When are nonwords easy to see?

The influences of presentation mode (mixed vs. blocked trials) and target variability on the detection of targets in words and in random letter strings were examined. The results indicated that there was a substantial word superiority effect in mixed lists of words and nonwords, but that this effect was eliminated when pure lists of words and nonwords were compared. Also, target variability affected the shape of the serial position curve. When subjects searched repeatedly for a single target, the serial position curve had only a significant linear component. However, when the identity of the target varied from trial to trial, the serial position curve had a significant quartic component (i.e.. it was M-shaped). These results were interpreted in terms of strategies and feature learning.     

Do humans prefer to see their grasping points?

ABSTRACT To grasp an object the digits need to be placed at suitable positions on its surface. The selection of such grasping points depends on several factors. Here the authors examined whether being able to see 1 of the selected grasping points is such a factor. Subjects grasped large cylinders or oriented blocks that would normally be grasped with the thumb continuously visible and the final part of the index finger's trajectory occluded by the object in question. An opaque screen that hid the thumb's usual grasping point was used to examine whether individuals would choose a grip that was oriented differently to maintain vision of the thumb's grasping point. A transparent screen was used as a control. Occluding the thumb's grasping point made subjects move more carefully (adopting a larger grip aperture) and choose a slightly different grip orientation. However, the change in grip orientation was much too small to keep the thumb visible. The authors conclude that humans do not particularly aim for visible grasping points.     

Do you see what I see? Testing horses’ ability to recognise real-life objects from 2D computer projections

Animal Cognition - The use of 2-dimensional representations (e.g. photographs or digital images) of real-life physical objects has been an important tool in studies of animal cognition. Horses are...     

Cross-gender perceptions of facial attributes and their relation to attractiveness: do we see them differently than they see us?

Examination of perceptions of human facial attributes revealed that individual attributes are similarly perceived by males and females. However, patterns of attribute interrelationships differ as a function of gender of the face. Undergraduate students (N = 280) rated pictures of 40 male or female Caucasians on 12 physical attributes (e.g., nose size, face width) and overall attractiveness. The four sets of attribute ratings (defined by rater gender and picture gender) were submitted to principal components analyses, and five-factor solutions were found for each condition (accounting for about 76% of the variance). Comparisons of the four component solutions using confirmatory factor procedures revealed that male and female raters share one factor structure when rating photographs of female faces and another factor structure when rating photographs of male faces. Multiple regression analyses revealed that the patterns of attribute interrelationships were not "perceptual units" in the perception of attractiveness, and that different "rules" are used to assess the attractiveness of male and female stimuli faces. The importance of these results for models of facial attractiveness and interfacial similarity judgements are discussed.     

Do you see what I see? How social differences influence mindreading

Disagreeing with others about how to interpret a social interaction is a common occurrence. We often find ourselves offering divergent interpretations of others’ motives, intentions, beliefs, and emotions. Remarkably, philosophical accounts of how we understand others do not explain, or even attempt to explain such disagreements. I argue these disparities in social interpretation stem, in large part, from the effect of social categorization and our goals in social interactions, phenomena long studied by social psychologists. I argue we ought to expand our accounts of how we understand others in order to accommodate these data and explain how such profound disagreements arise amongst informed, rational, well-meaning individuals.     

Do deaf individuals see better?

The possibility that, following early auditory deprivation, the remaining senses such as vision are enhanced has been met with much excitement. However, deaf individuals exhibit both better and worse visual skills than hearing controls. We show that, when deafness is considered to the exclusion of other confounds, enhancements in visual cognition are noted. The changes are not, however, widespread but are selective, limited, as we propose, to those aspects of vision that are attentionally demanding and would normally benefit from auditory-visual convergence. The behavioral changes are accompanied by a reorganization of multisensory areas, ranging from higher-order cortex to early cortical areas, highlighting cross-modal interactions as a fundamental feature of brain organization and cognitive processing.     

Do you see what I see? Co-actor posture modulates visual processing in joint tasks

ABSTRACT

Interacting with other people is a ubiquitous part of daily life. A complex set of processes enable our successful interactions with others. The present research was conducted to investigate how the processing of visual stimuli may be affected by the presence and the hand posture of a co-actor. Experiments conducted with participants acting alone have revealed that the distance from the stimulus to the hand of a participant can alter visual processing. In the main experiment of the present paper, we asked whether this posture-related source of visual bias persists when participants share the task with another person. The effect of personal and co-actor hand-proximity on visual processing was assessed through object-specific benefits to visual recognition in a task performed by two co-actors. Pairs of participants completed a joint visual recognition task and, across different blocks of trials, the position of their own hands and of their partner's hands varied relative to the stimuli. In contrast to control studies conducted with participants acting alone, an object-specific recognition benefit was found across all hand location conditions. These data suggest that visual processing is, in some cases, sensitive to the posture of a co-actor.     

How monkeys see the eyes: cotton-top tamarins’ reaction to changes in visual attention and action

Among social species, the capacity to detect where another individual is looking is adaptive because gaze direction often predicts what an individual is attending to, and thus what its future actions are likely to be. We used an expectancy violation procedure to determine whether cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus oedipus) use the direction of another individual’s gaze to predict future actions. Subjects were familiarized with a sequence in which a human actor turned her attention toward one of two objects sitting on a table and then reached for that object. Following familiarization, subjects saw two test events. In one test event, the actor gazed at the new object and then reached for that object. From a human perspective, this event is considered consistent with the causal relationship between visual attention and subsequent action, that is, grabbing the object attended to. In the second test event, the actor gazed at the old object, but reached for the new object. This event is considered a violation of expectation. When the actor oriented with both her head-and-eyes, subjects looked significantly longer at the second test event in which the actor reached for the object to which she had not previously oriented. However, there was no difference in looking time between test events when the actor used only her eyes to orient. These findings suggest that tamarins are able to use some combination of head orientation and gaze direction, but not gaze direction alone, to predict the actions of a human agent. Received: 17 February 1999 / Accepted after revision: 9 May 1999     

Do you see what I see? Infants’ reasoning about others’ incomplete perceptions

Twelve‐month‐olds realize that when an agent cannot see an object, her incomplete perceptions still guide her goal‐directed actions. What would happen if the agent had incomplete perceptions because she could see only one part of the object, for example one side of a screen? In the present research, 16‐month‐olds were first shown an agent who always pointed to a red object, as opposed to a black or a yellow object, suggesting that she preferred red over the other colours. Next, two screens were introduced while the agent was absent. The screens were (1) red or green on both sides; (2) red on the front (infants’ side) but green on the back (the agent’s side) or vice versa; or (3) only coloured red or green on the front. During test, the agent, who could see only the back of the screens, pointed to one of the two screens. The results revealed that while infants expected the agent to continue acting on her colour preference and point to the red rather than the green screen during test, they did so in accord with the agent’s perception of the screens, rather than their own perceptions: they expected the agent to point to the red screen in (1), but to the green‐front screen in (2), and they had no prediction of which screen the agent should point to in (3). The implications of the present findings for early psychological reasoning research are discussed.     

Why is it difficult to see in the fog? How stimulus contrast affects visual perception and visual memory

Processing visually degraded stimuli is a common experience. We struggle to find house keys on dim front porches, to decipher slides projected in overly bright seminar rooms, and to read 10th-generation photocopies. In this research, we focus specifically on stimuli that are degraded via reduction of stimuluscontrast and address two questions. First, why is it difficult to process low-contrast, as compared with high-contrast, stimuli? Second, is the effect of contrastfundamental in that its effect is independent of the stimulus being processed and the reason for processing the stimulus? We formally address and answer these questions within the context of a series of nested theories, each providing a successively stronger definition of what it means for contrast to affect perception and memory. To evaluate the theories, we carried out six experiments. Experiments 1 and 2 involved simple stimuli (randomly generated forms and digit strings), whereas Experiments 3–6 involved naturalistic pictures (faces, houses, and cityscapes). The stimuli were presented at two contrast levels and at varying exposure durations. The data from all the experiments allow the conclusion that some function of stimulus contrast combines multiplicatively with stimulus duration at a stage prior to that at which the nature of the stimulus and the reason for processing it are determined, and it is the result of this multiplicative combination that determines eventual memory performance. We describe a stronger version of this theory— the sensory response, information acquisition theory—which has at its core, the strong Bloch’s-law-like assumption of a fundamental visual system response that is proportional to the product of stimulus contrast and stimulus duration. This theory was, as it has been in the past, highly successful in accounting for memory for simple stimuli shown at short (i.e., shorter than an eye fixation) durations. However, it was less successful in accounting for data from short-duration naturalistic pictures and was entirely unsuccessful in accounting for data from naturalistic pictures shown at longer durations. We discuss (1) processing differences between short- and long-duration stimuli, (2) processing differences between simple stimuli, such as digits, and complex stimuli, such as pictures, (3) processing differences between biluminant stimuli (such as line drawings with only two luminance levels) and multiluminant stimuli (such as grayscale pictures with multiple luminance levels), and (4) Bloch’s law and a proposed generalization of the concept ofmetamers.     

You can see what ‘I’ means

This paper takes up the question of whether we can visually represent something as having semantic value. Something has semantic value if it represents some property, thing or concept. An argument is offered that we can represent semantic value based on a variety of number-color synesthesia. This argument is shown to withstand several objections that can be lodged against the popular arguments from phenomenal contrast and from the mundane example of reading.     

Do you see what I see?: An exploration of inter-ethnic ideal body size comparisons among college women

The present study explored African American (n = 16) and European American (n = 19) college women's ideal body size perceptions for their own and the other ethnic group along with reasons behind their selections. Respondents completed an ethnically-neutral figure rating scale and then participated in ethnically-homogenous focus groups. European Americans mostly preferred a curvy-thin or athletic ideal body while most African American students resisted notions of a singular ideal body. European Americans suggested that African Americans’ larger ideal body sizes were based on greater body acceptance and the preferences of African American men. African Americans used extreme terms when discussing their perceptions of European Americans’ thin idealization, celebrity role models, and weight management behaviors. African Americans’ perceptions of European Americans’ body dissatisfaction were also attributed to the frequent fat talk they engaged in. Implications for promoting the psychosocial well-being of ethnically-diverse emerging adult females attending college are discussed.     

"Why is it that I see everything differently?" Reading a 1933 letter from Paula Heimann to Theodor Reik

A letter from Paula Heimann to her training analyst, Theodor Reik, written shortly before her emigration from Berlin to London, sheds light on some of the technical controversies and personal animosities that shaped psychoanalytic clinical discourse in the early 1930s, as well as on Heimann's subsequent development as a clinician. A close reading of this letter highlights several distinctive aspects of psychoanalytic training and demonstrates the transgenerational transmission of psychoanalytic ideas.     

Do you see my growth? Two longitudinal studies on personality development from childhood to young adulthood from multiple perspectives

Personality developmental studies typically rely on single reporter data, while multi-informant studies are rare. In two longitudinal studies, the present investigation examined inter-judge differences in the development of the Big Five personality traits from childhood to young adulthood. Study 1 investigated personality development as judged by the self and parents from age 12 to 17 to 29 (N = 186). Study 2 investigated personality development annually from age 12 to 18 as judged by the self, and both parents and siblings (N = 574). Results showed personality maturation from childhood to young adulthood with disruptions during adolescence. Only parent-reports indicated maturation in adolescents’ negative affectivity (decreases in N), while self-reports indicated maturation in self-regulatory traits (increases in A and C).     

What does second-order vision see in an image?

The human visual system is sensitive to both first-order variations in luminance and second-order variations in local contrast and texture. Although there is some debate about the nature of second-order vision and its relationship to first-order processing, there is now a body of results showing that they are processed separately. However, the amount, and nature, of second-order structure present in the natural environment is unclear. This is an important question because, if natural scenes contain little second-order structure in addition to first-order signals, the notion of a separate second-order system would lack ecological validity. Two models of second-order vision were applied to a number of well-calibrated natural images. Both models consisted of a first stage of oriented spatial filters followed by a rectifying nonlinearity and then a second set of filters. The models differed in terms of the connectivity between first-stage and second-stage filters. Output images taken from the models indicate that natural images do contain useful second-order structure. Specifically, the models reveal variations in texture and features defined by such variations. Areas of high contrast (but not necessarily high luminance) are also highlighted by the models. Second-order structure--as revealed by the models--did not correlate with the first-order profile of the images, suggesting that the two types of image 'content' may be statistically independent.     

Concrete spatial language: see what I mean?

Conveying complex mental scenarios is at the heart of human language. Advances in cognitive linguistics suggest this is mediated by an ability to activate cognitive systems involved in non-linguistic processing of spatial information. In this fMRI-study, we compare sentences with a concrete spatial meaning to sentences with an abstract meaning. Using this contrast, we demonstrate that sentence meaning involving motion in a concrete topographical context, whether linked to animate or inanimate subjects nouns, yield more activation in a bilateral posterior network, including fusiform/parahippocampal, and retrosplenial regions, and the temporal-occipital-parietal junction. These areas have previously been shown to be involved in mental navigation and spatial memory tasks. Sentences with an abstract setting activate an extended largely left-lateralised network in the anterior temporal, and inferior and superior prefrontal cortices, previously found activated by comprehension of complex semantics such as narratives. These findings support a model of language, where the understanding of spatial semantic content emerges from the recruitment of brain regions involved in non-linguistic spatial processing.