LEARNING IN THE VISUAL SYSTEM
My current research involves demonstrating and characterizing how the visual system learns. Models based on associative learning, including operant and respondent conditioning, are used to provide experimental paradigms for the parametric analysis of visual learning. Some of these research paradigms show how associative learning can be used to accelerate accommodative and vergence skills as well as other skills. Other paradigms show how conditions of learning, such as types of response consequences or training parameters influence various measures of learning. Our current work will involve evaluating the Kamin blocking effect in human visual perception and how, in general, selective stimulus discrimination and generalization processes take place. Monocular as well as binocular tasks such as stereopsis are utilized to illustrate these in humans of all ages.