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This is a study to determine whether the teaching of isometric drawing will affect spatial perception.

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Les théories qui modélisent la perception spatiale chez l'adulte s'accordent à postuler l'existence de liens forts entre la perception et l'action(James, 1892 ; Poincaré, 1902 ; Gibson, 1979 ; Noe, 2004). Une vaste collection de données montre également que ces liens sont présents dans le développement ontogénétique. Ce travail de thèse vise à examiner les implications de tels liens dans le développement de la perception spatiale et d'en identifier les déterminants chez l'enfant. Nous avons mené une série d'expériences, basée sur l'utilisation des paradigmes d'atteignabilité et d'amorçage visuomoteur, autour de la problématique de l'élaboration et l'utilisation des représentations perceptives et sensorimotrices dans la perception spatiale. Nous avons mené ces expériences chez une population d'adultes et d'enfants âgées de 7 à 13 ans avec l'objectif d'évaluer la trajectoire développementale de la perception spatiale. Les résultats obtenus mettent en évidence des discontinuités dans les trajectoires développementales des différentes tâches proposées. Nous avons mis en évidence les marqueurs de ces changements développementaux dans les performances des tâches d'atteignabilité, d'imagerie motrice et également d'amorçage visuomoteur. Nous interprétons ces résultats comme relevant d'un changement qualitatif de la perception spatiale durant cette période. D'une manière générale, les travaux présentés dans cette thèse apportent des données nouvelles sur le développement de la perception spatiale chez l'enfant, et sont mis en relation avec la littérature en psychologie et en neurosciences du développement. / Spatial perception and motor skills : a developmental approach

Master of Science / Department of Statistics / Michael J. Higgins / There have been a wave of recent interest in understanding the dynamics of vehicular emissions in university towns. Using data from a recent survey of Kansas State University students, faculty, and staff-which includes a detailed itinerary of a day’s worth of travel -I assess spatial and temporal trends of emissions at Kansas State University. By combining the survey data with secondary sources of data, including vehicular emissions data from Fueleconony.gov and trip distance information from Google, I obtain improved measure for the quantity of emissions produced during each trip. After an extensive cleaning of the data, I develop heat maps for emissions composed of shape files identifying zip-code boundaries and a raster layer. I find that most vehicular emissions are concentrated around campus, with the highest level of emissions occurring during rush hour. Furthermore, faculty and staff appear to, on average, produce more emissions than students. I also investigate how proposed methods for reducing emissions will affect these spatio-temporal trends. Specifically, I show that walking or biking short distances instead of driving may lead to a small overall reduction in vehicular emissions.

The visual system integrates information over space to see surfaces, contours and edges. This integration can be described by a divisive normalization framework in which surrounding contextual information normalizes response to a central target. We ran a set of studies examining perceptual illusions with the intention of better understanding the neural mechanisms responsible for how the visual system integrates information over space. We measured surround integration using the Simultaneous Tilt Illusion. In the first study, we determined the extent to which the probability that different surround regions were co-assigned to the same object as the center impacts how much they are integrated. We found that the magnitude of the illusion was a sum of regional surround effects weighted by their dependency to the center. These results are consistent with a system that uses prior experience with natural scene statistics to integrate regions of space. In the second study, we measured the relationship between individual differences in spatial integration and autistic traits. We found no evidence for reduced normalization in people who score high on autistic traits. In the third study, we determined the extent to which arousal modulates spatial integration. Although we did not observe an effect of natural fluctuations in arousal, as indexed by pupil diameter, we observed a reduction in the magnitude of the illusion following an alerting tone. While more work is still needed to verify this effect, it suggests that we context information less under moderately alert states. We interpret these results in the context of the neural and perceptual mechanisms underlying spatial integration. Specifically, these results seem to indicate that the normalization process is gated by our expectancies about the structure of a scene and by our internal brain state. These results are consistent with a system that uses prior experience with scene statistics to represent patterns more efficiently.