Mode distinctions in knowing: The view from perception. Comments on Rönnberg (1990)

Information available for perception has been shown to be specific, to have validity extending over time, and to be meaningful. Thus, cognition cannot be distinguished as that which exclusively provides adaptive coherence of action and reliance on constraints. Transitions between perception and memory/cognition, as two qualitatively distinct modes of knowing, must instead be expected to occur for purposes of ensuring optimal utilization of information relative to its temporal validity and usefulness.     

A commentary on Rönnberg's distinction between perception and cognition

In a commentary on a note by Rönnberg (Rönnberg, J. On the distinction between perception and cognition. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology , 1990, 31 , 154–156), it is argued that one of Rönnberg's criteria for theoretically distinguishing perception from cognition, that of different biological purposes, is invalid. Congruent with a broad definition of perception and cognition which most researchers agree upon, Rönnberg's two other criteria essentially state that how internally represented information is processed distinguishes between perception and cognition. However, the more strict criterion of whether explicit retrieval of information from memory is necessary is too dependent on a particular, rather limited theoretical framework. A third, less theory-dependent criterion of whether the information available in the stimulus is sufficient to account for comprehension may be useful in research which investigates hypotheses about similarities between perception and cognition.     

Women’s perception of men’s sensation seeking propensity from their dance movements

Risk-taking behaviour in men, an expression of the more general personality trait sensation seeking, has been hypothesized to be an evolved aspect of male psychology that arose through sexual selection. Sensation seeking could be seen as a costly behavioural trait that signals a man’s health and vigour and is preferred by women. This study extends knowledge about risk-taking as a cue in human mate choice by examining whether women can perceive men’s sensation seeking propensity (assessed with the Sensation Seeking Scale Form V; SSS-V) by viewing their dance movements. We videotaped 50 men’s dancing and had 60 women judge each dancer on perceived attractiveness and risk-taking. A positive and significant correlation was found between women’s attractiveness judgements and male’s SSS-V total score, thrill and adventure seeking, disinhibition and boredom susceptibility. Further, women’s risk-taking judgements were related to men’s boredom susceptibility. We conclude that (i) male sensation seeking propensity is signalled via their dance movements, and (ii) women are sensitive to these cues as they consider men who score high on sensation seeking as attractive. We discuss our results with reference to the evolutionary psychology concept of sexual selection and mate preferences.     

Impulsivity,sensation seeking and reproductive behaviour: A life history perspective

Impulsivity has often been invoked as a proximate driver of different life-history strategies. However, conceptualisations of “impulsivity” are inconsistent and ambiguities exist regarding which facets of impulsivity are actually involved in the canalisation of reproductive strategies. Two variables commonly used to represent impulsivity were examined in relation to reproductive behaviour. Results demonstrated that sensation seeking was significantly related to strategy-based behaviour, but impulsivity (defined as a failure to deliberate) was only weakly correlated. The effect of impulsivity disappeared when sensation seeking was controlled. Sex differences emerged for sensation seeking but not impulsivity. We conclude that “impulsivity” is not a unitary trait and that clearer distinctions should be made between facets of this construct.     

Differentiation and unification in perception and cognition

It has been suggested that the development of distinctions between perception and cognition depends upon the perspective and the level of analysis chosen. Similarly, the unification of perception and cognition may be achieved from other perspectives and when other levels of analyses are applied. The fruitfulness, and disadvantages, of diverse suggestions for differentation/unification of perception and cognition are discussed briefly.     

Detection,not perception: A reply to Glazer

This article responds to Glazer’s claim that signals must be perceptible as well as his purported counterexample to my conditions for signaling. I defend a broader sense of signal detection that allows for imperceptible signals. While we disagree over the belief-signaling thesis, Glazer and I have great agreement over the social functions of belief.     

Causal perception of action-and-reaction sequences in 8- to 10-month-olds

Four experiments with 202 8- to 10-month-old infants studied their sensitivity to causation-at-a-distance in schematic events seen as goal-directed action and reaction by adults and whether this depends on attributes associated with animate agents. In Experiment 1, a red square moved toward a blue square without making contact; in “reaction” events blue moved away while red was approaching, whereas in “delay” events blue started after red stopped. Infants were habituated to one event and then tested on its reversal. Spatiotemporal features reversed for both events, but causal roles changed only in reversed reactions. Infants dishabituated more to reversed reaction events than to reversed delay events. Squares moved rigidly or in a nonrigid animal-like fashion. Infants discriminated these, but motion pattern did not affect responses to reversal. Infants also discriminated reactions from launching and dishabituated to reversed reactions lacking self-initiated motion. These results suggest that sensitivity to causation-at-a-distance depends on the event structure but not pattern or onset typical of animal motion.     

A probabilistic model of melody perception

This study presents a probabilistic model of melody perception, which infers the key of a melody and also judges the probability of the melody itself. The model uses Bayesian reasoning: For any "surface" pattern and underlying "structure," we can infer the structure maximizing P (structure|surface) based on knowledge of P (surface, structure). The probability of the surface can then be calculated as ∑ P (surface, structure), summed over all structures. In this case, the surface is a pattern of notes; the structure is a key. A generative model is proposed, based on three principles: (a) melodies tend to remain within a narrow pitch range; (b) note-to-note intervals within a melody tend to be small; and (c) notes tend to conform to a distribution (or key profile) that depends on the key. The model is tested in three ways. First, it is tested on its ability to identify the keys of a set of folksong melodies. Second, it is tested on a melodic expectation task in which it must judge the probability of different notes occurring given a prior context; these judgments are compared with perception data from a melodic expectation experiment. Finally, the model is tested on its ability to detect incorrect notes in melodies by assigning them lower probabilities than the original versions.     

Multiple sclerosis,emotion perception and social functioning

People with multiple sclerosis (MS) can experience problems in interpreting others’ emotions from faces or voices. However, to date little is known about whether difficulties in emotion perception in MS are related to broader aspects of social functioning. Also, there are few studies reporting the effect of MS on more ecologically valid assessments of emotion perception using multimodal videos. The current study looks at (1) the effect of MS on perceiving emotions from faces, voices and multimodal videos; (2) the possible role of slowed processing and executive dysfunction in emotion perception problems in MS and (3) the relationship between emotion perception and broader social functioning in MS. 53 people with MS and 31 healthy controls completed tasks of emotion perception and cognition, and assessed their levels of social support and social participation. Participants with MS performed worse than demographically matched controls on all measures of emotion perception. Emotion perception performance was related to cognitive measures in those with MS. Also, significant associations were found between emotion perception difficulties in MS and poorer social function. In particular, people with MS who had poorer emotion perception also reported lower levels of social support from their friends, and regression analysis showed that this prediction was maintained even when disease severity and cognitive function were taken into account. These results show that problems with emotion perception in MS extend to more realistic tasks and may predict key aspects of social functioning.     

Relative contribution of perception/cognition and language on spatial categorization

This study investigated the relative contribution of perception/cognition and language-specific semantics in nonverbal categorization of spatial relations. English and Korean speakers completed a video-based similarity judgment task involving containment, support, tight fit, and loose fit. Both perception/cognition and language served as resources for categorization, and allocation between the two depended on the target relation and the features contrasted in the choices. Whereas perceptual/cognitive salience for containment and tight-fit features guided categorization in many contexts, language-specific semantics influenced categorization where the two features competed for similarity judgment and when the target relation was tight support, a domain where spatial relations are perceptually diverse. In the latter contexts, each group categorized more in line with semantics of their language, that is, containment/support for English and tight/loose fit for Korean. We conclude that language guides spatial categorization when perception/cognition alone is not sufficient. In this way, language is an integral part of our cognitive domain of space.     

How extending your middle finger affects your perception of others: Learned movements influence concept accessibility

Body movements both express and influence how people feel and think. Conceptualizations of this bidirectional influence assume that movement-concept associations can be innate or learned, although evidence for learned associations remained ambiguous. Providing a conservative test of learned movement-concept associations, two studies investigate the influence of culture-specific body movements, which involve an arbitrary relationship between movements and associated concepts. Paralleling the influence of hostility primes, extending the middle finger influenced the interpretation of ambiguously aggressive behaviors as hostile, but did not influence unrelated trait judgments (Study 1). Paralleling the effects of global evaluative primes, upward extension of the thumb resulted in more positive evaluations of the same target along all trait dimensions and higher liking of the target (Study 2).     

Re-evaluating evidence for linguistic relativity: reply to Boroditsky (2001)

Six unsuccessful attempts at replicating a key finding in the linguistic relativity literature [Boroditsky, L. (2001). Does language shape thought?: Mandarin and English speakers' conceptions of time. Cognitive Psychology, 43, 1-22] are reported. In addition to these empirical issues in replicating the original finding, theoretical issues present in the original report are discussed. In sum, we conclude that Boroditsky (2001) provides no support for the Whorfian hypothesis.     

时序知觉影响因素与思考

时序知觉是在几十毫秒到几百毫秒内, 对事件的同时性、非同时性和顺序性的知觉。对时序知觉的影响因素的探索可分为自下而上和自上而下两种研究取向。自下而上的研究探讨刺激的物理特征、被试的生物学特征, 以及实验方法对时序知觉的影响。而自上而下的研究探讨因果信念、情绪、文化对时序知觉的影响。今后的研究还应结合行为实验与神经科学技术, 深入探讨时序知觉的两种加工方式是分离的还是同时进行的, 以及揭示控制时序加工的脑区。     

Prospective and concurrent correlates of emotion perception in psychotic disorders: A naturalistic,longitudinal study of neurocognition,affective blunting and avolition

This naturalistic study investigated longitudinal and cross‐sectional symptomatic and neurocognitive correlates of social cognition indexed by emotion perception. Participants were 31 persons admitted to a psychiatric emergency ward due to acute psychosis. Positive and negative (i.e., affective blunting and avolition) symptoms were assessed at baseline and 12‐month follow‐up using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. Participants completed neuropsychological assessments with alternative versions of the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status at baseline and at 12‐month follow‐up. Emotion perception was measured using the Face/Voice Emotion Test at 12‐month follow‐up. Correlational analyses (Spearman's rho) revealed strong and statistically significant associations between neurocognition and emotion perception (baseline r = 0.58, follow‐up r = 0.43). Associations between positive symptoms and emotion perception were weak or non‐existent (baseline r = 0.13, follow‐up r  =  –0.01). Emotion perception was moderately, but not significantly, associated with affective blunting at follow‐up (r = 0.33), but not at baseline (r = 0.21). The association with avolition was non‐existent (baseline r  =  –0.05, follow‐up r = 0.01). This study supports the notion that emotion perception has neurocognitive correlates. The cross‐sectional trend level association with affective blunting suggests that the ability to perceive emotions might be related to, but dissociable from the ability to express emotions.     

Eye movements and hazard perception in active and passive driving

ABSTRACT

Differences in eye movement patterns are often found when comparing passive viewing paradigms to actively engaging in everyday tasks. Arguably, investigations into visuomotor control should therefore be most useful when conducted in settings that incorporate the intrinsic link between vision and action. We present a study that compares oculomotor behaviour and hazard reaction times across a simulated driving task and a comparable, but passive, video-based hazard perception task. We found that participants scanned the road less during the active driving task and fixated closer to the front of the vehicle. Participants were also slower to detect the hazards in the driving task. Our results suggest that the interactivity of simulated driving places increased demand upon the visual and attention systems than simply viewing driving movies. We offer insights into why these differences occur and explore the possible implications of such findings within the wider context of driver training and assessment.     

Formal,systematic, and metasystematic operations with a balance-beam task series: A reply to Kallio's claim of no distinct systematic stage

This reply discusses the measurement of formal, systematic, and metasystematic stages. Recent multidomain studies have shown disparate results and we suggest that these results could be attributed not to actual variations in adult development or the existence or non-existence of stage, but instead may reflect differences in methodology regarding task, domain, and scoring. Our study indicates that when tested in only one domain—balance beams and extensions of those tasks—participants who performed at the higher stage were also able to perform at the lower stages. These results also coincide with similar studies conducted.