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.

Kallie, C.S., Schrater, P.R., & Legge, G.E. (2007). Variability in stepping direction explains the veering behavior of blind walkers. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 33, 183-200.

Yu, D., Cheung, S.-H., Legge, G.E., & Chung, S.T.L. (2007). Effect of letter spacing on visual span and reading speed. Journal of Vision, 7, 1-10. http://journalofvision.org/7/2/2/

Stankiewicz, B.J., Legge, G.E., Mansfield, J.S., & Schlicht, E.J. (2006). Lost in virtual space: studies in human and ideal spatial navigation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 32, 688-704.

Cheung, S.-H., & Legge, G.E. (2005). Functional and cortical adaptations to central vision loss. Visual Neuroscience, 22, 187-201.