Social phobic interoception: effects of bodily information on anxiety, beliefs and self-processing

It has been suggested that body-state information influences self-perception and negative thinking in social phobia [Clark, D. M., & Wells, A. (1995). A cognitive model of social phobia. In R. G. Heimberg, M. R. Liebowitz, D. A. Hope & F. R. Schneier (Eds.), Social phobia: diagnosis, assessment and treatment (pp. 69-93). New York: Guilford Press.]. This study explored the effects of body-state information on anxiety and cognition in patients with generalised social phobia during a feared social interaction. It was hypothesised that information concerning an increase in pulse rate would lead to increments in anxiety, negative beliefs and self-processing whilst information concerning a decrease in pulse rate would have the opposite effect. The results of this study were generally consistent with the hypotheses. These findings are important as they may help to account for fluctuations in anxiety, negative beliefs and self-processing in social situations that do not present objective social threat. In particular, social anxiety appears to be modulated by body-state information. The implications of the present findings for cognitive therapy of social phobia are briefly discussed.     

Distance perception and the ambiguity of visual stimulation: A theoretical note

Certain current views postulate that visual perception, especially of distance, is a function of optical stimulation alone. It is shown here that the optical array does not, in fact, specify absolute distance unambiguously, for either a stationary or a moving O. In view of this ambiguity of optical information, a more complex theory, comprising both visual and nonvisual information, as needed to explain, veridical perception.     

Influence of attention manipulation on emotion and autonomic responses

Psychopathologies such as depression and anxiety have been associated with self-consciousness, a trait focusing on the self in terms of emotions and social images. A technique designed to shift attention away from the self tends to reduce anxiety, so the present purpose was to assess the effect of self body-state information on an individual's emotional and autonomic activity. 24 undergraduate and graduate students (10 men and 14 women), ages 19 to 27 years (M = 22.1, SD = 2.5), were recruited as subjects. Focusing on body-state during an anxiety-inducing situation led to an increase of low to high frequency ratio of heart-rate variability which reflected cardiac sympathovagal balance. That is, attending to one's own bodily states enhanced relative sympathetic activity compared to parasympathetic activity, which can be interpreted as one of the physiological emotional responses elicited by anxiety.     

Caricature Recognition in a Neural Network

In a caricature drawing, the artist graphically exaggerates those features of an individual in proportion to their deviations from the normative or average face. The paradox of caricature recognition is that subjects recognize these distorted drawings of faces better than or equally as well as veridical drawings. The present research explores the caricature paradox by modelling caricature recognition in a neural network. Simulations were used to investigate the perceptual versus memorial bases of caricature recognition (Simulation 1) and examine the effects that familiarity (Simulation 2) and typicality (Simulation 3) have on caricature recognition. Simulation results are interpreted as support for a distinctive access hypothesis of the caricature recognition paradox that emphasizes the interaction between the stimulus properties of the caricature drawing and the underlying veridical face representation.     

Visual space under free viewing conditions

Most research on visual space has been done under restricted viewing conditions and in reduced environments. In our experiments, observers performed an exocentric pointing task, a collinearity task, and a parallelity task in a entirely visible room. We varied the relative distances between the objects and the observer and the separation angle between the two objects. We were able to compare our data directly with data from experiments in an environment with less monocular depth information present. We expected that in a richer environment and under less restrictive viewing conditions, the settings would deviate less from the veridical settings. However, large systematic deviations from veridical settings were found for all three tasks. The structure of these deviations was task dependent, and the structure and the deviations themselves were comparable to those obtained under more restricted circumstances. Thus, the additional information was not used effectively by the observers.     

Modularity in musical processing: the automaticity of harmonic priming

Three experiments investigated the modularity of harmonic expectations that are based on cultural schemata despite the availability of more predictive veridical information. Participants were presented with prime-target chord pairs and made an intonation judgment about each target. Schematic expectation was manipulated by the combination of prime and target, with some transitions being schematically more probable than others. Veridical information in the form of prime-target previews, local transition probabilities, or valid versus invalid previews was also provided. Processing was facilitated when a schematically probable target chord followed the prime. Furthermore, this effect was independent of all manipulations of veridical expectation. A solution to L. B. Meyer's (1967b) query "On Rehearing Music" is suggested, in which schematic knowledge contributes to harmonic expectation in a modular manner regardless of whether any veridical knowledge exists.     

Absolute localization of vibrotactile stimuli on the torso

Vibrotactile mobility systems present spatial information such as the direction of a waypoint through a localized vibration on the torso. Using these systems requires the ability to determine the absolute location of the stimulus. Because data are available only on the ability to determine the relative location of stimuli on the torso, we developed a novel method for measuring absolute localization on the basis of triangulation. For 15 observers, we calculated the subjective location of visual and tactile stimuli on the frontal half of the torso. The size of the 95% confidence intervals around the subjective tactile locations is about the size of the stimuli (1.66 cm) and is slightly larger than that around the subjective visual locations (mean difference, 0.17 cm). The error in tactile judgments over and above that in the visual judgments is present only for locations near the body midline. When the subjective visual and tactile locations are not co-located, the difference can best be described by a shift along the radius from the body midaxis. The same holds for the differences between the veridical and the subjective locations. Therefore, the difference between the veridical and the subjective directions of a stimulus is small. The results make us believe that stimulus locations on the torso are coded in polar coordinates of which the angle is perceptual invariant and the distance is less important, probably because it varies with changes in, among other things, posture and breathing.     

The time course of abstract visual representation

Studies in change blindness re-enforce the suggestion that veridical, pictorial representations that survive multiple relocations of gaze are unlikely to be generated in the visual system. However, more abstract information may well be extracted and represented by the visual system. In this paper we study the types of information that are retained and the time courses over which these representations are constructed when participants view complex natural scenes. We find that such information is retained and that the resultant abstract representations encode a range of information. Different types of information are extracted and represented over different time courses. After several seconds of viewing natural scenes, our visual system is able to construct a complex information-rich representation.     

Caricature generalization benefits for faces learned with enhanced idiosyncratic shape or texture

Recent findings show benefits for learning and subsequent recognition of faces caricatured in shape or texture, but there is little evidence on whether this caricature learning advantage generalizes to recognition of veridical counterparts at test. Moreover, it has been reported that there is a relatively higher contribution of texture information, at the expense of shape information, for familiar compared to unfamiliar face recognition. The aim of this study was to examine whether veridical faces are recognized better when they were learned as caricatures compared to when they were learned as veridicals—what we call a caricature generalization benefit. Photorealistic facial stimuli derived from a 3-D camera system were caricatured selectively in either shape or texture by 50 %. Faces were learned across different images either as veridicals, shape caricatures, or texture caricatures. At test, all learned and novel faces were presented as previously unseen frontal veridicals, and participants performed an old–new task. We assessed accuracies, reaction times, and face-sensitive event-related potentials (ERPs). Faces learned as caricatures were recognized more accurately than faces learned as veridicals. At learning, N250 and LPC were largest for shape caricatures, suggesting encoding advantages of distinctive facial shape. At test, LPC was largest for faces that had been learned as texture caricatures, indicating the importance of texture for familiar face recognition. Overall, our findings demonstrate that caricature learning advantages can generalize to and, importantly, improve recognition of veridical versions of faces.     

Action, verbal response and spatial reasoning

Studies have shown that perception of distance, orientation and size can be dissociated from action tasks. The action system seems to possess more veridical, unbiased information than the perceptual/verbal system. The current study examines the nature of the distinction between action and verbal responses in a spatial reasoning task. Participants imagined themselves facing different orientations and either pointed to where other objects would be, or verbally reported their egocentric directions (e.g., "50 degrees to my left"). When using pointing responses, RT and error increased as a function of the angular disparity between the imagined heading and their actual heading. However, when using verbal responses, performance was not affected by angular disparity, suggesting that participants knew the direction of the targets from the imagined perspective but could not point to them directly. The verbal and action systems have fundamentally different information or processes rather than quantitatively different ones.     

Illusions and Knowing What Is Real

Geometrical illusions are displays that give false impressions that observers take to be accurate. They have traditionally been cited as evidence against the naive realist claim that people see the world as it "really" is. Such illusions, however, often depend on their being viewed from a single vantage point (Kennedy & Portal, 1990). In Gibsonian terms, they depend on the availability of impoverished information. In this study, spatial transformations were applied to line-length (Sander parallelogram) and area (Jastrow curves) illusions to provide information to observers about veridical size. In particular, the reversal of certain parts of the displays resulted in informative invariants that specified the veridical nature of the parts. Most observers were able to use the information.     

Testing improves true recall and protects against the build-up of proactive interference without increasing false recall

Retrieval practice has been shown to protect against the negative effects of previously learned information on the learning of subsequent information, while increasing retention of new information. We report three experiments investigating the impact of retrieval practice on false recall in a multiple list paradigm. In three different experimental designs participants studied blocks of interrelated words that converged on non-presented associates. Participants were tested either after every study block or only after the fifth study block, and both groups received a cumulative test on all five study blocks. Overall the results from all three different experimental designs point to a benefit of testing in increasing long-term veridical recall on the cumulative test. More importantly, this improvement in veridical recall did not come at a cost: False recall on the cumulative test did not increase from retrieval practice.     

Visual capture in visual illusions

Visual capture is the resolution of visual-tactual conflicts in favor of vision. In each previous demonstration of this phenomenon, a distorted optic array, or some mechanical analog for a distorted optic array, has produced a conflict between erroneous visual information and presumably veridical tactual information. The present experiments demonstrate visual capture in the Müller-Lyer and Ponzo illusions in the absence of any distortions of the optic array.     

Depth interval estimates from motion parallax and binocular disparity beyond interaction space

Static and dynamic observers provided binocular and monocular estimates of the depths between real objects lying well beyond interaction space. On each trial, pairs of LEDs were presented inside a dark railway tunnel. The nearest LED was always 40 m from the observer, with the depth separation between LED pairs ranging from 0 up to 248 m. Dynamic binocular viewing was found to produce the greatest (ie most veridical) estimates of depth magnitude, followed next by static binocular viewing, and then by dynamic monocular viewing. (No significant depth was seen with static monocular viewing.) We found evidence that both binocular and monocular dynamic estimates of depth were scaled for the observation distance when the ground plane and walls of the tunnel were visible up to the nearest LED. We conclude that both motion parallax and stereopsis provide useful long-distance depth information and that motion-parallax information can enhance the degree of stereoscopic depth seen.     

Testing improves true recall and protects against the build-up of proactive interference without increasing false recall

Retrieval practice has been shown to protect against the negative effects of previously learned information on the learning of subsequent information, while increasing retention of new information. We report three experiments investigating the impact of retrieval practice on false recall in a multiple list paradigm. In three different experimental designs participants studied blocks of interrelated words that converged on non-presented associates. Participants were tested either after every study block or only after the fifth study block, and both groups received a cumulative test on all five study blocks. Overall the results from all three different experimental designs point to a benefit of testing in increasing long-term veridical recall on the cumulative test. More importantly, this improvement in veridical recall did not come at a cost: False recall on the cumulative test did not increase from retrieval practice.     

Pappus in optical space

Optical space differs from physical space. The structure of optical space has generally been assumed to be metrical. In contradistinction, we do not assume any metric, but only incidence relations (i.e., we assume that optical points and lines exist and that two points define a unique line, and two lines a unique point). (The incidence relations have generally been assumed implicitly by earlier authors.) The condition that makes such an incidence structure into a projective space is the Pappus condition. The Pappus condition describes a projective relation between three collinear triples of points, whose validity can--in principle--be verified empirically. The Pappus condition is a necessary condition for optical space to be a homogeneous space (Lobatchevski hyperbolic or Riemann elliptic space) as assumed by, for example, the well-known Luneburg theory. We test the Pappus condition in a full-cue situation (open field, broad daylight, distances of up to 20 m, visual fields of up to 160 degrees diameter). We found that although optical space is definitely not veridical, even under full-cue conditions, violations of the Pappus condition are the exception. Apparently optical space is not totally different from a homogeneous space, although it is in no way close to Euclidean.     

Study effort versus distinctiveness in the recollection of veridical and illusory memories

In past research, stimulus distinctiveness and study effort have been claimed to promote the development of distinctive memories, which in turn have been considered critical for enhancing veridical recollection and reducing illusory memory experiences. In the present investigation, stimulus distinctiveness, obtained by displaying text-redundant pictorial information at study, was pitted against study effort to determine whether either factor would be more beneficial to veridical recall and more detrimental to illusory recall than the other. Subjects first completed word fragments with or without the aid of an image of each word’s referent and then performed a recall test. It was found that when images were useful to the encoding task (fragment completion), their presence at study enhanced veridical recall and reduced illusory memories more than any additional encoding effort.     

Distinctiveness and expertise effects with homogeneous stimuli: towards a model of configural coding

Recent studies using Brennan's computerized caricature generator have demonstrated distinctiveness effects consistent with the idea that faces are coded in terms of their individual distinctive properties. Based on these findings it is suggested that, for homogeneous classes whose members share a common configuration, distinctive configural information may be coded as metric deviations from a spatial norm. Experiments are described which demonstrate similar distinctiveness effects in bird identification. Transformations that increase distinctiveness (caricatures) produced faster identification and a higher recognition proportion, for both experts and nonexperts, than transformations that reduce distinctiveness (anticaricatures). This distinctiveness advantage is consistent with the norm-based coding idea. Furthermore, within certain limits, increasing distinctiveness did not impair performance relative to that for veridical drawings. For experts there was also a caricature advantage, such that 50% caricatures of birds in a highly homogeneous and familiar class (passerines) were identified more quickly, provided that they were recognized at all, than uncaricatured veridical drawings. The significance of a caricature advantage for the visual coding of configural information is discussed.     

On the distinction between perception and cognition

To uphold the distinction between perception and cognition for certain classes of tasks or phenomena, it is proposed that three criteria must be met: (1) when perceptual and cognitive functions serve different biological purposes, (2) when stimulus information in dynamic events is necessary, but not sufficient for veridical perception, and (3) when the task emphasizes explicit retrieval, as opposed to implicit use of information. Conversely, when the three criteria have not been met, conditions for theoretical unification exist.     

Pappus in optical space

Optical space differs from physical space. The structure of optical space has generally been assumed to be metrical. In contradistinction, we do not assume any metric, but only incidence relations (i.e., we assume that optical points and lines exist and that two points define a unique line, and two lines a unique point). (The incidence relations have generally been assumed implicitly by earlier authors.) The condition that makes such anincidence structure into a projective space is the Pappus condition. The Pappus condition describes a projective relation between three collinear triples of points, whose validity can— in principle—be verified empirically. The Pappus condition is a necessary condition for optical space to be a homogeneous space (Lobatchevski hyperbolic or Riemann elliptic space) as assumed by, for example, the well-known Luneburg theory. We test the Pappus condition in a full-cue situation (open field, broad daylight, distances of up to 20 m, visual fields of up to 160° diameter). We found that although optical space is definitely not veridical, even under full-cue conditions, violations of the Pappus condition are the exception. Apparently optical space is not totally different from a homogeneous space, although it is in no way close to Euclidean.