Some findings on prospect and refuge theory: II

This article presents four new studies on the efficacy of predictions based on prospect and refuge theory and summarizes the results over eight studies. New data covered 49 participants and 36 environments. The eight studies included in the summary covered 144 participants and 80 widely diverse environments (Japanese Tatami rooms, Western rooms, porch, meadow, neighborhood commercial, shopping mall, vacation landscapes). Data were available for hypotheses about five factors: prospect, refuge, light, venue, and spatial transition. Efficacy was represented by correlations for the levels of the factors with responses of preference or comfort. Overall, venue was the most efficacious factor (r = .42, 95% CI = .14, .64). Efficacies for the other factors were very near zero. It is suggested that a considerable amount of additional formal inquiry be conducted before assuming the utility of prospect and refuge theory.     

Effects of nonuniform lighting on the evaluation of spaces: A comparison between the situations with and without conversation

The prospect‐refuge theory is a theory of landscape aesthetics and has recently been applied to interior design. The purposes of this article were to apply the prospect‐refuge theory to the interior lighting environment and to examine the effects of nonuniform lighting on the evaluations of a room shared with another person. Two experiments were conducted: Experiment 1 focused on the situation without conversation, and Experiment 2 on the situation with conversation. The results showed that nonuniform lighting influences the features of prospect and refuge in rooms. The results also showed that the features of prospect and refuge are important when the space is shared with people having no interaction. However, when people have an interaction, a sense of unity, which is formed by illumination wrapping them together, is important to make an adequate environment.     

Interior prospect and refuge

Prospect and refuge theory has usually been applied to landscapes but recent work suggests that it could also be applied to interiors. This article reports two experiments, covering 14 environments and 97 respondents, in which five hypotheses regarding prospect, refuge, and comfort were tested: H1: the transition from small, dark, and low to large, light, and high and vice-versa; H2: the transition from dark to light vs vice-versa; H3: the transition from low to high vs vice-versa; H4: the transition from small to big horizontally vs vice-versa; and H5: width. Results varied. The effect of width on comfort was substantial (r = .35); effects for the other hypotheses were either subtle or contrary to expectations.     

Lighting position and judgments of distance of shadow-casting objects.

Participants recruited on the web performed in two experiments in which they viewed eight pictures of the same two rods in the exact same positions with shadows generated by a light source located at eight positions around the rods. In Exp. 1, participants judged how much shadows projected to the front, back, and sides of the rods facilitated the correct perception of the actual distance of the rods relative to each other. In Exp. 1 (n: 52), frontal lighting facilitated judgments more than lighting from the rear, but frontal and side lighting did not differ in facilitative effects. In Exp. 2 (n: 72), judgments of rods depicted with shadows were relative to a judgment of the rods depicted without shadows (raw scores were the value of the judgment of the shadowless rods subtracted from the value of the judgment of each of the eight sets of rods). Again, frontal lighting was more facilitative than rear lighting and frontal lighting did not differ from side lighting. However, when the average of each participant's backlighting judgments was compared with his judgment of the shadowless rods, shadows generated by backlighting were more facilitative than none.     

Intuitively detecting what is hidden within a visual mask: Familiar–novel discrimination and threat detection for unidentified stimuli

Recognition without identification is the finding that, among recognition test items that go unidentified (as when a word is unidentified from a fragment), participants can discriminate those that were studied from those that were unstudied. In the present study, we extended this phenomenon to the more life-like situation of discriminating known from novel stimuli. Pictures of famous and nonfamous faces (Exp. 1), famous and nonfamous scenes (Exp. 2), and threatening and nonthreatening images (Exp. 3) were filtered in order to impede identification. As in list-learning recognition-without-identification paradigms, participants attempted to identify each image (e.g., whose face it was, what scene it was, or what was in the picture) and rated how familiar the image seemed on a scale of 0 (very unfamiliar) to 10 (very familiar). Among the unidentified stimuli, higher familiarity ratings were given to famous than to nonfamous faces (Exp. 1) and scenes (Exp. 2), and to threatening than to nonthreatening living/animate (but not to nonliving/nonanimate) images (Exp. 3). These findings suggest that even when a stimulus is too occluded to allow for conscious identification, enough information can be processed to allow a sense of familiarity or novelty with it, which appears also to be related to the sense of whether or not a living creature is a threat. That the sense of familiarity for unidentified stimuli may be related to threat detection for living or animate things suggests that it may be an adaptive aspect of human memory.     

Shadows as sources of cues for distance of shadow-casting objects

Shadows are neglected sources of information about shadow-casting objects' distance (location). In an experiment using real shadows, participants judged the distance of two rods, either with shadows (illumination from the left) or without shadows. Without shadows, a thin rod raised slightly above the surface was incorrectly judged to be more distant than a thick rod, but with shadows the thin rod was accurately judged to be closer. For judgments to be correct, shadows had to overwhelm competing height and stimulus-size cues. Exp. II involved nonoverlapping shadows produced by a light placed in front of the rods. Again, without shadows the thin-elevated rod was incorrectly judged to be more distant, but with shadows it was correctly judged to be closer. Exp. III involved two sets of thick and thin elevated rods and frontal lighting. Judgments were accurate when shadows were present but inaccurate when shadows were absent. Experiments conducted through the American Psychological Society Web-research site replicated results of Exp. I, II, and III. A final Web experiment replicated results of the others, but with shadows produced by illumination from the right. Three properties of shadows--angles, interposition, and positioning--are possible sources of distance information associated with cast shadows.     

Academic decision making and prospect theory

Two studies are reported that investigate the applicability of prospect theory to college students' academic decision making. Exp. 1 failed to provide support for the risk-seeking portion of the fourfold pattern predicted by prospect theory but did find the greater weighting of losses over gains. Using a more sensitive dependent measure, in Exp. 2 the results of the first experiment were replicated in terms of the gain-loss effect and also found some support for the fourfold pattern in the interaction between probabilities and gain versus loss. The greatest risk-seeking was found in the high probability loss condition.     

The effects of initial testing on false recall and false recognition in the social contagion of memory paradigm

In three experiments, participants studied photographs of common household scenes. Following study, participants completed a category-cued recall test without feedback (Exps. 1 and 3), a category-cued recall test with feedback (Exp. 2), or a filler task (no-test condition). Participants then viewed recall tests from fictitious previous participants that contained erroneous items presented either one or four times, and then completed final recall and source recognition tests. The participants in all conditions reported incorrect items during final testing (a social contagion effect), and across experiments, initial testing had no impact on false recall of erroneous items. However, on the final source-monitoring recognition test, initial testing had a protective effect against false source recognition: Participants who were initially tested with and without feedback on category-cued initial tests attributed fewer incorrect items to the original event on the final source-monitoring recognition test than did participants who were not initially tested. These data demonstrate that initial testing may protect individuals’ memories from erroneous suggestions.     

Speed-accuracy tradeoffs in rapid bimanual aiming movements

Two experiments reported the effect of movement time and knowledge of results on overall spatial errors in rapid simultaneous bimanual aiming movements. In Exps. 1 (n=32) and 2 (n=32), participants used light, aluminum levers oriented vertically in the sagittal plane to make reversal movements over the same distance (20 degrees - 20 degrees or 60 degrees - 60 degrees) or different distances (20 degrees - 60 degrees) in each arm in 250, 350, or 450 msec. to the reversal point. The participants in Exp. 1 were given knowledge of results on the spatial and temporal accuracy for both arms, while in Exp. 2 knowledge of results was provided for one arm only. Strong speed-accuracy tradeoffs were shown for all groups in both experiments, but errors were larger in the different distance movements compared to the same distance groups. Spatial errors were also elevated in Exp. 2 when knowledge of results was not available compared to those conditions where knowledge of results was available. Overall, bimanual speed-accuracy tradeoffs are similar to single arm movements when one moves the same distance in each arm and when knowledge of results is available.     

Anxiety, conscious awareness and change detection

Attentional scanning was studied in anxious and non-anxious participants, using a modified change detection paradigm. Participants detected changes in pairs of emotional scenes separated by two task irrelevant slides, which contained an emotionally valenced scene (the 'distractor scene') and a visual mask. In agreement with attentional control theory, change detection latencies were slower overall for anxious participants. Change detection in anxious, but not non-anxious, participants was influenced by the emotional valence and exposure duration of distractor scenes. When negative distractor scenes were presented at subliminal exposure durations, anxious participants detected changes more rapidly than when supraliminal negative scenes or subliminal positive scenes were presented. We propose that for anxious participants, subliminal presentation of emotionally negative distractor scenes stimulated attention into a dynamic state in the absence of attentional engagement. Presentation of the same scenes at longer exposure times was accompanied by conscious awareness, attentional engagement, and slower change detection.     

A bias to detail: how hand position modulates visual learning and visual memory

In this report, we examine whether and how altered aspects of perception and attention near the hands affect one’s learning of to-be-remembered visual material. We employed the contextual cuing paradigm of visual learning in two experiments. Participants searched for a target embedded within images of fractals and other complex geometrical patterns while either holding their hands near to or far from the stimuli. When visual features and structural patterns remained constant across to-be-learned images (Exp. 1), no difference emerged between hand postures in the observed rates of learning. However, when to-be-learned scenes maintained structural pattern information but changed in color (Exp. 2), participants exhibited substantially slower rates of learning when holding their hands near the material. This finding shows that learning near the hands is impaired in situations in which common information must be abstracted from visually unique images, suggesting a bias toward detail-oriented processing near the hands.     

The influences of partner accuracy and partner memory ability on social false memories

In this study, we examined whether increasing the proportion of false information suggested by a confederate would influence the magnitude of socially introduced false memories in the social contagion paradigm Roediger, Meade, & Bergman (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 8:365–371, 2001). One participant and one confederate collaboratively recalled items from previously studied household scenes. During collaboration, the confederate interjected 0 %, 33 %, 66 %, or 100 % false items. On subsequent individual-recall tests across three experiments, participants were just as likely to incorporate misleading suggestions from a partner who was mostly accurate (33 % incorrect) as they were from a partner who was not at all accurate (100 % incorrect). Even when participants witnessed firsthand that their partner had a very poor memory on a related memory task, they were still as likely to incorporate the confederate’s entirely misleading suggestions on subsequent recall and recognition tests (Exp. 2). Only when participants witnessed firsthand that their partner had a very poor memory on a practice test of the experimental task itself were they able to reduce false memory, and this reduction occurred selectively on a subsequent individual recognition test (Exp. 3). These data demonstrate that participants do not always consider their partners’ memory ability when working on collaborative memory tasks.     

Asymmetric Reinstatement Effects in Recognition

Our experiment examined two questions: (1) Does reinstating a studied context affect recognition of an associated word, and (2) Does reinstating a studied word affect recognition of an associated context? After encoding 75 words, each of which was shown superimposed over a different 5-sec video of an environment (e.g., a playground, a traffic scene, or a grocery store), participants were asked to recognize 50 of the words and 50 of the video scenes. On the test, half of the studied words were shown superimposed over the same video contexts that had been present at encoding, and half were shown over new scenes. Similarly, videos were presented with either old or new words. Context reinstatement increased hits and reduced false alarms for words, but word reinstatement did not affect recognition of video contexts. The results suggest that the associations that bind word events with their contexts may not be bidirectional.     

Preschoolers' knowledge about strategies in coping with other's disgust evoked by immoral actions

40 preschoolers in Exp. 1 and 22 in Exp. 2 (mean ages were both 5:11) were shown short stories presented as colored videotaped pictures with explanatory narrations. In each story a recipient felt disgusted by an agent's action. In Exp. 1 the agent's action was immoral. The participants were asked to tell how the agent would behave, supposing they were the agent themselves. About 80% of their answers were prosocial. In Exp. 2, two kinds of story were shown. In one, the agent hurt the recipient intentionally; in the other, by accident. Almost all answers in both kinds of story were prosocial. Furthermore, over a third of the participants told the reasons for their answers, considering the recipient's emotion, even when the agent's action was intentional and immoral. These findings show that the preschoolers had suitable knowledge about the agent's strategies in coping with the recipient's disgust.     

Role of expertise and action in motion extrapolation from real road scenes

The tendency of participants to “remember” the stopping point of an event as being farther along in the direction of motion has been a topic of study for about 30 years. The purpose of the present experiment was to test the influence of two factors on motion extrapolation: (1) The involvement of participants in the action, and (2) their expertise in the domain of automobile driving. Participants viewed real driving scenes from the driver's point of view. They were divided into four groups depending upon their involvement in the action (more or less active) and their driving experience (inexperienced or experienced). In order to get half of the participants involved in the driving situation, they had to use a steering wheel to follow the contour of the road. The results showed that both of these factors increased motion extrapolation. The discussion deals with how the interrelationships between real road scenes, expertise, and action-related knowledge affect motion extrapolation.     

Risk perception and risky choice: Situational, informational and dispositional effects

We investigated how situational (gain–loss), informational (opportunity–threat framing) and dispositional (achievement motive and avoidance motive) variables affected opportunity–threat perception and risky choice in managerial decision-making contexts. In Study 1, the risk preference of the participants showed a reflection effect due to situational differences (gain or loss) and a partial framing effect caused by presenting the same choice information in terms of either opportunities or threats. However, both effects were in the opposite direction of predictions from prospect theory. Gains and positive framing enhanced risk-seeking preference whereas losses and negative framing augmented risk-averse preference. Risk-seeking choices were mediated by opportunity perception whereas risk-averse choices were mediated by threat perception. In Study 2, the participants high in achievement motive perceived greater opportunities in a negative situation, and the participants high in avoidance motive perceived greater threats in a positive situation, suggesting that ambition (achievement motive) operates more significantly in the face of adversities whereas cautiousness (avoidance motive) functions more significantly in prosperity.     

What if they knocked down the library and nobody noticed? The failure to detect large changes to familiar scenes

The purpose of the current study was to investigate people's ability to detect changes to familiar scenes. College students were asked either to identify what was wrong with a picture of a familiar location on their college campus (e.g., the library had been removed from the scene), or to estimate the difficulty of change detection for a hypothetical cohort performing the same task. Performance in the change-detection condition was extremely poor, even when changes were large. Participants who were familiar with the scenes and those who were unfamiliar with the scenes both overestimated the actual levels of change-detection performance. A follow-up analysis indicated that the participants who were unfamiliar with the scenes produced estimations of difficulty that were highly correlated with the mathematical area of the change, whereas participants who were familiar with the scenes produced estimations of difficulty that were highly correlated with the actual difficulty of change detection. The results indicate that people's visual long-term memory for familiar scenes lacks the precision to be able to effectively identify even large-scale changes, although subjectively people believe this should be relatively easy.     

On the optimal degree of fluctuations in practice for motor learning

In human movement science, it is widely accepted that random practice generally enhances complex motor-skill learning compared to repetitive practice. In two experiments, a particular variability-related concept is put to empirical test, namely the concept of differencial learning (DL), which assumes (i) that learners should not be distracted from task-space exploration by corrections, and (ii) that learning is facilitated by large inter-trial fluctuations. In both experiments, the advantage of DL over repetitive learning was not statistically significant. Moreover, learning was more pronounced when participants either received corrections in addition to DL (Exp. 1) or practiced in an order in which differences between consecutive trials were relatively small (Exp. 2). These findings suggest that the positive DL effects reported in literature cannot be attributed to the reduction of feedback or to the increase of inter-trial fluctuations. These results are discussed in the light of the structural-learning approach and the two-state model of motor learning in which structure-related learning effects are distinguished from the capability to adapt to current changes.     

What if they knocked down the library and nobody noticed? The failure to detect large changes to familiar scenes

The purpose of the current study was to investigate people's ability to detect changes to familiar scenes. College students were asked either to identify what was wrong with a picture of a familiar location on their college campus (e.g., the library had been removed from the scene), or to estimate the difficulty of change detection for a hypothetical cohort performing the same task. Performance in the change-detection condition was extremely poor, even when changes were large. Participants who were familiar with the scenes and those who were unfamiliar with the scenes both overestimated the actual levels of change-detection performance. A follow-up analysis indicated that the participants who were unfamiliar with the scenes produced estimations of difficulty that were highly correlated with the mathematical area of the change, whereas participants who were familiar with the scenes produced estimations of difficulty that were highly correlated with the actual difficulty of change detection. The results indicate that people's visual long-term memory for familiar scenes lacks the precision to be able to effectively identify even large-scale changes, although subjectively people believe this should be relatively easy.     

Visual search for arbitrary objects in real scenes

How efficient is visual search in real scenes? In searches for targets among arrays of randomly placed distractors, efficiency is often indexed by the slope of the reaction time (RT) × Set Size function. However, it may be impossible to define set size for real scenes. As an approximation, we hand-labeled 100 indoor scenes and used the number of labeled regions as a surrogate for set size. In Experiment 1, observers searched for named objects (a chair, bowl, etc.). With set size defined as the number of labeled regions, search was very efficient (~5 ms/item). When we controlled for a possible guessing strategy in Experiment 2, slopes increased somewhat (~15 ms/item), but they were much shallower than search for a random object among other distinctive objects outside of a scene setting (Exp. 3: ~40 ms/item). In Experiments 4–6, observers searched repeatedly through the same scene for different objects. Increased familiarity with scenes had modest effects on RTs, while repetition of target items had large effects (>500 ms). We propose that visual search in scenes is efficient because scene-specific forms of attentional guidance can eliminate most regions from the “functional set size” of items that could possibly be the target.