Information displays and preference reversals

Preference reversals occur when a decision maker prefers one option to another in one response mode but reverses that ordering when preferences are elicited in another response mode. We report the results of two experiments which significantly impact the frequency of preference reversals. Specifically, when the probabilities are displayed in a format which appears harder to process, the frequency of reversals is increased. Process-tracing evidence suggests that decision-makers also shifted information processing strategies as a function of information format. We discuss the implications for theories of preference reversals and strategy selection, and for the design of information displays.     

Context and learning in the processing of Information from brief visual displays

Research on visual detection with tachisto scopically presented multiple-element displays has indicated that a nonrandom sample of the elements is processed on any trial. The effect of learning on the sample composition was assessed with a task in which S reported whether matrices of nine letters contained one or two Xs. After a first session involving two-signal displays with signal pairs oriented either horizontally or vertically, two groups of nine Ss saw only one signal-pair orientation, while a comparison group continued to see all display types. The group that switched to all-vertical orientation significantly out-improved and outperformed the comparison group on the vertical two-signal displays, demonstrating that the central processing mechanism may adapt to take advantage of display pattern regularities.     

Selective encoding from multielement visual displays

When a multiletter display is preceded by a bar designating one of the letters for report, reaction time (RT) to voice the indicated letter decreases. Previous research had indicated that the efficiency of this selective mechanism decreases as the number of display elements increases. Two experiments were conducted to determine whether the effect of display size could be eliminated when the indicator precedes the display at long intervals. Results indicated that the display size effect was maintained. The results could not be attributed to eye movements, but were interpreted in terms of a central encoding mechanism that is limited in its precision of localization and exclusion.     

Information search and decision making: The effects of information displays

Information display boards may be used to test assumptions about underlying cognitive processes in decision situations. However, the question may be raised whether information processing in a complex decision situation is indepemdent of the structure of the information display board used. In a study employing 96 subjects, the design of the information display board, the number of alternatives, and the number of attributes were varied. Twelve groups of eight subjects were presented with one hypothetical choice among riskless multiattribute decision alternatives (apartments). Results showed that information search patterns were not influenced by the design of the information display board, but that the relative number of attributes included in the decision process was. The number of available attributes appeared to be the strongest determinant of information search patterns. A higher number of attributes induced information search patterns consistent with the noncompensatory conjunctive decision rule. It is suggested that the decision situation employed, which forced the decision maker to remember each piece of information acquired, underlies the difference between the results in the present study and previous findings.     

Integration of information from multiple element displays

This experiment examined the processing of information from multiple element visual displays, using techniques derived from the theory of signal detectability. The method allows one to specify how observers integrate information from individual elements of a display. The experiment tested numerical and graphical displays having different display sizes, durations, and arrangements of elements. Observer performance increased with the number, m, of display elements, but at less than the ideal √m rate. Observer performance was consistent with a model of information integration constrained by internal noise. Linear arrays of elements resulted in better performance than did square arrays. Graphically coded elements resulted in better performance than did numerical elements. Observer decision weighting of element information from graphical displays was approximately uniform across spatial position, but the weighting of information from numerical displays was concentrated on elements near the fixation point.     

Understanding intention from minimal displays of human activity

The impression of animacy from the motion of simple shapes typically relies on synthetically defined motion patterns resulting in pseudorepresentations of human movement. Thus, it is unclear how these synthetic motions relate to actual biological agents. To clarify this relationship, we introduce a novel approach that uses video processing to reduce full-video displays of human interactions to animacy displays, thus creating animate shapes whose motions are directly derived from human actions. Furthermore, this technique facilitates the comparison of interactions in animacy displays from different viewpoints-an area that has yet to be researched. We introduce two experiments in which animacy displays were created showing six dyadic interactions from two viewpoints, incorporating cues altering the quantity of the visual information available. With a six-alternative forced choice task, results indicate that animacy displays can be created via this naturalistic technique and reveal a previously unreported advantage for viewing intentional motion from an overhead viewpoint.     

Sociodemographic correlates of assimilation of refugees from Kurdistan

Successful assimilation of refugees in their host country is an important prerequisite of psychological well-being. Refugees' satisfaction in the new country is one of key indicators of their assimilation. The satisfaction with their host country was assessed for 54 Kurdish refugees of mean age of 35.8 yr. (SD= 10.9) via an 8-item rating scale partly based on Cernovsky's Assimilation Scale. The 36 men and 18 women had resided in the host country for a mean of 4.5 yr. (SD=4.0). An overall score was calculated from ratings of satisfaction with personal safety, health, employment, food, financial security, social life, and entertainment. This overall score was unrelated to age, sex, and employment status. Those who emigrated at a younger age (r = -.28, p = .03) and those with lower education reported more satisfaction with their host country (r = -.28, p = .03) perhaps because they could more easily and rapidly re-establish social status comparable to what they had in their homeland than could older refugees from Kurdistan's higher educational strata.     

Recognition of self-generated actions from kinematic displays of drawing

Five experiments addressed the question of whether individuals can distinguish between self-generated and other-generated actions when seeing their visual effects. Each experiment consisted of a recording session in which participants drew familiar and unfamiliar characters without receiving visual feedback and a recognition session in which they provided self-or-other judgments (SOJs) to indicate whether a kinematic display reproduced the visual effects of their own actions. The main results were that self-generated and other-generated drawing can be distinguished, that the familiarity of character shapes does not influence the accuracy of SOJs, and that velocity information is crucial for the identification of self-generated drawing. The ability to determine authorship from kinematic displays of drawing provides evidence for the contribution of action-planning structures to perception.     

Constructing representations of spatial location from briefly presented displays

Spatial memory and reasoning rely heavily on allocentric (often map-like) representations of spatial knowledge. While research has documented many ways in which spatial information can be represented in allocentric form, less is known about how such representations are constructed. For example: Are the very early, pre-attentive parts of the process hard-wired, or can they be altered by experience? We addressed this issue by presenting sub-saccadic (53 ms) masked stimuli consisting of a target among one to three reference features. We then shifted the location of the feature array, and asked participants to identify the target’s new relative location. Experience altered feature processing even when the display duration was too short to allow attention re-allocation. The results demonstrate the importance of early perceptual processes in the creation of representations of spatial location, and the malleability of those processes based on experience and expectations.     

Involuntary processing of social dominance cues from bimodal face-voice displays

Social-rank cues communicate social status or social power within and between groups. Information about social-rank is fluently processed in both visual and auditory modalities. So far, the investigation on the processing of social-rank cues has been limited to studies in which information from a single modality was assessed or manipulated. Yet, in everyday communication, multiple information channels are used to express and understand social-rank. We sought to examine the (in)voluntary nature of processing of facial and vocal signals of social-rank using a cross-modal Stroop task. In two experiments, participants were presented with face-voice pairs that were either congruent or incongruent in social-rank (i.e. social dominance). Participants’ task was to label face social dominance while ignoring the voice, or label voice social dominance while ignoring the face. In both experiments, we found that face-voice incongruent stimuli were processed more slowly and less accurately than were the congruent stimuli in the face-attend and the voice-attend tasks, exhibiting classical Stroop-like effects. These findings are consistent with the functioning of a social-rank bio-behavioural system which consistently and automatically monitors one’s social standing in relation to others and uses that information to guide behaviour.     

Visual attention: Race models for selection from multielement displays

Summary A choice model for partial report from briefly exposed visual displays (Bundesen, Shibuya, & Larsen, 1985) is further investigated and related to a general class of selection models called independent race models. The choice model relates performance to the numbers of targets and distractors in the stimulus display by way of the choice axiom. In race models, the selection process is viewed as a race between items in the choice set toward a state of having been processed in that the first items reaching this state are the ones selected. If items are processed independently and processing times are exponentially distributed, selection occurs strictly in accordance with the choice axiom, so the race model is a choice model. The choice model also seems to work as a good approximation for independent race models based on other gamma distributions than the exponential one.     

Inferring task performance and confidence from displays of eye movements

Eye movements reveal what is at the center of people's attention, which is assumed to coincide with what they are thinking about. Eye-movement displays (visualizations of a person's fixations superimposed onto the stimulus, for example, as dots or circles) might provide useful information for diagnosing that person's performance. However, making inferences about a person's task performance based on eye-movement displays requires substantial interpretation. Using graph-comprehension tasks, we investigated to what extent observers (N = 46) could make accurate inferences about a performer's multiple-choice task performance (i.e., chosen answer), confidence, and competence from displays of that person's eye movements. Observers' accuracy when judging which answer the performer chose was above chance level and was higher for displays reflecting confident performance. Observers were also able to infer performers' confidence from the eye-movement displays; moreover, their own task performance and perceived similarity with the performer affected their judgments of the other's competence.     

Temporal and spatial characteristics of selective encoding from visual displays

The time required for Ss to voice a target letter in a visual display was studied as a function of the spatial proximity of two kinds of noise elements (letters or disks) to the target and as a function of when the noise elements were presented following the onset of the target letter. The results were not consistent with a focusing model of attention or selective encoding. Instead, there appears to be a small area in the visual field (about 1 deg of angle) in which all stimuli are processed in detail.     

Portraits as displays

Cynthia Freeland’s investigation of four kinds of ‘fidelity’ in portraiture is cut across by more general philosophical concerns. One is about what might be called the expression of persons--the persons or ‘inner selves’ of portrait subjects and of portrait artist: whether either is possible across each of the four kinds of fidelity, and whether these two kinds of expression are in tension. More fundamental is the problem of telling how self-expression is at all possible in any of these forms. Finally, she wonders how photography affects all these questions. This comment addresses portraiture not so much in terms of the four fidelities, but with another quartet of concepts: four ordinary types of ‘display’, in terms of which we see how artists’ self-expression is possible in all these forms, also including photography. Its key idea is that portraits are displays simply by being pictures or sculptures, which are kinds of artifacts, hence things that we perceive as having intentional affordance: that is, as being intentionally made ‘for’ something.

Prediction of facial displays from knowledge of norms of emotional expressiveness

A study was conducted to examine the accuracy of prediction of facial expressiveness from knowledge of the norms of expressiveness in same-sex and mixed-sex social interactions. Men and women subjects were videotaped while they viewed emotionally loaded stimulus slides and rated their responses to them. The edited videotapes were shown to judges who attempted to identify the emotion reported by each viewer for each slide. A separate group of subjects was asked to rate how acceptable or appropriate it is for a man or a woman to express each target emotion under the conditions of the slide-viewing study. The accuracy of emotion identification data correlated highly with acceptability ratings across emotions and sex pairings, although examined more closely, the data show this predictability only for same-sex pairings. Alternative explanations for these results in terms of display rules and the social demands of interactions are discussed.The authors wish to thank Alan Fridlund for helpful comments on a previous version of this paper.     

Perceptual acceleration of objects in stream: evidence from flash-lag displays

An object in continuous motion is perceived ahead of the briefly flashed object, although the two images are physically aligned (Nijhawan, 1994), the phenomenon called flash-lag effect. Flash-lag effects have been found also with other continuously changing features such as color, pattern entropy, and brightness (Sheth, Nijhawan, & Shimojo, 2000) as well as with streamed pre- and post-target input without any change of the feature values of streaming items in feature space (Bachmann & P?der, 2001a. 2001b). We interpret all instances of the flash-lag as a consequence of a more fundamental property of conscious perception in general: acceleration of the speed with which samples of perceptual information become represented in explicit format immediately after the stimulation onset. Decreased visual latency of the samples of stimulus information from the streamed input leads to the relative perceptual lag for the separately flashed stimulus because it is not preceded by adjacent sensory input that would have accelerated its perception. Experimental support for the notion of perceptual acceleration is reviewed.     

Exaggerating temporal differences enhances recognition of individuals from point light displays

Humans are very good at perceiving each other's movements. In this article, we investigate the role of time-based information in the recognition of individuals from point light biological motion sequences. We report an experiment in which we used an exaggeration technique that changes temporal properties while keeping spatial information constant; differences in the durations of motion segments are exaggerated relative to average values. Participants first learned to recognize six individuals on the basis of a simple, unexaggerated arm movement. Subsequently, they recognized positively exaggerated versions of those movements better than the originals. Absolute duration did not appear to be the critical cue. The results show that time-based cues are used for the recognition of movements and that exaggerating temporal differences improves performance. The results suggest that exaggeration may reflect general principles of how diagnostic information is encoded for recognition in different domains.