Dr. Erik Blaser.  Associate Professor, Psychology, UMass Boston.

Graduate Program Director, Developmental and Brain Sciences PhD

B.A., Psychology, Rutgers University (advisors, Dr. Eileen Kowler & Charles Schmidt)

M.A., Mathematical Behavioral Science, University of California, Irvine

Ph.D., Psychology (Cognitive Science), University of California, Irvine (advisor, George Sperling)

Postdoc, LVR & RuCCS at Rutgers University (labs: Dr. Thomas Papathomas & Dr. Zenon Pylyshyn)

Selected conference and workshop presentations

[will be updated soon....]

Blaser, E. (2006). The hidden scale of natural forms: A new cue to depth? The Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), Sarasota, FL

Niederhoefer, V. & Blaser, E. (2006). The functional units of visual working memory: Objects or Locations? The Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), Sarasota, FL

Kaldy, Z., Blaser, E., & Kibbe, M. (2006). Detection vs. Salience of color and motion-defined stimuli in 6-month-old infants. The Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), Sarasota, FL

Kaldy, Z., Blaser, E., Kibbe, M., & Pomplun, M. (2005). What drives visual salience in young infants? The Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), Sarasota, FL

Blaser, E., Kaldy, Z., Eddy, K., & Pomplun, M. (2005). Determining salience for complex objects. The Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), Sarasota, FL

Kaldy, Z. & Blaser, E. (2005). Visual salience relations reflect perceptual development in 5- and 6-month-old infants. The Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD), Atlanta, GA

Kaldy, Z., & Blaser, E. (2004). Iso-salient color and luminance information in visual working memory. European Conference on Visual Perception (ECVP), Budapest, Hungary

Kaldy, Z., Blaser, E., & Leslie, A. (2004). Iso-salient color and luminance information in object identification. International Conference on Infancy Studies (ICIS), Chicago, IL

Blaser, E., Domini, F., & Raymond, L. (2004). Perceptual learning increases the tilt aftereffect. The Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), Sarasota, FL

Blaser, E., Papathomas, T., & Vidnyanszky, Z. (2003). Polarity-contingent motion aftereffects at the stage of local motion processing. The Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), Sarasota, FL

Blaser, E., Vidnyanszky, Z., & Papathomas, T. (2002). Relative motion, not polarity, breaks ‘surface tension’. The Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), Sarasota, FL

Sohn, W., Blaser, E., Vidnyanszky, Z., & Papathomas, T. (2002). Surface based mechanisms of attentional facilitation and inhibition in motion perception. The Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), Sarasota, FL

Vidnyanszky, Z., Blaser, E., & Papathomas, T. (2001). An explanation for unidirectional motion aftereffects following adaptation to bivectorial transparent motion. The Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), Sarasota, FL

Sohn, W., Vidnyanszky, Z., Blaser, E., & Papathomas, T. (2001). Attention to one component of bivectorial transparent motion strongly inhibits the processing of the unattended component. The Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), Sarasota, FL

Domini, F. & Blaser, E. (2000).  Surface-based depth perception. The Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO), Annual Meeting, Ft. Lauderdale, FL

Blaser, E., Pylyshyn, Z.W., & Domini, F. (1999). Measuring attention during 3D multielement tracking.  The Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO), Annual Meeting, Ft. Lauderdale, FL

Sohn, W., Papathomas, T., Blaser, E., & Vidnyanszky, Z. (2003).  Object-based cross-attribute attentional effects in bivectorial motion. The Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), Sarasota, FL

Selected publications

Kaldy, Z., Kraper, C., Carter, A., & Blaser, E. (2011). Toddlers with Autism Spectrum Disorder are more successful at visual search than typically developing toddlers. Developmental Science.

Blaser, E. & Kaldy (2010). Infants get five stars on iconic memory tests: A partial report test of 6-month-old infants’ iconic memory capacity. Psych Science. 

Vishwanath, D. & Blaser, E. (2010). Retinal blur and the perception of egocentric distance. Journal of Vision.

Blaser, E. & Shepard, T (2009). Maximal motion aftereffects in spite of diverted awareness. Vision Research.

Kaldy, Z. & Blaser, E. (2009) How to compare apples and oranges: Infants’ visual memory or equally salient shape and luminance changes. Infancy.

Blaser, E. & Sperling, G.  (2008) When is motion motion? Perception.

Kaldy, Z., Blaser, E., & Leslie, A., (2006). A new method for calibrating perceptual salience across dimensions in infants: the case of color vs. luminance.  Developmental Science, 9:5, 482–489

Blaser, E., Papathomas, T.V., & Vidnyanszky, Z.  (2005). Binding of motion and colour is local and automatic. European Journal of Neuroscience, 21, 2040-2044

Papathomas T.V., Vidnyanszky Z., Blaser E. (2004). Transparent motion: a powerful tool  to study segmentation, integration, adaptation, and attentional selection. Jenkin, M. and Harris, L. (eds.) Seeing Spatial Form, Oxford University Press, 2004.

Sohn, W., Papathomas, T., Blaser, E., & Vidnyanszky, Z. (2004). Object-based cross-attribute attentional modulation from color to motion. Vision Research, 44, 1437-1443.

Vidnyanszky, Z., Blaser, E., & Papathomas, T. (2002). Motion integration during motion aftereffects. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 157-161.

Blaser, E. & Domini, F.  (2002). The conjunction of feature and depth information. Vision Research, 42, 273-279.

Sperling, G., Reeves A., Blaser, E., Lu, Z-L, & Weichselgartner, E. (2001). Two computational models of attention.  Visual attention and cortical circuits, MIT Press. 

Blaser, E., Pylyshyn, Z.W., & Holcombe, A. (2000). Tracking an object through feature-space. Nature, 408, 196-199.

see also:

Braun, J.  (2000). Intimate attention.  [Discussion of Blaser, Pylyshyn, & Holcombe (2000)]. Nature, 408, 154-155.

Domini, F., Blaser, E., & Cicerone, C. (2000). Color-specific depth mechanisms revealed by a color-contingent depth aftereffect. Vision Research, 40, 359-364.

Blaser, E., Sperling, G., & Lu, Z-L. (1999). Measuring the amplification of attention.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 96, 11681-11686.

see also:

Snowden, R. (2000) In clear and vivid form?  [Discussion of Blaser, Sperling, & Lu (1999)]. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 40.

Kowler, E. & Blaser, E. (1995). The accuracy and precision of saccades to small and large targets. Vision Research, 35, 1741-1754

Kowler, E., Anderson, E., Dosher, B., & Blaser, E. (1995). The role of attention in the programming of saccades. Vision Research, 35, 1897-1916.