Birds of a feather… Generalization of facial structures following massive familiarization

Three experiments examined the effects of symmetry and complexity, as facial structures, on the aesthetic judgments of faces, and how these effects are modulated by moderate or massive familiarization. Results showed that symmetrical faces were judged as more attractive than nonsymmetrical faces, and simple faces were judged as more attractive than complex faces—with complexity defined as the number of facial elements. Complexity in faces seemed to have overridden the usually positive effects of facial symmetry. Moreover, while moderate familiarization did not modulate the effects, massive familiarization to a specific face type resulted in structural generalization effects: participants provided higher aesthetic judgments to faces that were new, but similarly structured to those which they were familiarized. This latter result contrasts previous studies that have found structural contrast effects following familiarization to meaningless, abstract stimuli. Taken together, these results reflect the greater biological and social significance of faces as compared to other objects in the world. They also show that people are drawn to those with familiar characteristics.     

Effects of object complexity and type on the gaze behavior of children with pervasive developmental disorder

The looking behavior of children with pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) and age- and IQ-matched normal control children was studied using infrared oculography. Stimuli varying in complexity and topic were presented to test whether children with PDD have specific abnormalities in looking behavior to complex stimuli and/or to faces. All children showed more and longer fixations on the complex objects than on the simple objects, especially the complex nonsense figure, but group differences were not found. The results show no evidence for specific abnormalities in looking behavior to either faces or to complex stimuli in high functioning children with PDD.     

Evidence for asymmetrical hemispheric priming using known and unknown warning stimuli in two language-trained chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

In this article results are reported from 3 warning stimulus-priming experiments that assessed hemisphere-specific activation and lateralization in 2 language-trained chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Results from Experiment 1 indicated a right visual field advantage in priming for meaningful warning stimuli presented in blocks of 36 trials. In Experiments 2 and 3, randomized presentations of meaningful, familiar, and meaningless stimuli resulted in right visual field advantages for meaningful warning stimuli. No visual half-field differences were found for familiar or meaningless warning stimuli. The findings are similar to those found in human subjects using known-unknown symbol paradigms; they suggest that basic phylogenetic neuropsychological systems related to activation and priming processes may link nonhuman primate and human studies of lateralization.     

The abstraction of linguistic ideas in “meaningless” sentences

It was proposed that the Bransford and Franks linear effect is unrelated to semantic processes and will, therefore, occur even when “meaningless” sentences (i.e., sentences containing nonsense instead of meaningful content words) are employed. Within the Bransford and Franks format, Ss were given either the meaningless sentences or control sentences. Results showed a significant linear effect for the meaningless sentences. Furthermore, although the slope of the effect for meaningless sentences was flatter than that of the control, other data ruled out a semantic integration explanation based on the availability of semantic information contained in sentence structure. A simple guessing strategy hypothesis was offered to account for the linear effect.     

The locus of sex differences in spatial ability

College men and women judged whether pairs of stimuli were identical or mirror images. One stimulus of a pair was presented upright; the other was rotated 0°–150° from the vertical. The stimuli were either alphanumeric symbols or unfamiliar letter-like characters of the type found on the Primary Mental Abilities Spatial Relations Test. For each individual, the linear function relating response latency to degree of rotation was computed. The slope of this function was steeper for women than for men. Further, the distribution of slopes was more variable among women, with approximately 30% falling outside the range of distribution for men. Women and men were quite similar in the accuracy of their judgments, the intercepts of the latency functions, and the precision with which the linear function characterized the latency data. It is suggested that the sex difference in the slope of the rotation function may reflect differences in strategies of mental rotation.     

客体复杂度影响工作记忆可存储的客体数目

采用变化觉察范式,以对侧延迟活动（contralateral delay activity,CDA）的幅值为指标,通过操纵记忆刺激的复杂程度,对视觉工作记忆中可存储的客体数目（即工作记忆容量）问题进行了探讨。结果表明,2个复杂客体条件下的CDA幅值与4个复杂客体条件无显著差异,而4个简单客体条件的CDA幅值显著高于2个简单客体条件,即CDA的幅值受客体复杂度的调节。基于该结果推论：并非视觉工作记忆总能存储4个客体,其可存储的客体数目受客体复杂度影响。     

Effects of plane rotation,task, and complexity on recognition of familiar and chimeric objects

We examined the effects of plane rotation, task, and visual complexity on the recognition of familiar and chimeric objects. The effects of rotation, with response times increasing linearly and monotonically with rotation from the upright, were equivalent for tasks requiring different degrees of visual differentiation of the target from contrasting stimuli--namely, (1) deciding whether the stimulus was living or nonliving (semantic classification), (2) deciding whether the stimulus was an object or a nonobject (object decision), and (3) naming. The effects of complexity, with shorter response times to more complex stimuli, were most apparent in semantic classification and object decision and were additive with the effects of rotation. We discuss the implications of these results for theories of the relationship between the process of normalization and the determining of object identity.     

Just how stable are stable aesthetic features? Symmetry,complexity, and the jaws of massive familiarization

Using both group- and individual-level analyses, we explored the complex and dynamic effects of basic visual features on aesthetic judgment. Specifically, the mediating influence of familiarization on the combined effects of complexity and symmetry on aesthetic judgment was examined. Experiment 1 showed that symmetry and complexity are indeed powerful determinants of aesthetic judgment. Experiment 2 demonstrated that massive familiarization generated contrast effects for complexity: participants familiarized to simple stimuli subsequently judged complex stimuli more beautiful and participants familiarized to complex stimuli subsequently judged simple stimuli more beautiful. In contrast, moderate familiarization in Experiment 3 did not elicit the above effects. Group-level analyses were augmented with judgment analyses of individual response patterns resulting in a more comprehensive assessment of aesthetic judgment.     

Curious Objects: How Visual Complexity Guides Attention and Engagement

Some things look more complex than others. For example, a crenulate and richly organized leaf may seem more complex than a plain stone. What is the nature of this experience—and why do we have it in the first place? Here, we explore how object complexity serves as an efficiently extracted visual signal that the object merits further exploration. We algorithmically generated a library of geometric shapes and determined their complexity by computing the cumulative surprisal of their internal skeletons—essentially quantifying the “amount of information” within each shape—and then used this approach to ask new questions about the perception of complexity. Experiments 1–3 asked what kind of mental process extracts visual complexity: a slow, deliberate, reflective process (as when we decide that an object is expensive or popular) or a fast, effortless, and automatic process (as when we see that an object is big or blue)? We placed simple and complex objects in visual search arrays and discovered that complex objects were easier to find among simple distractors than simple objects are among complex distractors—a classic search asymmetry indicating that complexity is prioritized in visual processing. Next, we explored the function of complexity: Why do we represent object complexity in the first place? Experiments 4–5 asked subjects to study serially presented objects in a self-paced manner (for a later memory test); subjects dwelled longer on complex objects than simple objects—even when object shape was completely task-irrelevant—suggesting a connection between visual complexity and exploratory engagement. Finally, Experiment 6 connected these implicit measures of complexity to explicit judgments. Collectively, these findings suggest that visual complexity is extracted efficiently and automatically, and even arouses a kind of “perceptual curiosity” about objects that encourages subsequent attentional engagement.     

Hierarchical forms processing in adults and children

Two experiments examined child and adult processing of hierarchical stimuli composed of geometric forms. Adults (ages 18-23 years) and children (ages 7-10 years) performed a forced-choice task gauging similarity between visual stimuli consisting of large geometric objects (global level) composed of small geometric objects (local level). The stimuli spatial arrangement was manipulated to assess child and adult reaction times and predisposition toward local or global form categorization under two distinct trial conditions, with varied density of the local forms comprising the global forms. In Experiment 1, children and adults were presented with common, simple geometric shape hierarchical forms composed of ovals and rectangles. In Experiment 2, adults were presented with hierarchical forms composed of the simple geometric shapes, ovals and rectangles, and additional novel complex geometric shapes, “posts” and “arches.” Results show a clear increase of global processing bias across the age ranges of the individuals in the study, with children at 10 years performing similarly to adults on the simple stimuli. In addition, adults presented with the novel complex geometric shapes showed a significant reduction in global processing bias, indicating that form novelty and complexity lead to additional attention to local features in categorization tasks.     

Sex differences and the role of figural complexity in determining the rate of mental rotation

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of figural complexity on the rate of mental rotation of 3-dimensional figures and to compare the performance of men and women. Complexity was manipulated in three ways: by changing the number of blocks in the figure (7 or 10), by altering the number of turns (2 or 3), and by using outline or solid figures. In the first study, these factors were manipulated between groups of subjects. Women showed steeper slopes than men, but none of the complexity variables affected either slope or intercept for the mental rotation function. In the second study, number of turns and number of blocks were manipulated within-subjects, using only the solid figures. There were significant sex differences in both slope and intercept, and the number of blocks affected the slope of the rotation function. In both studies, a small percentage of the subjects showed nonlinear functions relating angular rotation to response time. Although the women consistently showed slower rotation functions, rate of rotation did not relate either to figural complexity or to nonlinearity. The results suggest that the rate of mental rotation is not affected by figural complexity, at least at the levels used in the present study, and that men and women employ essentially similar strategies.     

场景知觉及其研究范式

场景知觉关注的是人如何知觉和加工复杂的真实环境信息。场景包括物体和背景两个重要的组成部分,根据复杂性与真实性程度,场景刺激材料可以分为三种不同的类型。已有研究主要从自上而下和自下而上两种方式来解释场景知觉中信息的提取和加工,也有研究试图从二者交互的角度来进行解释。此外,基于不同的实验目的和技术,研究者分别采用了眼动、背景提示、物体觉察、变化觉察和点线索追随几种不同的研究范式来探讨场景信息的知觉问题。场景知觉研究在场景的定义、不同范式间的整合、研究内部效度和不同加工阶段的加工方式四个方面还需要进一步深入和探讨     

What does the nature of the stimuli tell us about the Global Precedence Effect?

The "Global Precedence Effect" (GPE) is a well-established phenomenon characterised by a global advantage (global response times that are faster than local response times) and an interference effect from global distractors during identification of local targets but not vice versa. In the present study, two experiments were carried out to examine how the GPE is affected by the meaningfulness of the stimuli. Using global/local compound stimuli based on either meaningful or meaningless stimuli, we found, on the one hand, that the global level was always processed faster than the local level, irrespective of the meaningfulness of the material. On the other hand, results show that the interference effect occurred only with meaningful stimuli. We propose that automatic identification of meaningful stimuli plays a role in the interference effect. These results suggest that the GPE involves both "sensory mechanisms" (responsible for the global advantage) and "cognitive mechanisms" (responsible for the interference effect).     

Queer sentences,ambiguity, and levels of processing

Subjects judged linguistic strings "meaningful" or "meaningless." Meaningful sentences were identical for all subjects; however, for each of five groups, meaningless foils containing different kinds of linguistic violation were interspersed among the meaningful sentences. Type of foil influenced processing time for meaningful items, suggesting that laboratory language processing may be determined by the entire set of linguistic materials used. Effect of foil type on comprehension depth for meaningful items was assessed from the extent to which three kinds of ambiguity slowed judgments on those items as compared to unambiguous sentences. Foil type appears to affect depth of meaningful sentence processing in such a way as to support a "levels of analysis" view of sentence comprehension. Foil type and kind of ambiguity interacted to suggest that sentence comprehension requires computation of underlying logical relationships prior to computation of surface structural relationships and the unequivocal determination of word meanings.     

Aging and Visual Short-term Memory: Effects of Object Type and Information Load

ABSTRACT

Previous research has observed that the size of age differences in short-term memory (STM) depends on the type of material to be remembered, but has not identified the mechanism underlying this pattern. The current study focused on visual STM and examined the contribution of information load, as estimated by the rate of visual search, to STM for two types of stimuli – meaningful and abstract objects. Results demonstrated higher information load and lower STM for abstract objects. Age differences were greater for abstract than meaningful objects in visual search, but not in STM. Nevertheless, older adults demonstrated a decreased capacity in visual STM for meaningful objects. Furthermore, in support of Salthouse's processing speed theory, controlling for search rates eliminated all differences in STM related to object type and age. The overall pattern of findings suggests that STM for visual objects is dependent upon processing rate, regardless of age or object type.     

Visual working memory for simple and complex visual stimuli

Does the magical number four characterize our visual working memory (VWM) capacity for all kinds of objects, or is the capacity of VWM inversely related to the perceptual complexity of those objects? To find out how perceptual complexity affects VWM, we used a change detection task to measure VWM capacity for six types of stimuli of different complexity: colors, letters, polygons, squiggles, cubes, and faces. We found that the estimated capacity decreased for more complex stimuli, suggesting that perceptual complexity was an important factor in determining VWM capacity. However, the considerable correlation between perceptual complexity and VWM capacity declined significantly if subjects were allowed to view the sample memory display longer. We conclude that when encoding limitations are minimized, perceptual complexity affects, but does not determine, VWM capacity.     

Effects of stimulus complexity on mental rotation rate of polygons

Both spatial and propositional theories of imagery predict that the rate at which mental images can be rotated is slower the more complex the stimulus. Four experiments (three published and one unpublished) testing that hypothesis found no effect of complexity on rotation rate. It is argued that despite continued methodological improvements, subjects in the conditions of greater complexity may have found it sufficient to rotate only partial images, thereby vitiating the prediction. The two experiments reported here are based on the idea of making the discriminative response sufficiently difficult so as to force the rotation of complete images. The first one scaled the similarity between standard polygons and certain systematically mutated versions. From the ratings so obtained, two levels of perceived similarity, high and low, were defined and served as separate conditions in a response-time, image rotation experiment. The second experiment tested the complexity hypothesis by examining the effect of similarity on rotation rates and its interaction with levels of complexity. The results support the complexity hypothesis, but only for the highly similar stimuli. Rotation times were also generally slower for high as compared with low similarity. It is argued that these results arise because subjects rotate incomplete images when the stimuli are not very similar.     

Perceptual equivalence between vision and touch is complexity dependent

We experience the shape of objects in our world largely by way of our vision and touch but the availability and integration of information between the senses remains an open question. The research presented in this article examines the effect of stimulus complexity on visual, haptic and crossmodal discrimination. Using sculpted three-dimensional objects whose features vary systematically, we perform a series of three experiments to determine perceptual equivalence as a function of complexity. Two unimodal experiments - vision and touch-only, and one crossmodal experiment investigating the availability of information across the senses, were performed. We find that, for the class of stimuli used, subjects were able to visually discriminate them reliably across the entire range of complexity, while the experiments involving haptic information show a marked decrease in performance as the objects become more complex. Performance in the crossmodal condition appears to be constrained by the limits of the subjects’ haptic representation, but the combination of the two sources of information is of some benefit over vision alone when comparing the simpler, low-frequency stimuli. This result shows that there is crossmodal transfer, and therefore perceptual equivalency, but that this transfer is limited by the object’s complexity.     

Control of echolalic speech in psychotic children

Immediate echolalia, a common language disorder in psychotic children, was studied in a series of replicated single-subject designs across six schizophrenic and five normal children. In Experiment 1, each child was presented with several questions and commands, some of which set the occasion for specific, appropriate responses and some of which did not. The former were referred to as discriminative stimuli and the latter, as neutral stimuli. The psychotic children tended to echo the neutral stimuli while responding appropriately to the discriminative stimuli; the normal children, in contrast, typically echoed neither type of stimulus. In Experiment 2, three psychotic children were taught appropriate responses to each of several neutral stimuli. Following this training, the children generally responded appropriately to these stimuli without echoing. A plausible interpretation of these results is that the neutral stimuli were initially incomprehensible or meaningless to the children (whereas the discriminative stimuli were comprehensible or meaningful) and that verbal incomprehensibility may be one important determinant of immediate echolalia. Finally, the results are noteworthy in that they isolate a sufficient treatment variable (i.e., the reinforcement of alternative, nonecholalic responses) for eliminating instances of this language anomaly.     

Heart-rate and electrodermal orienting responses to visual stimuli differing in complexity

Orienting response (OR) theory predicts that amount of information in the stimulus, or stimulus complexity, should be an important determinant of OR elicitation and habituation, more intense and more slowly habituating ORs being expected to complex than to simple stimuli. This prediction was tested in an experiment where subjects were exposed to simple and complex visual stimuli in randomized order, while heart-rate and skin conductance were measured. Complex stimuli evoked a more pronounced deceleratory heartrate response than did simple stimuli. However, the two conditions did not differ in rate of habituation of this response. For skin conductance responses, on the other hand, the complex stimulus took more trials than the simple stimulus to reach habituation, whereas the two conditions did not differ in response magnitude. Thus, the hypothesis of more intense orienting to complex stimuli was supported by the heart-rate data, and that of slower habituation to complex stimuli, of the skin conductance data.