LABORATORY FOR VISUAL PERCEPTION AND ACTION
Ben Gurion University of the Negev
Head of the laboratory for Visual Perception and Action
Office: Building 98, Room 205
email: tganel@bgu.ac.il
Tzvi Ganel, PhD.
Research Interests
Visual control of action constitutes a fundamental ability that allows people and other organisms to interact with their visual environments. Visual perception of objects, on the other hand, allows people to identify objects in their visual environment. Current models of visual perception propose that those two visual functions are neuroanatomically dissociable. My main areas of research include studying visual perception in general, and more specifically, exploring the potential differences between visual perception and visually-guided action using behavioral methods as well as using fMRI.
An ongoing research in my perception-action lab is being focused on how visual perception and visually-guided action differ from one another using established psychophysical and behavioral tools such as testing those two systems under different contexts that emphasize configural processing, numerical magnitude, and visual illusions. A central research direction in my lab is related to the question of whether action and perception differ from one another in how they relate to basic psychophysical principals. A relevant example is that of Weber's law, a fundamental perceptual principle according to which visual resolution linearly increases with stimuli size. We recently showed, using classic behavioral methods, is that while resolution for stimulus size behaves according to Weber's when visual perception is involved, Weber's law does not characterize the control of visually-guided action in a task in which participants were asked to grasp various objects that differed in length (Ganel, Chajut, & Algom, 2008, Current Biology).
Selected publications
Freud, E., Binor, N., Srikanth, A., Davidson, E., Ganel, T., & B-S. Hadad (2021). Double Dissociation Between Perception and Action in Children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 201, 104986.
Freud, E., Stajduhar, A., Rosenbaum, R.S., Avidan, G., & Ganel, T. (2020). The COVID-19 pandemic masks the way people perceive faces. Scientific Reports, 10: 22344.
Navon, G. & Ganel, T. (2020). Consciously monitored grasping is vulnerable to perceptual intrusions. Consciousness and Cognition, 85:103019.
Ozana, A. Berman, S., & GaneI, T. (2020). Grasping Weber’s law in a virtual environment: The effect of haptic feedback. Frontiers in Psychology, 11:573352
Ozana, A., & GaneI, T. (2020). A double dissociation between action and perception in bimanual grasping: Evidence from the Ponzo and the Wundt-Jastrow illusions. Scientific Reports, 10:14665.
Ozana, A., Namdar, G., & Ganel, T. (2020). Active visuomotor interactions with virtual objects on touchscreens adhere to Weber’s law. Psychological Research, 84, 2144-2156.
GaneI, T., Ozana, A., & Goodale, M.A. (2020). When perception intrudes on 2D grasping: Evidence from Garner interference. Psychological Research, 84, 2138-2143.
Ozana, A. & Ganel, T. (2019). Obeying the law: Speed-precision tradeoffs and the adherence to Weber’s law in 2D grasping. Experimental Brain Research, 237, 2011-2021.
Zitron-Emanuel, N., & Ganel, T. (2020). Food deprivation disrupts normal holistic processing of domain-specific stimuli. Psychological Research, 84, 302-312.
Ganel, T., & Goodale, M.A. (2019). Still holding after all these years: An action-perception dissociation in patient DF. Neuropsychologia,128, 249-254.
Ozana, A. & Ganel, T. (2019). Weber’s law in 2D and 3D grasping. Psychological Research, 83, 977-988.
Namdar, G., Algom, D., & Ganel, T. (2018). Dissociable effects of stimulus range on perception and action. Cortex, 98, 28-33.
Ozana, A. & Ganel, T. (2018). Dissociable effects of irrelevant context on 2D and 3D grasping. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 80, 564-675.
Ganel, T., & Goodale, M.A. (2018). The effects of smiling on perceived age defy belief. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25, 612-616.
Zitron-Emanuel, N., & Ganel, T. (2018). The effect of food deprivation on human resolving power. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25, 455-462.
Namdar, G., & Ganel, T. (2018). Numerical magnitude affects online execution, not planning of visuomotor control. Psychological Research, 82, 488-495.
Ganel, T., Namdar, G., & Mirsky, A. (2017). Bimanual grasping does not adhere to Weber's law. Scientific Reports,7:6467.
Freud, E., Ganel, T., Shelef, I., Hammer, M.D., Avidan, G., & Behrmann, M. (2017). Three-dimensional representations of objects in dorsal cortex are dissociable from those in ventral cortex. Cerebral Cortex, 27, 422-434.
Namdar, G., Ganel, T., & Algom, D. (2016). The extreme relativity of perception: A new contextual effect modulates human resolving power. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145, 509–515.
Freud, E., Ganel, T., Avidan, G., & Gilaie-Dotan, S. (2016). Functional dissociation between action and perception of object shape in developmental visual object agnosia. Cortex, 76, 17-27.
Namdar, G., Avidan, G., & Ganel, T. (2015). Effects of configural processing on the spatial resolution for face features. Cortex, 72, 115-123.
Ganel, T. (2015). "Smiling makes you look older. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.22, 1671-1677.
Freud, E., & Ganel, T. (2015). Visual control of action directed to two-dimensional objects relies on holistic processing of object shape.Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 22, 1377-1382.
Freud, E., Hadad, B.S., Avidan, G., & Ganel, T. (2015). Evidence for Similar Early but Not Late Representation of Possible and Impossible Objects. Frontiers in Psychology 6(94).
Freud, E., Avidan, G., & Ganel, T. (2015). The highs and lows of object impossibility: Effects of spatial frequency on holistic processing of impossible objects. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 22, 297-306.
Ganel, T. (2015). Weber's law in grasping.Journal of Vision, 15, 1-2.
Namdar, G., & Ganel, T. (2015). Cross-modal effects of auditory magnitude on visually-guided grasping. Journal of Vision, 15, 1-10.
Ganel, T., Freud, E. & Nachshon, M. (2014). Action is immune to the effects of Weber's law throughout the entire grasping trajectory. Journal of Vision, 14, 1–11.
Ganel, T., & Goodale, M. A. (2014). Variability-based Garner interference for perceptual estimations but not for grasping. Experimental Brain Research, 232, 1751-1758.
Namdar, G., Tzelgov, J., Algom, D., & Ganel, T. (2014). Grasping Numbers: Evidence for Automatic Influence of Numerical Magnitude on Grip Aperture. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 21, 830–835.
Tanzer, M., Freud, E., Ganel, T., & Avidan, G. (2013). General-holistic impairment in congenital prosopagnosia: Evidence from Garner's speeded-classification task. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 30, 429-445.
Freud, E., Avidan, G., & Ganel, T (2013). Holistic Processing of Impossible Objects: Evidence from Garner's speeded-classification task. Vision Research, 93, 10-18.
Freud, E., Ganel, T., & Avidan, G. (2013). Representation of possible and impossible objects in the human visual cortex: evidence from fMRI adaptation. NeuroImage, 64, 685-692.
Hadad, B. S., Avidan, G., & Ganel, T. (2012). Functional dissociation between perception and action is evident early in life. Developmental Science, 15, 653-658.
Milner, A. D., Ganel, T., & Goodale, M. A. (2012). Does grasping in patient D.F. depend on vision? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16, 256-257.
Ganel, T., Freud, E., Chajut, E., & Algom, D. (2012). Accurate visuomotor control below the perceptual threshold of size discrimination. PLoS ONE, 7, e36253.
Ganel, T. (2011). Revisiting the relationship between the processing of gaze direction and the processing of facial expression. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 37, 48-57.
Ganel, T., Chajut, E., & Algom, D. (2008). Visual coding for action violates fundamental psychophysical principles. Current Biology, 18, R599-601.
Ganel, T., Tanzer, M., & Goodale, M. A. (2008). A double dissociation between action and perception in the context of visual illusions: Opposite effects of real and illusory size. Psychological Science, 19, 221-225.