Judging pictorial and linguistic aspects of space

A test is made of the notion that Stroop-like interference and facilitation effects arise from two different sources, one pictorial and the other linguistic. It was hypothesized that when irrelevant information is pictorial, it interferes with a pictorial code used in the processing of the relevant information; when it is linguistic, it interferes with a linguistic code. The experiment required subjects to respond to (1) the meaning of a spatial word, t2) its absolute position, or (3) its relative position, while attempting to ignore the two irrelevant dimensions of the display. It was found that word meaning and absolute position information affected the speed of relative position judgments in an additive manner. No other Stroop-like effects were found. The results supported the hypothesis under test. It was concluded that the existence of different kinds of Stroop effect must be accommodated by current models of the phenomenon.     

Pictorial depth interpretation: A prerequisite to pictorial space comprehension

One hundred and seventy-two perceptually untrained Grade 3 Shona school children, urban and rural, were presented with, and tested orally on, six pictures containing structured depth cues. Eighty per cent of the children achieved consistent (6/6) pictorial depth interpretation (p.d.i.) in response to the oral instruments, whereas only 69% mean p.d.i. had been attained by Grade 2 & 4 children in response to the non-verbal instruments of Jahoda and McGurk (1974). Of the 24% of the children who achieved consistent pictorial space comprehension (p.s.c.) all but two (less than 5%) were also capable of p.d.i. To establish that p.s.c. is preceded by p.d.i., and does not occur simultaneously with it, 86 children, trained perceptually for pictorial depth, were similarly tested. Of the 26% gain in consistent p.s.c., almost half occurred amongst children necessarily already capable of p.d.i. Further, it was noted that the inhibition of p.d.i., like that of p.s.c. (Leach, 1975, 1977), resulting from excessively abstract line drawings, was reduced by the use of more realistic materials such as photographs.     

Ambiguity in pictorial depth

Pictorial space is the 3-D impression that one obtains when looking 'into' a 2-D picture. One is aware of 3-D 'opaque' objects. 'Pictorial reliefs' are the surfaces of such pictorial objects in 'pictorial space'. Photographs (or any pictures) do in no way fully specify physical scenes. Rather, any photograph is compatible with an infinite number of possible scenes that may be called 'metameric scenes'. If pictorial relief is one of these metameric scenes, the response may be considered 'veridical'. The conventional usage is more restrictive and is indeed inconsistent. Thus the observer has much freedom in arriving at such a 'veridical' response. To address this ambiguity, we determined the pictorial reliefs for eight observers, six pictures, and two psychophysical methods. We used 'methods of cross-sections' to operationalise pictorial reliefs. We find that linear regression of the depths of relief at corresponding locations in the picture for different observers often lead to very low (even insignificant) R2s. Thus the responses are idiosyncratic to a large degree. Perhaps surprisingly, we also observed that multiple regression of depth and picture coordinates at corresponding locations often lead to very high R2s. Often R2s increased from insignificant up to almost 1. Apparently, to a large extent 'depth' is irrelevant as a psychophysical variable, in the sense that it does not uniquely account for the relation of the response to the pictorial structure. This clearly runs counter to the bulk of the literature on pictorial 'depth perception'. The invariant core of interindividual perception proves to be of an 'affine' rather than a Euclidean nature; that is to say, 'pictorial space' is not simply the picture plane augmented with a depth dimension.     

Size scaling in two-dimensional pictorial arrays

The study examined effects of instructional sets (objective, phenomenal, projective, and retinal) on the judged sizes of blocks placed at various “distances” in a pictorial array. Magnitude estimations of size were consistent with previous studies of size constancy in three-dimensional arrays. Chronometric analyses indicated that reaction time increased with distal size, but was not affected by perceived distance. The results suggested that size was scaled relative to a perceptual unit. Instructions affected the nature of the scale unit (proximal vs. distal), but not the scaling process itself.     

Interference in memory for pictorial information

Subjects studied either faces composed from visual features or verbal facts composed from concepts. Recognition times were increased for both faces and facts when they were composed of elements that occurred in multiple study items. In Experiment 1 the interfering effect of other study items was much larger for verbal facts than for faces. This difference was largely eliminated in Experiment 2 where care was taken to control the features by which the faces were encoded. Experiment 2 also showed that verbal information could interfere with pictorial information and vice versa. However, this cross-modality interference was much weaker than within-modality interference. The data are consistent with the ACT theory in which pictorial material and verbal material are stored together in an abstract propositional network. The subnode model (Anderson, Language, memory, and thought, Hillsdale, N. J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1976) can account for the greater within- than cross-modality interference.     

Rotation of objects in pictures viewed at an angle: evidence for different properties of two types of pictorial space

As an observer views a picture from different viewing angles, objects in the picture appear to change orientation relative to the observer, but some objects change orientation more than others. This difference in rotation for different objects is called the differential rotation effect. The differential rotation is not, however, accompanied by corresponding changes in the perception of the spatial layout of objects in the picture. This lack of correspondence between the perception of rotation and the perception of spatial layout is a result of the fact that the information on a picture's surface defines two kinds of pictorial space with different properties. Rotation is perceived in terms of the pictorial space outside the picture, and spatial layout is perceived in terms of the pictorial space inside the picture.     

Recognition memoryfor pictorial events

Subjects viewed sequences of slides depicting everyday events, and in later recognition tests, they correctly rejected distractors that were inconsistent with some invariant of the event but falsely accepted consistent distractors. J. J. Jenkins has accounted for the differential recognition of consistent and inconsistent slides of pictorial sequences in terms of fusion, the abstraction of an event from a series of temporally related items. The conditions under which event fusion was likely to occur were manipulated in three experiments: degree of ordering of the action-sequence slides, semantic vs. nonsemantic orienting tasks during acquisition, and duration of retention interval Recognition performance was generally more accurate under conditions of semantic processing, ordered acquisition sequences (for the semantic task), and shorter retention intervals. However, these variables did not affect differential recognition of consistent vs. inconsistent slides. A further experiment showed that the absence of an effect of disordering acquisition sequences on differential recognition could not be attributed to subjects’ reordering the disordered sequences in a way consistent with the original event. The data did not support the hypothesis that recognition performance was based on fusion of events depicted by temporally ordered slide sequences. It was suggested that memory for featural detail is a relevant factor in performance.     

Common and specific features in pictorial analogies

Pictures belonging to different domains (cups and persons), as well as pictures belonging to the same domains (cups or persons only), were used to construct analogies of various paradigms. Pictures from different domains shared three common features, while pictures within each domain had two features specific to that domain. When no specific feature change was introduced, an asymmetry of the paradigms IA cup is to B cup as R person is to S person and P person is to Q person as C cup is to D cup) was obtained as an extension of the theory of metaphoricity (Ortony, 1979) predicted. When specific feature changes were introduced, however, the obtained results were not as the extended theory would predict. An alternative model that emphasizes the function of a set of reference feature changes in extraction and comparison of the feature changes that may exist in the first and second terms was proposed to account for the experimental findings.     

Generation of a pictorial code

In Experiments I and II direct measures were obtained of the time required to convert a picture or a sentence to a report of visualization or to a simple drawing, latencies were faster for pictures than for sentences and were affected by the surface form of the sentence. In Experiment Ill, Ss matched pictures or sentences against a test picture under conditions of simultaneous or successive presentation. “Yes” and “No” response times were affected by sentence form under both conditions, although the difference between sentence-picture and picture-picture comparisons was virtually eliminated under the successive condition. In Experiment IV, Ss held a sentence or picture in memory over a 1,500-msec interval at the end of which a test picture or an instruction to draw the design was presented. Construction latencies were shorter in response to pictures than sentences, and there were effects of sentence form on verification time. Some implications of these results are discussed.