Prof. Ruth Kimchi
Office: Institute of Information Processing and Decision Making, University of Haifa, 199 Aba Khoushy Ave. Mount Carmel, Haifa, 3498838, Israel.
Phone: 972-4-8249432 | Fax: 972-4-8249431.
Email: rkimchi@univ.haifa.ac.il
Subject: Visual Cognition: perceptual organization; visual attention; object and face perception; perception of hierarchical structure; holistic/configural processing; visual consciousness.
CV | Publications
My research has been mainly in the domain of visual cognition, with a special focus on visual perceptual organization, the perception of hierarchical structure, and the nature of holistic/configural processing in objects and faces. Using behavioral methods with normal adults, children and neurological patients, I seek to reveal the principles and the processes by which the perceptual system structures visual information into coherent units that eventually we experience as objects in our environment.
Some of the more specific research questions that I have been examining along with my colleagues and students are:
- The perceptual relation between different levels of structure (global and local levels or form, texture, and figural parts)
- Microgenetic analysis of perceptual organization: Investigating the time course of perceptual organization
- Ontogenesis of perceptual organization: Investigating the development of organizational processes in children
- Attentional capture by objecthood: The effects of perceptual organization on automatic deployment of attention
- Perceptual grouping and figure-ground organization under inattention
- Perceptual organization and visual consciousness: Can perceptual organization unfold in the absence of visual consciousness?
- Multiple level crowding: Grouping and configural effects
- The interplay between component and configural properties in face perception and the nature of ‘holistic’ face processing
- Object recognition: The role of attention to distinguishing features - an interactive-iterative framework