Gordon E. Legge Department Chair Distinguished McKnight University Professor N257 Elliott, (612) 625-0846 legge@umn.edu Minnesota Laboratory for Low Vision Research Professor Legge's homepage Education Ph.D., 1976, Harvard University

Statement of Interests

I specialize in visual perception with a cognitive-neuroscience perspective. I am particularly interested in the role of vision in important real-world activities including reading, object recognition and wayfinding. Additional research interests include binocular vision and visual contrast coding.

A major focus of my research has been the application of  vision research to explain the difficulties encountered by people with impaired vision in everyday activities, especially reading. One practical outcome of this research is the recent development of the MNREAD Acuity Chart, a new eye chart for testing normal and impaired vision.

Selected Publications

Legge, G.E. (2007). Psychophysics of Reading in Normal and Low Vision. Mahwah, NJ & London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. ISBN 0-8058-4328-0

• Preface and Acknowledgments
• 1. Vision and Reading
• 2. Measuring Reading Speed
• 3. Visual Mechanisms in Reading
• 4. Displaying Text
• 5. The MNREAD Acuity Chart (Co-authored with J.S. Mansfield)
• Appendix: Print Size Definitions and Conversions (Co-authored with J.S. Mansfield)
• A compact disk accompanies the book and contains reprints of the 20 journal articles in the Psychophysics of Reading series and computer source code for analyzing MNREAD test data.

Legge, G.E., Cheung, S.-H., Yu, D., Chung, S.T.L., Lee, H.-W., & Owens, D.P. (2007). The case for the visual span as a sensory bottleneck in reading. Journal of Vision, 7(2):9, 1-15, http://journalofvision.org/7/2/9/, doi:10.1167/7.2.9.

Giudice, N.A., Bakdash, J., & Legge, G.E. (2007). Wayfinding with words: Spatial learning and navigation using dynamically updated verbal descriptions. Psychological Research Psychologische Forschung, 71, 347-358.

Cheung, S.-H.,  Fang, F., He, S. & Legge, G.E. (2009). Retinotopically-specific reorganization of visual cortex for tactile pattern recognition. Current Biology, 19, 596-601.

Kwon, M., Legge, G.E., Fang, F., Cheong, A.M.Y. & He, S. (2009). Adaptive changes in visual cortex following prolonged contrast reduction. Journal of Vision, 9)2):20, 1-16.

Kalia, A.A., Legge, G.E. & Giudice, N.A. (2008). Learning building layouts with non-geometric visual information: The effects of visual impairment and age. Perception 37, 1677-1699.

Legge G.E., Madison C., Vaughn B.N., Cheong A.M.Y. & Miller J.C. (2008). Retention of high tactile acuity throughout the lifespan in blindness. Perception and Psychophysics, 70, 1471-1488.