts were more accurate in performance and used defined strategies to reach the goal. The presence of these strategies significantly predicted the accuracy of the retinoscopy result. Conclusion: This study highlights the importance of meta‐cognitive strategies and the need for an adequate theoretical foundation in skill acquisition. The underpinning knowledge provides a pedagogic tool that specifies activities which are beneficial to learning a clinical skill.

Evidence is presented for intermediate, wholistic visual representations of objects and non-objects that are computed online and independent of visual attention. Short-term visual priming was examined between visually similar shapes, with targets either falling at the (valid) location cued by primes or at another (invalid) location. Object decision latencies were facilitated when the overall shapes of the stimuli were similar irrespective of whether the location of the prime was valid or invalid, with the effects being equally large for object and non-object targets. In addition, the effects were based on the overall outlines of the stimuli and low spatial frequency components, not on local parts. In conclusion, wholistic shape representations based on outline form, are rapidly computed online during object recognition. Moreover, activation of common wholistic shape representations prime the processing of subsequent objects and non-objects irrespective of whether they appear at attended or unattended locations. Rapid derivation of wholistic form provides a key intermediate stage of object recognition.

Brédart, Valentine, Calder and Gassi (1995) described an interactive activation and competition (IAC) model in which the lexical representations of people’s names have inhibitory connections between each other, but do not receive inhibition from the representation of biographical properties. The model predicts that people would be slower to name a celebrity for whom two names are equally available than they would be to name an equally familiar celebrity for whom only one name is available. However, naming should only be slowed by competition from a competing name; a highly available biographical property should not increase face naming latency. These predictions were confirmed in a simulation of the model. The effect is referred to as the nominal competitor effect. Experiment 1 showed that participants who had practiced naming actors using both the actor’s name (e.g. John Cleese) and the character’s name (e.g. Basil Fawlty) were slower to produce the actor’s name at test than were participants who had practiced producing only the actor’s name. However, practice in naming the relevant television series (e.g. Fawlty Towers) did not inhibit subsequent production of the actor’s name. In contrast to the semantic competitor effect in picture naming, the effect reported here was found to be long-lasting (Experiment 2).

Purpose. Visual search measures have been used to evaluate the effects of pattern-related visual stress (PRVS), and its alleviation by colored filters, but tasks and results have varied between studies. Performance on a high-difficulty search task was measured in individuals having low- and high-PRVS susceptibility. methods. Two PRVS groups (low and high) were formed on the basis of participants’ responses to a visual symptoms questionnaire and perceptions of a high-contrast grating pattern. Each participant searched for multiple instances of a single-digit number (target) within an array of similar numbers (distractors). Performance was measured by response time and error count. A three-factor, mixed-factorial ANOVA design was used to investigate the effects of PRVS group, a high-contrast background PATTERN, an overlay of an individually-selected COLOR. results. Individuals classified with high visual stress were found to experience significantly greater improvement in reading performance (F _(1,26) = 24.579, P < 0.001) and reduction in the number of errors (F _(1,26) = 9.502, P = 0.005) when performing the Wilkins Rate of Reading Test with a colored overlay than those with low visual stress. Error count was significantly higher in the high-PRVS group, when subjects were performing a visual search task, in the absence of either PATTERN or COLOR, but response time was not significantly different. Neither response time nor error count was significantly affected by background PATTERN and/or colored overlay. conclusions. Results of this and previous studies confirm that visual search measures may be helpful in the assessment of PRVS, but several important methodological issues may limit their application in this context.

Personality dimensions of participants who suffer from visual stress were compared with those of normal participants using the Eysenck Personality Inventory. Extraversion–Introversion scores showed no significant differences between the participants who suffered visual stress and those who were classified as normal. By contrast, significant differences were found between the normal participants and those with visual stress in respect of Neuroticism–Stability. These differences accord with Eysenck’s personality theory which states that those who score highly on the neuroticism scale do so because they have a neurological system with a low threshold such that their neurological system is easily activated by external stimuli. The findings also relate directly to the theory of visual stress proposed by Wilkins which postulates that visual stress results from an excess of neural activity. The data may indicate that the excess activity is likely to be localised at particular neurological regions or neural processes.

Two methods of assessing candidates for coloured overlays were compared with the aim of determining which method had the most practical utility. A total of 58 adults were assessed as potential candidates for coloured overlays, using two methods; a questionnaire, which identified self‐reported previous symptoms, and a measure of perceptual distortions immediately prior to testing. Participants were classified as normal, Meares–Irlen sensitive, and borderline sensitive. Reading speed was measured with and without coloured overlays, using the Wilkins Rate of Reading Test and the change in speed was calculated. Participants classified as normal did not show any significant benefit from reading with an overlay. In contrast, a significant reading advantage was found for the borderline and Meares–Irlen participants. Current symptom rating was found to be a significant predictor of the change in reading speed, however the previous symptom rating was not found to be a reliable predictor. These data indicate that the assessment of perceptual distortions immediately prior to measuring colour preference and reading speed is the most meaningful method of assessing pattern glare and determining the utility of coloured overlays.

Two experiments are reported that tested predictions derived from the framework of face, object, and word recognition proposed by Valentine, Brennen, and Brédart (1996). The findings were as follows: (1) Production of a celebrity's name in response to seeing the celebrity's face primed a subsequent familiarity decision to the celebrity's printed name. The degree of repetition priming observed was as great as that observed when a familiarity decision to the printed name was repeated in the prime and test phases of the experiment. (2) Making a familiarity decision to an auditory presentation of a celebrity's name primed a familiarity decision to the same celebrity's name presented visually. The magnitude of cross-modality priming was as great as the magnitude of within-modality repetition priming. This result for people's names contrasted with the effects observed in lexical decision tasks, in which no reliable cross-modality priming was observed. The results cannot be accounted for by previous models of face and name processing. They show a marked contrast between processing people's names and processing words. The results support the framework proposed by Valentine et al. (1996). The implications for models of speech production, perception, and reading are discussed, together with the potential of the methodology to elucidate our understanding of proper name processing.