Relative speed of processing determines color–word contingency learning

In three experiments, we tested a relative-speed-of-processing account of color–word contingency learning, a phenomenon in which color identification responses to high-contingency stimuli (words that appear most often in particular colors) are faster than those to low-contingency stimuli. Experiment 1 showed equally large contingency-learning effects whether responding was to the colors or to the words, likely due to slow responding to both dimensions because of the unfamiliar mapping required by the key press responses. For Experiment 2, participants switched to vocal responding, in which reading words is considerably faster than naming colors, and we obtained a contingency-learning effect only for color naming, the slower dimension. In Experiment 3, previewing the color information resulted in a reduced contingency-learning effect for color naming, but it enhanced the contingency-learning effect for word reading. These results are all consistent with contingency learning influencing performance only when the nominally irrelevant feature is faster to process than the relevant feature, and therefore are entirely in accord with a relative-speed-of-processing explanation.     

Interaction of color and geometric cues in depth perception: When does “red” mean “near”?

Luminance and color are strong and self-sufficient cues to pictorial depth in visual scenes and images. The present study investigates the conditions under which luminance or color either strengthens or overrides geometric depth cues. We investigated how luminance contrast associated with the color red and color contrast interact with relative height in the visual field, partial occlusion, and interposition to determine the probability that a given figure presented in a pair is perceived as nearer than the other. Latencies of near responses were analyzed to test for effects of attentional selection. Figures in a pair were supported by luminance contrast (Experiment 1) or isoluminant color contrast (Experiment 2) and combined with one of the three geometric cues. The results of Experiment 1 show that the luminance contrast of a color (here red), when it does not interact with other colors, produces the same effects as achromatic luminance contrasts. The probability of near increases with the luminance contrast of the color stimulus, the latencies for near responses decrease with increasing luminance contrast. Partial occlusion is found to be a strong enough pictorial cue to support a weaker red luminance contrast. Interposition cues lose out against cues of spatial position and partial occlusion. The results of Experiment 2, with isoluminant displays of varying color contrast, reveal that red color contrast on a light background supported by any of the three geometric cues wins over green or white supported by any of the three geometric cues. On a dark background, red color contrast supported by the interposition cue loses out against green or white color contrast supported by partial occlusion. These findings reveal that color is not an independent depth cue, but is strongly influenced by luminance contrast and stimulus geometry. Systematically shorter response latencies for stronger near percepts demonstrate that selective visual attention reliably detects the most likely depth cue combination in a given configuration.     

Discrimination and matching within and between hues measured by reaction times: some implications for categorical perception and levels of information processing

Summary Same-different reaction times (RTs) were obtained for pairs of color samples ranging perceptually from blue to green. In Experiment 1, observers responded with same if both stimuli in a pair were from the same hue category (i.e., blue-blue or green-green) or different if the two stimuli were from different hue categories (i.e., blue-green or green-blue). RT for same responses was faster for pairs of physically identical stimuli (A-A) than for pairs of physically different stimuli (A-a) belonging to the same hue. RT for different responses was faster for larger physical differences across a boundary between hues (A-B 6 step) than for smaller physical differences (A-B 2 step). Experiment 2 replicated and extended these findings: In one phase observers matched pairs of stimuli as same or different by categorical similarity as in Experiment 1, and in a second phase observers matched the same stimulus pairs, this time by physical similarity. Matching by categorical similarity replicated the pattern of results found in Experiment 1. Matching by physical similarity showed that RTs for different responses were equivalently fast independent of the physical difference between A-B pairs, but were faster for A-B than for A-a comparisons. Further, matching identity was faster under categorical match instructions than under physical match instructions. Results of the two experiments support a model of parallel processing of physical and categorical stimulus information in color perception. Further, these reaction-time data and their implications in color perception (for hues) parallel reaction-time data and their implications in speech perception (for phonemes).     

What really is turquoise? A note on the evolution of color terms

Summary In order to distinguish between the relativistic and the universalistic sematics in color terms, formal models in the framework of fuzzy-set theory are developed. These models can be used to generate empirically testable hypotheses about response latencies and the distribution of color terms in the visual spectrum.In Experiment I subjects had to name 20 colors in the blue-green area of the spectrum and 20 in the yellow-red area. Although the relative frequency data did not favor either model, the decision time data favored a specific universalistic model.Experiment II was intended to clarify the behavioral effects of basicality by investigating the differences in color naming of users and non-users of derived color terms as turquoise and orange. For users frequency data as well as response latencies from the unrestricted color-naming task conformed well with the predictions derived from the specific universalistic model, whereas the data for the non-users fell in between this model and the MIN-rule model. These results can be accounted for by a continuous model for basicality with a basicality parameter r.I want to thank J. Freyd/Stanford, P. Kay/Berkeley, and C. Freksa/Munich who have read earlier versions of this paper and have made many valuable suggestions concerning the theoretical framework, the readability and the style in general. The discussion about the experimental results in L. Zadeh's seminar in Berkeley has stimulated me to work further on a unified theory of color naming. The motivating critique of two anonymous reviewers has helped me to express the results more clearly and to rethink the arguments more thoroughly     

道德概念的隐喻表征——从红白颜色、左右位置和正斜字体的维度

随着具身认知的兴起和发展,道德隐喻的研究焕发新活力。在此背景下,本研究从红白颜色、左右位置和正斜字体三个维度考察道德概念的隐喻表征。实验1的结果显示,红白颜色可能并不与道德概念存在隐喻表征。实验2表明,左右位置与道德概念交互作用显著,左边、右边位置分别与不道德概念、道德概念存在一致的隐喻表征。实验3发现,正斜字体对道德概念的判断具有干扰作用,正体字与道德词汇隐喻表征一致,斜体字与不道德词汇隐喻表征一致。研究表明:左右位置、正斜字体与道德概念存在一定的隐喻联结。     

Egocentric and relative spatial codes in S-R compatibility

Summary It has been shown that spatial compatibility is due to a comparison between the spatial codes that describe stimulus and response positions. Such codes are often defined in right-left terms. There are, however, two types of right-left codes that can be used for describing a position in space. One is formed with relation to the egocentric axes and can be termed side, whereas the other is formed with relation to an external reference location and can be termed relative position. Five experiments were conducted to determine the role of these different codes in producing spatial compatibility effects. In Experiments 1 and 2 the position of the stimulus provided the relevant cue for choosing the correct response (i.e., the situation was typical of spatial compability proper), whereas in Experiments 3, 4, and 5 the stimulus provided a locational cue that was not necessary for choosing the correct response (i.e., the situation was typical of the Simon effect). The experimental manipulations concerned the task demands and the time elapsing between availability of the stimulus code and availability of the response code. The results showed that upon stimulus presentation, both stimulus codes (that concerning side and that concerning relative position) were formed, but experimental manipulations determined the one that was effective in yielding compatibility effects. When the task required the use of one type of code, then spatial compatibility depended on that code alone. When the two coding processes were separated in time, then spatial compatibility depended only on the code that was formed simultaneously with the response code.     

Authorial intentions and metaphor comprehension

Three experiments investigated the role of authorial intentions in metaphor comprehension. In these studies, subjects read metaphoric (e.g., A family album is like a museum), literal (e.g., An art gallery is like a museum), and anomalous (e.g., A tortoise shell is like an art gallery) comparisons and rated their degreeof meaningfulness (Experiment 1), made speeded decisions as to whether each phrase was meaningful or not (Experiment 2), or wrote out interpretations of each comparison statement (Experiment 3). The subjects were tolt that the comparisons were written either by famous 20th century poets or by a computer program that randomly generated the statements from a list of words. Our general hypothesis was that knowing that intentional agents (the poets) authored the different comparisons should facilitate subjects' comprehension of the metaphors. Experiment 1 showed that subjects rated both metaphoric and literal comparisons as being more meaningful in the poet condition than when these statements were supposedly written by computer. Experiment 2 demonstrated that subjects were faster in making their meaningfulness judgments for metaphors in the poet condition than in the computer context, but that subjects were also slower in rejecting anomalous comparisons when these were supposedly written by the poets. Experiment 3 indicated that subjects produced more meanings or interpretations for comparisons presumably written by poets than by computer. These results highlight the improtance of implied, authorial intentions in understanding metaphorical statements. We discuss the implications of this work for psycholinguistic theories of figurative language comprehension, as well as for theories of literary interpretation.     

Signal Detection Analysis of Choice Behavior and Aging

The primary research question was whether older adults respond to the contingencies of reinforcement such that they allocate their behavior as predicted by the reinforcement contingencies and discriminative stimuli programmed by the experimenters. Six subjects, ranging in age from 62 to 74 years, participated in 15 experimental sessions. Subjects were instructed to press the F1 key when they saw a white circle, and to press the F12 key when they saw a red letter A. Responses on the F1 key were reinforced on a variable interval (VI) 30-s schedule (i.e., a VI schedule of reinforcement with 11 arithmetically spaced intervals with a mean of 30 s); F12 key responses were reinforced on a VI 60-s schedule (i.e., a VI schedule of reinforcement with 11 arithmetically spaced intervals with a mean of 60 s). Reinforcers included monetary units (10 cents) and verbal praise. Results indicated positive effects of stimulus control of behavior. Collective false alarms and miss rates represented only 0.05% of the total responses. Also, two thirds of the subjects allocated behavior consistent with the second hypothesis that a denser reinforcement schedule (i.e., the VI 30-s) would cause subjects to respond more quickly to this condition. Implications of the present results for clinical studies of Alzheimer's Disease and dementia, as well as behavior modification strategies with aging individuals, are discussed.     

Acoustic correlates of subjective pauses

This study investigates the perception of subjective pauses, i.e., pauses that do not correspond to silent pauses. Experiment I used stimuli which were excerpts from spontaneous speech which were presented in two versions: spectrally normal and spectrally inverted. Experiment II used stimuli which were generated by first cross-splicing the two halves of two sentences; they were further manipulated for fundamental frequency, intensity, or duration of the vowel just preceding the splice point. The task in both experiments was to press a button when a speech interruption was heard. The purpose of the experiments was to identify the grammatical and acoustic correlates of the subjective pauses thus reported. The results of Experiment I show, for the inverted speech condition, but not for the normal speech condition, an increase in pause reports as the duration of the prepausal vowel increased. The results of Experiment II show an increase in pause reports with increasing vowel duration. The implications of increased prepausal duration functioning as a pause signal are discussed.     

Action-feature integration blinds to feature-overlapping perceptual events: evidence from manual and vocal actions

Previous studies showed that the identification of a left- or right-pointing arrowhead is impaired when it appears while planning and executing a spatially compatible left or right keypress (Müsseler & Hommel, 1997a). We attribute this effect to stimulus processing and action control operating on the same feature codes so that, once a code is integrated in an action plan, it is less available for perceptual processing. In three pairs of experiments we tested the generality of this account by using stimulus-response combinations other than arrows and manual keypresses. Planning manual left-right keypressing actions impaired the identification of spatially corresponding arrows but not of words with congruent meaning. On the contrary, planning to say "left" or "right" impaired the identification of corresponding spatial words but not of congruent arrows. Thus, as the feature-integration approach suggests, stimulus identification is impaired only with overlap of perceptual or perceptually derived stimulus and response features while mere semantic congruence is insufficient.     

"Solar love": Nietzsche,Merleau-Ponty and the fortunes of perception

Both Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty repudiate the mirror view of perception and embrace what Nietzsche refers to as solar love or creative perception. I argue that Merleau-Ponty thinks of this type of perception primarily in terms of convergence and Nietzsche in terms of divergence. I then show how, contrary to their own emphases, Merleau-Ponty's notion of flesh and Nietzsche's idea of chaos suggest that convergence and divergence are abstractions from an ontologically prior realm of hybrid perceptions. In this realm, each perception is shot through with the others, simultaneously inside and outside one another. The creative tension among these perceptions continually produces new perspectives or voices, that is, a realm whose very being is metamorphosis. Moreover, this realm of hybrid perceptions suggests a political principle that might prove attractive for communities in an age of diversity and cultural hybridity.     

汉语颠倒词加工中重复知盲发生的水平

以汉语中的颠倒词为材料, 探讨汉语重复知盲的发生水平。采用RSVP方式呈现包含颠倒词对(C1和C2)的句子列表或词语列表, 让被试对列表中的词进行全部报告或报告是否存在重复词, 记录报告C2的正确率。三个实验采用3 (词语的重复性: 颠倒重复、完全重复、不重复) × 2 (颠倒词对的意义相似性: 意义不同、意义相似)两因素被试内设计, 结果在全部报告和报告是否存在重复词的实验中都出现重复性和意义相似性的交互效应, 但不同实验任务, 数据模式不同。该结果表明, 在RSVP任务中, 汉语颠倒词加工存在RB效应, 该效应产生的水平受制于不同的实验任务, 在部分报告任务中, 颠倒词的RB效应发生在知觉水平, 在全部报告任务中, 颠倒词的RB效应发生在语义水平。     

Assessment and Treatment of Compulsive Sex/Love Behavior

Sex-love compulsivity or addiction involves most of the same issues as other addictive or compulsive behavior. Reasons for the increase in attention to this problem are suggested, and assessment criteria and procedures, guidelines for treatment, and case examples are provided.     

Phonological encoding and word comprehension

Summary A semantic categorization task was carried out on single words in order to determine under what circumstances a phonological code might be implicated in the process of getting from print to meaning. The subjects were asked whether or not a target word presented visually was a member of a superordinate category or sounded like a member of a category (e.g., PAIR; FRUIT). The target words were drawn from two groups, orthographically regular words (complying with grapheme-phoneme correspondences in English) and orthographically irregular words (exceptions to grapheme-phoneme correspondences).The results indicated that a phonological code may only be a necessary requirement for word comprehension in a task demanding phonological assessment (i.e., in the case of PAIR in the sounds like task). Furthermore, it was argued that some phonological effects, arising in single word comprehension, may be attributed to prelexical phonology while others may implicate postlexical phonology.     

The responsive order: A new empiricism

The uniqueness of logic is upheld and contrasted with twenty roles of a wider responsive order that includes us and our procedures. Empirical responses are precise, but different in different approaches. Procedures and findings are independent of (not separable from) their concepts. Two-way feedback obviates a top-down derivation of findings from assumptions, hypotheses, history, or language. The postmodern problems of interpretation, conditions of appearances and relativism involve the ancient error of making perception the model-instance of experience. Instead, bodily interaction functions in language and precedes perception and interpretation. Logic, space time locations and individuated referents involve positional relations derived from comparing. Beyond Kuhn, Feyerabend, Newton and Einstein, if we can give interaction priority over comparing, the responsive objectivity of both can be upheld. A new empiricism, neither naive nor constructivist, uses the words order, explication, truth, and exactly to build on Wittgenstein and on Dilthey's hermeneutic. Natural language is metaphor-like, originally crossed. Logic must ignore its assumptions. It must render everything as a machine and drop humans and animals out. A new discipline is proposed, to move between the logical and the responsive orders, to deal with the machine/human interface and the social uses of science such as bioengineering.     

Coding left and right

The present study compared the processing of direction for up and down arrows and for left and right arrows in visual displays. Experiment 1 demonstrated that it is more difficult to deal with left and right than with up and down when the two directions must be discriminated but not when they must simply be oriented to. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that telling left from right is harder regardless of whether the responses are manual or verbal. Experiment 4 showed that left-right discriminations take longer than up-down discriminations for judgments of position as well as direction. In Experiment 5 it was found that position information can intrude on direction judgments both within a dimension (e.g., a left arrow to the left of fixation is judged faster than a left arrow to the right of fixation) and across dimensions (e.g., judging vertically positioned left and right arrows is more difficult than judging horizontally positioned left and right arrows). There was indirect evidence in these experiments that although the spatial codes for up and down are symmetrical, the codes for left and right may be less so; this in turn could account for the greater difficulty of discriminating left from right.     

Color preference,arousal, and the theory of psychological reversals

The theory of psychological reversals asserts that there are two levels of preferred felt arousal, one high and one low. Only one of them is preferred at a given time, although discrete switches (reversals) occur from time to time, so that each level is preferred at different times. In order to document such changes in preferred levels of arousal, 75 subjects were asked to make color preference choices at regular intervals during their working day, some for as many as 8 days. The assumption was that different colors are arousing or relaxing, and that color choice indicates arousal preference. The typical patterns of color choices that occurred clearly displayed the expected reversal effect over time and were considerably more consistent with reversal theory than with optimal arousal theory. In a second study, 41 new subjects were asked to respond to a simple mood adjective checklist each time they made their color preference choices. The results strongly supported the association between arousal preference and color preference and also supported the reversal theory thesis that low arousal preference is associated with seriousness and planning orientation (all these characterizing the telic state), and that high arousal preference is associated with playfulness and spontaneity (all these characterizing the paratelic state). Finally, both studies showed that there is a systematic tendency for long-wavelength colors to induce feelings of high arousal and for short-wavelength colors to induce feelings of low arousal.     

Semantic organization in deaf and hearing subjects

Hierarchical cluster analysis of data from the sorting of noun words was used to compare semantic structures in 63 profoundly deaf and 63 hearing adolescents. In the first study, performance differed only for a set of words referring to sounds, where deaf persons have no experience, and not for a set of common noun words and pictures. In the second study, differences between matched sets of high- and low-imagery words were comparable for 63 deaf and 63 hearing subjects. It is concluded that deaf subjects manifested abstract hierarchical relations and were not dependent on visual mediators or hindered by the absence of acoustic mediators.This investigation was supported in part by National Institutes of Health Research Grant NS-09590-03 from the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke and in part by a Faculty Research Grant from Bowling Green State University.Portions of Study 1 were previously reported at the Eighty-first Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Montreal, 1973.     

Utility theory with inexact preferences and degrees of preference

a–b* c–d is taken to mean that your degree of preference for a over b is less than your degree of preference for c over d. Various properties of the strength-of-preference comparison relation * are examined along with properties of simple preferences defined from *. The investigation recognizes an individual's limited ability to make precise judgments. Several utility theorems relating a–b * c–d to u(a)–u(b) are included.     

Symbolic- and response-related contributions to blindness to compatible stimuli

Blindness to compatible stimuli refers to poorer target identification (e.g., right-pointing arrowhead) following compatible stimuli (e.g., right arrows; Stevanovski, Oriet, & Jolic?ur, 2003) and compatible responses (e.g., right key press; Müsseler & Hommel, 1997a and 1997b). To clarify the role of the response in this effect, we examined the impact of adding or removing an overt response. In three experiments, subjects saw an arrow cue (that sometimes required a response) followed by a brief, masked arrowhead, which was reported on all trials. In all experiments, making a response increased the magnitude of the blindness effect. Furthermore, “no response” performance was unaffected by whether subjects had previously responded to the cue. Results favour a two-factor symbolic- plus response-related activation model over a purely symbolic activation model.