Self-image bias and the perception of other persons' skills

Previous research on the Self-image bias' has demonstrated a defensive tendency to overestimate the importance of positive general self-attributes (e.g. warm, patient) when forming impressions of other people. The current research replicates and extends the self-image bias findings in an area of theoretical as well as applied relevance: The evaluation of other peoples specific skills, and resulting social preferences.     

Six-year-olds' perception of home literacy environment and its influence on children's literacy enjoyment,frequency, and early literacy skills

Home literacy environment (HLE) makes an important contribution to children's reading acquisition in early years. Even though some research on children's perception exists, children's reports about HLE have been neglected. The present study focuses on N = 281 six-year-old's reports about HLE and its influences on literacy enjoyment, frequency, and early literacy skills. Parents' educational background was expected to predict children-perceived HLE. A positive impact of active HLE on literacy enjoyment and frequency were found. HLE also mediates the relation between parents' background and enjoyment. The importance of children's perspective on HLE regarding family literacy programs is discussed.     

Self-concept, social anxiety, and interpersonal perception skills

The Interpersonal Perception Task videotape provided a criterion variable to test hypotheses about social information processing skills of socially anxious subjects. Results from 68 undergraduates show negative correlations between both shyness social anxiety and nonverbal decoding scores, and positive correlations between shyness and measures of test anxiety. Results are interpreted in light of cognitive conceptions of social anxiety and its role in decoding nonverbal communication.     

Differential psychomotor skills in a clinical group

Schoppe's Motoric Performance Series (MLS) was administered to a group of psychiatric patients. Three factors emerged after principal component analysis with varimax rotation, the first two of which represented about 60% of the total variance and corresponded to a speed and precision factor. Zonal analysis revealed that MLS profiles of high and low trait neurotic patients were not significantly different from each other. Extraverts were inclined to exhibit inferior performance compared to introverts as witnessed by elevated scores on the subtests associated with lack of precision (steadiness and line-tracing error rates, steadiness error duration, as well as insertion of small pins). Introverted and extraverted neurotics did not differ significantly in MLS components.High and low P Ss displayed similar MLS profiles with the exception of the subtest, line-tracing (duration), in which high trait P individuals tended to perform faster. The dissimulating group (L +) required significantly longer to complete the two pin insertion tasks (both loaded on the speed factor) indicating inferior hand- and finger-dexterity, compared to low L-scoring patients. Several interactions, P × L, emerged as statistically significant. P − were less precise (steadiness error time), and required considerably less time to execute the line-tracing task, than P + Ss, for high L-scoring individuals only. P − L − individuals yielded the lowest tremor scores of all four groups.     

Spatial frequency requirements for audiovisual speech perception

Spatial frequency band-pass and low-pass filtered images of a talker were used in an audiovisual speech-in-noise task. Three experiments tested subjects' use of information contained in the different filter bands with center frequencies ranging from 2.7 to 44.1 cycles/face (c/face). Experiment 1 demonstrated that information from a broad range of spatial frequencies enhanced auditory intelligibility. The frequency bands differed in the degree of enhancement, with a peak being observed in a mid-range band (11-c/face center frequency). Experiment 2 showed that this pattern was not influenced by viewing distance and, thus, that the results are best interpreted in object spatial frequency, rather than in retinal coordinates. Experiment 3 showed that low-pass filtered images could produce a performance equivalent to that produced by unfiltered images. These experiments are consistent with the hypothesis that high spatial resolution information is not necessary for audiovisual speech perception and that a limited range of spatial frequency spectrum is sufficient.     

Infant speech perception and cognitive skills as predictors of later vocabulary

Research has identified bivariate correlations between speech perception and cognitive measures gathered during infancy as well as correlations between these individual measures and later language outcomes. However, these correlations have not all been explored together in prospective longitudinal studies. The goal of the current research was to compare how early speech perception and cognitive skills predict later language outcomes using a within-participant design. To achieve this goal, we tested 97 5- to 7-month-olds on two speech perception tasks (stress pattern preference, native vowel discrimination) and two cognitive tasks (visual recognition memory, A-not-B) and later assessed their vocabulary outcomes at 18 and 24 months. Frequentist statistical analyses showed that only native vowel discrimination significantly predicted vocabulary. However, Bayesian analyses suggested that evidence was ambiguous between null and alternative hypotheses for all infant predictors. These results highlight the importance of recognizing and addressing challenges related to infant data collection, interpretation, and replication in the developmental field, a roadblock in our route to understanding the contribution of domain-specific and domain-general skills for language acquisition. Future methodological development and research along similar lines is encouraged to assess individual differences in infant speech perception and cognitive skills and their predictability for language development.     

An index of prenatal steroid exposure predicts adult face perception skills

Face perception skills are fundamental to social cognition, yet they vary markedly across individuals. This diversity has stimulated controversy over the relative contributions of genetic factors, prenatal environment, and postnatal experience to face perception. Recent twin studies have found that face perception is heritable, highlighting the potential for substantial prenatal determination of these skills. In contrast, previous work on potential influences of the prenatal hormonal environment on social cognition have found no association between 2D:4D, a marker for prenatal androgen exposure, and processing of facial emotional expressions, apparently precluding a major role for prenatal hormones in governing face perception. We propose that substantial predictive relationships between 2D:4D and face perception may have been masked in previous work because the task employed required both face perception and processing of others?? emotions, the latter component being greatly influenced by circulating hormones in adults. To assess prenatal hormone influences on face perception without requiring emotion processing, we related 2D:4D to the face inversion effect (FIE), a measure of the recruitment of specialist face processes to visual perception. The magnitude of the resulting predictive relationship (r = .52) compared surprisingly well with that found between identical twins?? face perception (rs = .27?C.61), suggesting that mechanisms of 2D:4D may account for a substantial proportion of perinatal influences on face processing. Furthermore, we employed 2D:4D as a common scale to map individual differences in the FIE onto prenatal testosterone:estrogen ratios, assayed by Lutchmaya, Baron-Cohen, Raggatt, Knickmeyer, and Manning (Early Human Development 77:23?C28, 2004). The substantial overlap between the two data sets further implicates prenatal steroids in adult face perception skills.     

Emotion perception is mediated by spatial frequency content

Spatial frequencies have been shown to play an important role in face identification, but very few studies have investigated the role of spatial frequency content in identifying different emotions. In the present study we investigated the role of spatial frequency in identifying happy and sad facial expressions. Two experiments were conducted to investigate (a) the role of specific spatial frequency content in emotion identification, and (b) hemispherical asymmetry in emotion identification. Given the links between global processing, happy emotions, and low frequencies, we hypothesized that low spatial frequencies would be important for identifying the happy expression. Correspondingly, we also hypothesized that high spatial frequencies would be important in identifying the sad expression given the links between local processing, sad emotions, and high spatial frequencies. As expected we found that the identification of happy expression was dependent on low spatial frequencies and the identification of sad expression was dependent on high spatial frequencies. There was a hemispheric asymmetry with the identification of sad expression, especially in the right hemisphere, possibly mediated by high spatial frequency content. Results indicate the importance of spatial frequency content in the identification of happy and sad emotional expressions and point to the mechanisms involved in emotion identification.     

Velocity perception for sounds moving in frequency space

In three experiments, we considered the relative contribution of frequency change (Δf) and time change (Δt) to perceived velocity (Δf/Δt) for sounds that moved either continuously in frequency space (Experiment 1) or in discrete steps (Experiments 2 and 3). In all the experiments, participants estimated “how quickly stimuli changed in pitch” on a scale ranging from 0 (not changing at all) to 100 (changing very quickly). Objective frequency velocity was specified in terms of semitones per second (ST/s), with ascending and descending stimuli presented on each trial at one of seven velocities (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 14 ST/s). Separate contributions of frequency change (Δf) and time change (Δt) to perceived velocity were assessed by holding total Δt constant and varying Δf or vice versa. For tone glides that moved continuously in frequency space, both Δf and Δt cues contributed approximately equally to perceived velocity. For tone sequences, in contrast, perceived velocity was based almost entirely on Δt, with surprisingly little contribution from Δf. Experiment 3 considered separate judgments about Δf and Δt in order to rule out the possibility that the results of Experiment 2 were due to the inability to judge frequency change in tone sequences.     

Background spatial frequency influences perception of luminance-based apparent movement

Apparent movement occurs when stimulus figures are presented at different spatial locations at different times. In the present studies, the periodicity of the background upon which stimuli were presented was manipulated. Subjects viewed a bistable movement display presented on a background consisting of a variable-frequency grating. The type of movement perceived varied systematically with the spatial frequency of the background, suggesting that more than the target stimuli are processed in the generation of apparent movement.     

Differential effects of cast shadows on perception and action

In two experiments we investigated the effects of cast shadows on different real-life tasks. In experiment 1, participants were required to make a speeded verbal identification of the target object (perceptual task), whereas in experiment 2 participants were required to reach for and grasp the target object (motor task). In both experiments real three-dimensional (3-D) objects were presented, one at a time, either with their own natural cast shadow (congruent condition) or with the cast shadow of a different object (incongruent condition). Shadows were cast either to the left or to the right of the object. We asked whether the features of the shadow (ie whether it is congruent or incongruent with the object, and whether it is cast to the left or to the right of the object) could influence perception and action differently. Results showed that cast shadows did not influence identification of real 3-D objects (experiment 1), but they affected movement kinematics, producing distractor-like interference, particularly on movement trajectory (experiment 2). These findings suggest a task-dependent influence of cast shadows on human performance. In the case of object-oriented actions, cast shadows may represent further affordances of the object, and as such compete for the control of the action.     

Oral form perception skills of stuttering and nonstuttering children measured by stereognosis

It has been suggested that a primary causative factor in stuttering is a disordered feedback mechanism. Some researchers have explored the relationship between stuttering and the integrity of the feedback mechanism through studies of oral form perception. The studies on the relationship between stuttering and oral form perception have been carried out largely on adult populations. The results of those studies have been contradictory. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship of stuttering to oral form perception in a school-age population. The results are in agreement with previous studies which have indicated that stutters do not do as well as non-stutters on tasks of oral form perception.     

Visual pattern perception: a multidimensional analysis of development of children's reading skills

This study was designed to assess the extent to which there are visual pattern processing deficits which are related to differential reading skill of young children. Discrimination problems were constructed using visual patterns with features known to be processed differentially by the central nervous system based upon neurophysiological data. Analysis of variance and multidimensional scaling techniques were used to analyze the discrimination latencies of kindergarten through third grade children (12 per grade) who were classified either as good or poor readers. The results show that there are no pattern-specific effects which discriminate good from poor readers. Rather, good readers process all patterns more efficiently than do poor readers, and efficiency improves with age for all readers studied. This suggests that the locus of the reading deficit occurs at levels in the nervous system beyond where pattern-feature processing occurs.     

Identification of language-impaired children on the basis of rapid perception and production skills

Discriminant function analysis was used to determine whether performance on temporal perception and production tasks alone could correctly classify children as language-impaired or normal. The analysis identified six variables, all of which assessed temporal perceptual and production abilities, which taken in combination correctly classified 98% of participating subjects. None of these variables assess the higher-level linguistic abilities (semantic, syntactic, pragmatic) that have classically been considered to be deficient in language-impaired children, or have been used to diagnose them clinically.     

Top-down attentional modulation of spatial frequency processing in scene perception

Recent evidence suggests that spatial frequency (SF) processing of simple and complex visual patterns is flexible. The use of spatial scale in scene perception seems to be influenced by people's expectations. However as yet there is no direct evidence for top-down attentional effects on flexible scale use in scene perception. In two experiments we provide such evidence. We presented participants with low- and high-pass SF filtered scenes and cued their attention to the relevant scale. In Experiment 1 we subsequently presented them with hybrid scenes (both low- and high-pass scenes present). We observed that participants reported detecting the cued component of hybrids. To explore if this might be due to decision biases, in Experiment 2, we replaced hybrids with images containing meaningful scenes at uncued SFs and noise at the cued SFs (invalid cueing). We found that participants performed poorly on invalid cueing trials. These findings are consistent with top-down attentional modulation of early spatial frequency processing in scene perception.