ECVP 2021: Author Information Sheet
Thank you for considering a submission to ECVP 2021. It is important that you read the following instructions
carefully. Accepted abstracts will be published by SAGE in the journal Perception, and you will be asked to agree
to the terms and conditions of publication as part of the submission process.
This document also provides guidelines on the format and content of the abstract text and supporting information.
These will be the same as in previous years, and we have designed an abstract form that we hope will make thesubmission process straightforward. At the end of this document, you will also find examples of previous ECVP
abstracts and links to published collections, and we suggest you familiarise yourself with these. You may find it
useful to download and refer to these guidelines when filling in the ECVP abstract form.
Abstract Format: Abstract text is limited to maximum 250 words and should describe original work that has notbeen previously presented or published in the context of other international scientific meetings unless it is clearthat the current submission represents a substantial evolution of the work in terms of new analyses, data collection,etc. Please write in clear academic English. Either UK or US usage is acceptable but should be consistent. Use
APA format for in-text citations, for example, Smith & Jones (2018). Images may not be included and fullreferences should be avoided. There is a separate input section for funding, acknowledgement and/or conflict ofinterest statements, so do not include these in your abstract text. See below for further details on the required
information.
Author declarations: By submitting your work to ECVP 2021, you will be:• providing permission for author details and all submitted material to appear – both online and in print –as part of ECVP 2021 publications• confirming that all authors have participated in and agree with the content and conclusions of the work,and that the identified list of authors are solely responsible for the work
• confirming that the work submitted is original, except for extracts from copyrighted works fully
authorised by the copyright holders, and does not infringe upon any copyright, proprietary, or personal
right of any third party• confirming that all statements declared as facts are based on thorough examination and investigation for
accurateness.
Copyright Information: All content belongs to the author(s). However, if the abstract is accepted, the submitter
agrees, on behalf of all co-authors, to transfer and assign to the publishers of Perception (SAGE), free of charge,
on a non-exclusive basis, for fifteen years from the present submission the rights to edit, publish, reproduce,
reformat, distribute in whole or in part the abstract and prepare all type of derivative works such as press releases
and/or educational products, using all communication tools and means, now known or hereinafter developed,
including any and all digital means and any and all supports or forms of media, now known or hereinafter
developed, in particular all paper, analog, digital, numerical and electronic media, including Internet, Intranet andExtranet sites and social media. This includes use in indexes or search databases in print, electronic, or othermedia. The author(s) retain the right, after presentation at ECVP 2021, to subsequently include the workin articles, books, or derivative works that they author or edit.
Conflict of Interest: Please clearly indicate in the section provided (see below) if any of the authors have apotential conflict of interest that readers should be aware of when assessing the objectivity of the presented
material. We also ask that if your abstract is accepted for presentation at the meeting that such conflicts ofinterest are also clearly indicated on an appropriate talk slide or poster section.
A potential conflict of interest may arise from various relationships, past or present. Example relationships
include, but are not limited to, employment by an industrial concern, ownership of stock, membership on astanding advisory council or committee, being on the board of directors, or being publicly associated with thecompany or its products. Other areas of real or perceived conflict of interest could include receiving honoraria,
consulting fees, grants or funds from such corporations or individuals representing such corporations. Personal orfamily relationships that may be relevant to assessing the objectivity of the work should also be declared.

Abstract Submission Form
We have designed an interactive form that will allow you to structure and preview your abstract as it will appear
online and in print (see below for the form layout and example abstracts). The abstract format is closely basedon previous ECVP style. Some examples are provided below, but you can also view the ECVP 2019 meeting
abstracts at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0301006619863862
When you have filled in all of the required fields, you can directly preview and proofread your abstract, making
any necessary changes. You can preview and edit your form as many times as needed before submission.
However, once submitted you will be able to view but not edit your work, so please make sure you preview
carefully.
1) As a first step in the abstract submission process, you will be asked to specify the number of authors
and unique affiliations associated with the work. This information will be used to create a customised
form where author and affiliation sections contain required fields, so please select these accurately. If
you are unsure of how author and affiliation information is presented in ECVP abstracts, please see theexamples at the end of this document.
2) You will next be asked to identify the best fitting topic/session for your work from a dropdown list of
options, and to specify whether your work is to be considered for a talk or poster session. Please notethat due to the limited number of available talk slots, abstracts that are not selected for oral presentation
during peer-review will automatically be offered a poster presentation.
3) The author information section collects data on each co-author. Middle initials are optional, but if used,
please enter them with following periods and no spaces, for example, “M.A.K.” not “M. A. K.”
4) For each author you must explicitly specify affiliation codes, that match sequentially to the list of
institutions/addresses. For example, if Jade Jones was affiliated with the first three institutions, you
would enter “1,2,3” in the box provided.
5) Please use an institutional email address for the corresponding author, rather than a personal one.
Ideally this will be the same email address that was used by the corresponding author to register for the
meeting on Eventbrite.
6) Abstract text is limited to maximum 250 words and should describe original work that has not beenpreviously presented or published in the context of other international scientific meetings unless it isclear that the current submission represents a substantial evolution of the work in terms of new
analyses, data collection, etc. Please write in clear academic English. Either UK or US usage is
acceptable but should be consistent. Use APA format for in-text citations, for example, Smith & Jones(2018). Images may not be included and full references should be avoided.
7) If you have a conflict of interest, please note this in the section provided. This same section may also
be used to note funding and any other form of acknowledgment.
8) You may also optionally provide an html link to a repository such as OSF or a preprint server withinformation related to your submission. You may also link to a lab page or professional profile.
When you have entered all required information, use the “Preview” button to view and proofread yoursubmission. You will be prompted if any of the required fields are missing. Abstract word count and email
matching will also be verified. When you are happy with the final version of your submission, use the “Submit”
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You will be asked again to confirm and agree to the terms of submission and publication. Once you click “OK”
in the confirmation box, you should receive an acknowledgement message with a unique abstract code which
can be used later to verify your abstract and/or communicate with us about your abstract.
**** IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU COPY THIS CODE FOR YOUR RECORDS***
You will NOT receive a separate confirmation email with a copy of this code. If you do forget the code or if
you have any other questions about the submission process, please contact us abstracts@ecvp2021.org

Before reaching the abstract submission page,
you will be asked to specify the number of authors
and the number of unique affiliations. All fields are required,with the exception of Initials, Funding and URL.
Middle initials are optional and this field can be blank
If used, terminate each initial with a period, no spaces

Use a comma-separated list to match
each author to their affiliation.

Default text shows the affiliation number
which runs sequentially top-to-bottom (1-3 here)

Please use the same email address used
for registering. Institutional email addresses
are preferred to personal ones

Please list any conflicts of interest. This field canalso be used to acknowledge funding.

When you've filled the form, the Preview button
allows you to check how the abstract will appear
in print. Check that all names are as you'd liketo see them, the affiliations match correctly and allother aspects of the text seem fine.
Once submitted, you will be able to view the abstract
but will not be able to edit it.
If you do need to make changes, or have any questions
or issues with submission, contact us at
abstracts@ecvp2021.org

On the next pages, you will find example abstracts takenfrom the ECVP 2019 abstract book.
You can use these samples as a guide, and also viewthe entire book at:https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0301006619863862

Abstracts

33

Eye Movements in the Formally Blind
1,2

1

3

Paul Zerr , Jose Ossandon , Idris Shareef ,Stefan Van der Stigchel2, Ramesh Kekunnaya3 andBrigitte R€
oder1
1
Biological Psychology and Neuropsychology, Hamburg
University, Germany
2
Department of Experimental Psychology, Helmholtz Institute,
Utrecht University, the Netherlands
3Child Sight Institute, Jasti V Ramanamma Children’s Eye Care
Center, LV Prasad Eye Institute, Hyderabad, India

Sensitive periods have been identified for several humanvisual system functions, such as global motion perception
and face perception. This study investigated whether sensitive periods exist in the development of human oculomotor control. Goal-directed eye movements are crucial
for efficient visual perception. Eye movements in individuals born with total bilateral cataracts were compared withsight-restored late blind individuals, individuals with pathological nystagmus, and controls with typical vision.
Congenital cataract reversal individuals (CC) regained
the ability to make systematic, purposeful gaze shifts,
even after decades of blindness. The typical strong nystagmus of CC individuals caused distorted eye movement
trajectories, but measures of latency and accuracy wereas expected from their prevailing nystagmus, that is, notworse than in individuals with pathological nystagmus due
to other reasons than a period of blindness. By contrast,
saccade velocity was lower in CC individuals than in any of
the control groups. This first study on basic characteristics
of oculomotor control in CC individuals demonstrated aremarkable recovery of goal-directed gaze shifts despitesome remaining impairments in oculomotor control.
Thus, the severe higher visual function impairments
observed in this group cannot be fully explained by thelack of basic goal directed eye movements.

Learning Face Perception Without
Vision: Rebound Learning Effect andHemispheric Differences in Blindand Sighted
Lora Likova, Ming Mei, Kris Mineff andSpero Nicholas
Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, San Francisco, CA, USA

To address the longstanding questions of whether theblind-from-birth have an innate face-schema, what plasticity mechanisms underlie nonvisual face learning, andwhether there are interhemispheric face processing differences in the blind, we used a unique nonvisual drawingbased training in congenitally blind (CB), late-blind (LB),
and blindfolded-sighted (BF) groups of adults. The 5-day
1-hour training taught participants to haptically explore,
recognize, and memorize raised-line images and draw

them from memory. FMRI (Siemens 3T) was run before
and after training. Tactile-face perception activated theoccipito-temporal cortex in all groups. However, the training led to a strong left-hemispheric reorganization in theblind, in contrast to right-hemispheric in BF. This is the firstfinding of interhemispheric differences in nonvisual faceprocessing. Remarkably, this learning-based change waspositive in CB and BF but negative in LB. The lateralizationand inversed-sign learning effects were specific to faces but
absent in nonface categories (small objects, houses).
Importantly, a short training enabled good tactile-face perception and even face-empathy in CB, implies a preexisting
face-schema. A rebound learning model and a neuroBayesian economy principle are proposed to explain multidimensional learning effects. The results provide new
insights into the Nature-vs-Nurture interplay in rapid
brain plasticity and neurorehabilitation.
Funding: This work was supported by NEI-ROIEY024056,
NSF/L-CN-1640914.

Early Blindness Triggers an Imbalance
Between Temporal and Occipital
Regions Coding for Auditory
Motion Directions
Ceren Battal1,2, Mohamed Rezk1,2,
Stefania Mattioni1,2, Roberto Bottini2,
Giorgia Bertonati2, Valeria Occelli2,
Stefano Targher2 and Olivier Collignon1,2
1
Institute for Research in Psychology, Institute of Neuroscience,
Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium
2
Center of Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento, Italy

A region in the middle occipito-temporal cortex (hMTþ/V5), classically considered as purely visual, enhances its
response tuning to moving sounds in case of congenital
blindness. However, whether hMTþ/V5 contains information about sound directions and whether the impact of thiscrossmodal reorganization of hMTþ/V5 on the regions
typically dedicated to auditory motion, like the Planum
Temporale (PT), remains equivocal. We used functional
magnetic resonance imaging to characterize the brain
activity of sighted and congenital blind individuals listening
to left, right, up, and down moving and static sounds.
Whole-brain univariate analysis revealed preferential auditory motion response in both sighted and blind participants in a dorsal fronto-temporo-parietal network including PT, and in the most anterior portion of hMTþ/V5.
Blind participants showed additional auditory motion
response in the more posterior region of hMTþ/V5.
Multivariate pattern analysis revealed auditory motion
direction information in independently localized PT andhMTþ/V5 in blind and sighted participants. However,decoding accuracies in the blind were higher in hMTþ/V5 and lower in PT when compared with the sighted.

Abstracts
investigated the role of ambient scents with different
crossmodal correspondences when visually evaluating various types of meaningful stimuli. Specifically, we looked atwhether the perceived shape in terms of “roundnessangularity” of environmental scents would alter the perceived shape of other stimuli present in this environment.
In a first study, 99 participants evaluated angular androunded versions of products, while in a second study,
96 participants evaluated two-dimensional renderings ofrounded and angular interior environments. Finally,
during these studies and one additional study (N ¼ 111),
participants also evaluated the actual experimental room
they were in. In all studies, participants were either in asituation with no added scent, a “round” or an “angular”
ambient scent. Results suggest that environmental scents
can indeed affect the perceived shape of other meaningfulstimuli present, but also that this depends on both the typeof stimulus and the specific task-induced mindsetof observers.

Aesthetic Preferences in Visual Art:
The Interplay With Mental Imagery
and Face Perception
Fatima M. Felisberti1, Rossan Actis Grosso2,
Mark Riley3, Isa M. Paiva1, Adebukola Salaudeen1
and Dean Holliday1
1

Kingston University London, UK
Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
Roehampton University, London, UK

2
3

Mental imagery can be depictive or propositional and it has
been linked to aesthetic preferences in the literature andvisual art, but little is known about their interaction withface perception. This study used a liking rating (Likert)
scale to examine whether aesthetic preferences for a setof Picasso’s paintings and photographs from assorted
artists were modulated by mental imagery style or prosopagnosic traits. Half of the artwork depicted landscapes orobjects and half depicted people and faces. In addition, the186 participants completed the prosopagnosic traits index
and the mental imagery and art expertise questionnaires.
The findings showed that participants preferred paintingsand photographs of landscapes/objects, but prosopagnosic
traits were not significantly correlated with liking ratings.
Conversely, object-based mental imagery and art expertise
were positively correlated with each other and with aesthetic preferences, but only when people were present.
These findings explained up to 8% of the variability in preference for photographs and up to 4% for paintings.
The results suggest the aesthetic experience of neurotypical adults is not affected by prosopagnosic traits but israther a function of the interaction between an object-based mental imagery style and the viewer’s art expertise,37
supporting recent theoretical propositions which will
be discussed.

Contour Features Predict Valence andThreat Judgements in Scenes
Claudia Damiano, Dirk B. Walther andWilliam A. Cunningham
University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Quickly scanning an environment to determine relative
threat or safety is an essential part of survival. Low-levelvisual features, extracted rapidly from the environment,
may help people detect threat. In three experiments, weprobe this link between low-level visual scene features andvalence/threat decisions. In Experiment 1, we asked artists
to trace the contours of all images from the International
Affective Picture System image set. We computationally
extracted the contour curvature, length, and orientation
statistics of all images and explored whether these features
predict emotional valence scores. We found that images
containing angular contours were rated as more negative,
and images containing long contours were rated as morepositive. For Experiments 2 and 3, we composed new,content-free line drawings of contours with specific combinations of length, curvature, and orientation values; 67
participants and 97 participants were presented with theseimages on Amazon Mechanical Turk and had to categorize
them as positive or negative, and safe or threatening,respectively. In both cases, we found that low curvature,
long, horizontal contours predicted participants’ positive/
safe responses, while short, high curvature contours predicted participants’ negative/threatening responses. Our
work shows that low-level scene features help people
make judgements about potential threat in theenvironment.

Revisiting the Positive Impact of Visual
Exposure to Nature: A Case of
Aesthetic Preference?
Daria Burtan and Ute Leonards
University of Bristol, UK

Exposure to nature, even only as photographic images,
impacts positively on physical and mental health. In linewith this claim, we recently reported that walking towards
images of urban as compared with nature scenes was more
effortful, as indicated by a decrease in gait velocity and step
length (Joyce and Leonards, ECVP 2017). Yet, what causes
these gait changes: Differences in image statistics, semantic
associations related to different image types, or scene

80
responses at 1.5 Hz (and harmonics), indexing generic facecategorization located over right occipito-temporal
regions, emerged at slightly lower contrast in L to H
(7.4%) than their disappearance threshold in H to L
(10.8%) sequences. Response saturation occurred at thesame 15.6% contrast in both conditions. To summarize,
the human brain requires nearly twice as much contrast
for rapidly categorizing faces among objects than to merely
detect visual stimuli. Yet the small offset between onset
and saturation of the neural face-selective response suggests fast and efficient information accumulation for facecategorization.

Integration of Spatial Frequency
Information in Familiar Face
Recognition in a Dynamic Visual Stream
Xiaoqian Yan1,2, Valérie Goffaux1 andBruno Rossion1,2,3
1
Institute of Research in Psychological Science, Institute of
Neuroscience, Université de Louvain, Belgium
2
CNRS, CRAN, Université de Lorraine, Nancy, France
3
Service de Neurologie, CHRU-Nancy, France

Here we investigated how visual information at different
spatial frequencies (SFs) is integrated when recognizing
familiar faces in a dynamic stream. Human participants
observed 63-second sequences of unfamiliar face images
presented at a fast rate of 6 Hz, with different images ofdifferent familiar faces embedded every sixth image (1 Hz).
Each sequence comprised nine SF steps (from 3 to 40
cycles/image with low-pass Gaussian filter) in twoorders: (a) from coarse to fine images and or (b) thereverse. We found different response patterns during
two presentation orders. In the coarse-to-fine sequences,
the neural responses emerged over the occipito-temporal
cortex at around 11 cycles/image (cpi). Response
increased and reached to plateau at around 15 cpi. In
the fine-to-coarse order, we observed peak responses
for faces filtered from 30 to 40 cpi. However, the recognition responses reduced strongly at 11 cpi, to an insignificance level. Our results provide neural threshold consistent with previous observations that a middle SF range(8–16 cpi) is important for face recognition. The lower
recognition threshold found in the coarse to finesequence, compared with the reverse order, supports
visual perception theories that the visual system integrates
visual input in a coarse-to-fine manner.

Perception 48(2S)
Does Holistic Processing Explain
Ultra-Rapid Saccades Toward
Face Stimuli?
Louise Kauffmann1,2, Sarah Khazaz2,
Carole Peyrin2 and Nathalie Guyader1
1

CNRS, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, France
CNRS, LPNC, Univ. Savoie Mont Blanc, Univ. Grenoble
Alpes, France
2

Previous studies have shown that face stimuli influence theprogramming of eye movements by eliciting extremely fastsaccades toward them. This effect would be mediated by
rapid processing of their low spatial frequencies. This study
further examined whether these effects also reflected aholistic processing of faces. We used a saccadic choicetask in which participants (N ¼ 24) were presented simultaneously with two images and had to perform a saccadetoward the target stimulus (face or vehicle). Stimuli were
either upright or upside-down, the latter condition being
used to disrupt holistic processing of stimuli. While stimuli
inversion generally impaired performances (overall higher
error rate and longer latencies of saccades toward thetarget when stimuli were upside-down than upright), saccades toward face targets were still faster and had lower
error rates than saccades toward vehicle targets, irrespective of the inversion condition. Interestingly, Y-ending positions of saccades toward faces (but not vehicles) were
flipped upside-down (relative to the center of images)
according to the inversion condition suggesting that thesame face features were targeted in both conditions.
These results suggest that the bias for faces is not entirely
explained by their holistic processing and rather relies on
the detection of specific features.

Wild Lab—Characterizing
Face-Selective ERPs Under More
Natural Conditions
Anna Lisa Gert1, Benedikt V. Ehinger2,
Silja Timm1, Peter K€
onig1,3 andTim C. Kietzmann4
1

Osnabrück University, Germany
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior, Radboud
University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
3
Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University
Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany
4
MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University ofCambridge, UK
2Over more than two decades, neural mechanisms of faceprocessing have been studied in the laboratory using highly
constrained experimental conditions. Typical paradigms
include passive fixation tasks, randomized image sequences, and adjusted low-level stimulus features. These controls help overcoming technical challenges in subsequent