Laurence T. Maloney

Psychology

Mathematical Approaches to Psychology and Neuroscience

Go to my homepage in Psychology.

I am interested in how biological visual systems gather information and act on it. I've worked on topics including

• combination of visual cues
• the geometries of visual space and color space
• perception of surface color and material
• planning of movement

Two projects that I'm working on now are described below.

Movement under risk: The first project concerns how humans plan and execute rapid arm movements in 'risky' environments. A scene abruptly appears and the observer must reach out and tap a goal to earn money. If s/he jostles other clearly-marked objects along the path to the goal, s/he can lose money as well. Picking the optimal path that earns the most money is not easy and the observer has less than a second to plan and execute his movement. We have developed models of optimal performance of observers based on Statistical Decision Theory and we can compare predicted optimal performance to measurements made using an Optotrak 3020 Motion Tracking Device.

Perception of surface color in 3D: Suppose that a scene is illuminated by a yellow sun and blue sky. The mixture of light that reaches a matte surface depends on its orientation with respect to the sun. Do observers discount the effect of orientation in estimating the surface color? We measured observers' surface color perception in virtual scenes with complex light sources and find that observers do compensate for scene geometry in judging surface color.

E-mail: ltm1@nyu.edu

Selected Publications

Wu, S.-W., Trommershaeuser, J., Maloney, L. T. & Landy, M. S. (2006), Limits to human movement planning in tasks with asymmetric gain landscapes. Journal of Vision, 6, 53-63.

Boyaci, H., Doerschner, K., & Maloney, L. T. (2006), Cues to an equivalent lighting model, Journal of Vision, 6, 106-118.

Logvinenko, A. D. & Maloney, L. T. (2006), The proximity structure of achromatic surface colors and the impossibility of asymmetric lightness matching. Perception & Psychophysics, 68(1), 76-83.

Trommershaeuser, J., Landy, M. S. & Maloney, L. T. (2006), Humans rapidly estimate expected gain in movement planning. Psychological Science, 11, 981-988.

Ho, Y.-X., Landy, M. S. & Maloney, L. T. (2006), How illuminant direction affects perceived visual roughness, Journal of Vision, in 6, 634-648.

Boyaci, H., Doerschner, K., Snyder, J. L. & Maloney, L. T. (2006), Surface color perception in three-dimensional scenes. Visual Neuroscience, 23, 311-321.

Fulvio, J. M., Singh, M. & Maloney, L. T. (2006), Combining achromatic and chromatic cues to transparency, Journal of Vision, 6, 760-776.

Trommershaeuser, J., Mattis, J., Landy, M. S. & Maloney, L. T. (2006), Limits to human movement planning with delayed and unpredictable onset of needed information. Experimental Brain Research, 175, 276-284.

Schultz, S., Doerschner, K., & Maloney, L. T. (2006), Color constancy and hue scaling. Journal of Vision, 6, 1102-1116.

Maloney, L. T. & Dal Martello, M. F. (2006), Kin recognition and the perceived facial similarity of children, Journal of Vision, 6, 1047-1056.

Dal Martello, M. F. & Maloney, L. T. (2006), Where are kin recognition signals in the human face? Journal of Vision, 6, 1356-1366.

Ho, Y.-X., Maloney, L. T. & Landy, M. S. & (2007), The effect of viewpoint on perceived visual roughness, Journal of Vision, 7, 1-16.

Rhodes, G., Maloney, L. T., Turner, J. & Ewing, L. (2007), Adaptive face coding and discrimination around the average face, Vision Research, 47, 974-989.

Dean, M., Wu, S.-W. & Maloney, L. T. (2007), Trading off speed and accuracy in rapid, goal directed movements, Journal of Vision , 7(5):10, 1-12.

Knill, D. C., Maloney, L. T. & Trommershaeuser, J. (2007), Sensorimotor processing and goal-directed movement. Journal of Vision, 7(5):i, 1-2.

Charrier, C., Maloney, L. T., Cherifi, H. & Knoblauch, K., (2007), Maximum likelihood difference scaling of image quality in compression-degraded images. Journal of the Optical Society of America A, 24, 3814-3826.

Maloney, L. T., Trommershaeuser, J. & Landy, M. S. (2007), Questions without words: A comparison between decision making under risk and movement planning under risk. In Gray, W. (Ed), Integrated Models of Cognitive Systems. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, pp. 297-315.

Doerschner, K., Boyaci, H. & Maloney, L. T. (2007), Testing limits on matte surface color perception in three-dimensional scenes with complex light fields, Vision Research, 47, 3409-3423.

Hudson, T. E., Maloney, L. T. & Landy, M. S. (2007), Movement planning with probabilistic target information. Journal of Neurophysiology, 98, 3034-3046.

Cohen, E. H., Singh, M. & Maloney, L. T. (2008), Perceptual segmentation and the perceived orientation of dot clusters: The role of robust statistics. Journal of Vision, Journal of Vision, 8(7), 1-13.

Tokunaga, R., Logvinenko, A. D. & Maloney, L. T. (2008), Multidimensional scaling of dissimilarities between yellow-blue surfaces rated under neutral light sources. Visual Neuroscience, 25, 395-398.

Fulvio, J. M., Singh, M. & Maloney, L. T. (2008), Consistency of location and gradient judgments of visually-interpolated contours, Vision Research, 48(6), 831-849.

Knoblauch, K. & Maloney, L. T. (2008), MLDS: Maximum likelihood difference scaling in R. Journal of Statistical Software, 25(2), 1-26.

Logvinenko, A., Petrini, K. & Maloney, L. T. (2008), A scaling analysis of the snake lightness illusion. Perception & Psychophysics, 70(5), 828-840.

Ho, Y.-H., Landy. M. S. & Maloney, L. T. (2008), Conjoint measurement of gloss and surface texture. Psychological Science, 19(2), 196-204.

Yeshurun, Y., Carrasco, M. & Maloney, L. T. (2008), Bias and sensitivity in two-interval forced-choice procedures, Vision Research, 48, 1837-1851.

Gepshtein, S., Elder, J. & Maloney, L. T. (2008), Perceptual organization and neural computation, Journal of Vision, 8(7):i, 1-4.

Hudson, T. E., Maloney, L. T. & Landy, M. S. (2008), Optimal compensation for temporal uncertainty in movement planning. PLoS Computational Biology, 4(7):e100130, 1-9.

Trommershaeuser, J., Maloney, L. T. & Landy M. S. (2008), Decision making, movement planning and statistical decision theory. Trends in Cognitive Science, 12(8), 291-297.

Kitazaki, M., Kobiki, H. & Maloney, L. T. (2008), The effect of pictorial depth cues, binocular disparity and motion parallax depth cues on lightness perception in three-dimensional virtual scenes, PLoS ONE, in press.

Trommershaeuser, J., Maloney, L. T. & Landy M. S. (2008), The expected utility of movement. In Glimcher, P., Camerer, C., Fehr, E & Poldrack, R. (Eds), Neuroeconomics, in press.