Negative priming between pictures and words in a selective attention task: Evidence for semantic processing of ignored stimuli

This study examined the processing of ignored pictures and words when attention was directed to a different picture or word. Previous work by Tipper (1985) demonstrated that the priming effect of an ignored picture on a subsequent categorically related picture is inhibitory. This effect was termednegative priming. Tipper concluded that ignored pictures achieved abstract categorical levels of internal representation, and that these representations were inhibited during selection of a simultaneously presented picture. This conclusion, however, was premature. Observation of the figures used by Tipper suggests that objects within a category have greater structural similarity than do objects in different categories. The negative priming effect could therefore be at a structural level of representation. The present study examined priming across symbolic domains (pictures and words) where there was no structural relationship between objects. Negative priming was again observed and was equivalent to the negative priming observed within symbolic domain. These data suggest that ignored drawings and words do achieve abstract categorical levels of representation, and that the mechanisms underlying negative priming operate at, or beyond, this level.     

The eyes grasp,the hands see: Metric category knowledge transfers between vision and touch

Categorization of seen objects is often determined by the shapes of objects. However, shape is not exclusive to the visual modality: The haptic system also is expert at identifying shapes. Hence, an important question for understanding shape processing is whether humans store separate modality-dependent shape representations, or whether information is integrated into one multisensory representation. To answer this question, we created a metric space of computer-generated novel objects varying in shape. These objects were then printed using a 3-D printer, to generate tangible stimuli. In a categorization experiment, participants first explored the objects visually and haptically. We found that both modalities led to highly similar categorization behavior. Next, participants were trained either visually or haptically on shape categories within the metric space. As expected, visual training increased visual performance, and haptic training increased haptic performance. Importantly, however, we found that visual training also improved haptic performance, and vice versa. Two additional experiments showed that the location of the categorical boundary in the metric space also transferred across modalities, as did heightened discriminability of objects adjacent to the boundary. This observed transfer of metric category knowledge across modalities indicates that visual and haptic forms of shape information are integrated into a shared multisensory representation.     

The structure of three-dimensional object representations in human vision: evidence from whole-part matching

This article examines how the human visual system represents the shapes of 3-dimensional (3D) objects. One long-standing hypothesis is that object shapes are represented in terms of volumetric component parts and their spatial configuration. This hypothesis is examined in 3 experiments using a whole-part matching paradigm in which participants match object parts to whole novel 3D object shapes. Experiments 1 and 2, consistent with volumetric image segmentation, show that whole-part matching is faster for volumetric component parts than for either open or closed nonvolumetric regions of edge contour. However, the results of Experiment 3 show that an equivalent advantage is found for bounded regions of edge contour that correspond to object surfaces. The results are interpreted in terms of a surface-based model of 3D shape representation, which proposes edge-bounded 2-dimensional polygons as basic primitives of surface shape.     

Peck tracking: a method for localizing critical features within complex pictures for pigeons

The pigeon is a standard animal in comparative psychology and is frequently used to investigate visuocognitive functions. Nonetheless, the strategies that pigeons use to discriminate complex visual stimuli remain a difficult area of study. In search of a reliable method to identify features that control the discrimination behaviour, pecking location was tracked using touch screen technology in a people-absent/people-present discrimination task. The correct stimuli contained human figures anywhere on the picture, but the birds were not required to peck on that part. However, the stimuli were designed in a way that only the human figures contained distinguishing information. All pigeons focused their pecks on a subarea of the distinctive human figures, namely the heads. Removal of the heads significantly impaired performance, while removal of other distinctive parts did not. Thus, peck tracking reveals the location within a complex visual stimulus that controls discrimination behaviour, and might be a valuable tool to reveal the strategies pigeons apply in visual discrimination tasks.     

实物形状的知觉相似性对视觉隐喻加工的影响

视觉隐喻是众多研究者比较关注的领域, 当前多以物体简笔画、漫画及广告等方面的研究为主, 但对与生活密切相关的实物的视觉隐喻研究甚少。因此研究采用掩蔽启动范式、李克特9点量表及语音生成等研究方法, 在物体概念类型(概念相同、概念相异)及形状类型(形状相似、形状相异)条件下, 针对实物图片的形状知觉相似性是否对视觉隐喻加工产生影响进行探讨。结果发现无论物体概念是否相同, 形状相似性对个体的物体识别具有“促进”作用, 并有利于视觉隐喻加工; 在物体识别中, 当两个物体概念不同时, 个体会试图建立一个特设类别来对形状相似的物体进行归类, 从而实现了视觉隐喻的加工。因此研究进一步证明了实物形状的知觉相似性有利于视觉隐喻的加工。     

The lasting impression of chairman Mao: hyperfidelity of familiar-face memory

We examined the accuracy of a highly-familiar-face representation in memory. In experiment 1, a famous portrait of Chairman Mao was digitally altered in terms of the distance between his two eyes, two pixels at a time. Mainland Chinese adults were shown the original or altered photos, one at a time, and asked to determine whether each was that of Chairman Mao or altered. Eastern Asian and Caucasian participants, who were unfamiliar with Mao's photo, were shown simultaneously the original face paired with the altered ones and asked to determine whether the photos were identical. The Mainland Chinese participants' memory threshold approximated the perceptual discrimination threshold of the Eastern Asian and Caucasian participants. Experiments 2 and 3 ruled out that the result of experiment I was due to artifacts of photographic alteration. The findings of the present study suggest that our memory of a very familiar face is highly accurate, at least in terms of the interocular configuration. The accuracy is perhaps only limited by the perceptual resolution capacity of our visual system.     

Infants' perceptual differentiation of amodal and modality-specific audio-visual relations.

Ninety-six infants of 3 1/2 months were tested in an infant-control habituation procedure to determine whether they could detect three types of audio-visual relations in the same events. The events portrayed two amodal invariant relations, temporal synchrony and temporal microstructure specifying the composition of the objects, and one modality-specific relation, that between the pitch of the sound and the color/shape of the objects. Subjects were habituated to two events accompanied by their natural, synchronous, and appropriate sounds and then received test trials in which the relation between the visual and the acoustic information was changed. Consistent with Gibson's increasing specificity hypothesis, it was expected that infants would differentiate amodal invariant relations prior to detecting arbitrary, modality-specific relations. Results were consistent with this prediction, demonstrating significant visual recovery to a change in temporal synchrony and temporal microstructure, but not to a change in the pitch-color/shape relations. Two subsequent discrimination studies demonstrated that infants' failure to detect the changes in pitch-color/shape relations could not be attributed to an inability to discriminate the pitch or the color/shape changes used in Experiment 1. Infants showed robust discrimination of the contrasts used.     

Visual imagery and knowledge about the visual appearance of objects in patients with posterior cerebral artery lesions

The purpose of this study was to explore whether patients with left posterior cerebral artery (PCA) lesions have defective mental visual imagery and to differentiate whether such a deficit stems from a loss of knowledge about the visual appearance of objects or from an inability to create mental visual images out of preserved visual knowledge. Normal controls and patients with either left or right PCA lesions were asked to verify low- and high-imagery sentences and then to verify pictorial representations of the predicates of high-imagery sentences. High-imagery questions concerned either the shape or the color of objects. In addition, perceptual discrimination of shape and color was assessed. Patients with right PCA lesions were impaired on the perceptual discrimination tasks. Left PCA patients did not significantly differ from controls on low-imagery sentences but scored significantly lower on shape and color questions. Their impairment was distinctly more severe with the pictorial than with the verbal versions of shape and color questions. In comparison to patients with occipital left PCA lesions, patients with temporo-occipital left PCA lesions were selectively impaired on verbal and visual color questions. It is concluded that patients with left PCA lesions lack knowledge about shape and color of objects, but that their ability to convert visual knowledge into mental images is preserved.     

视觉客体工作记忆中图形特征存储与捆绑时程

采用单探测变化检测范式,考察了形状和颜色客体在工作记忆中的表征方式、特征检测类型及初始刺激呈现时间对工作记忆表征的影响。结果表明:(1)视觉客体工作记忆的表征包括两个水平,首先是对客体的特征进行加工存储,其次才是对特征的捆绑;(2)不同特征的加工时间不同,颜色的加工完成的较早,记忆效果好,而形状的加工完成的较晚,记忆效果也差,表现出颜色的子系统优势;(3)特征的捆绑不是必需的,只有在任务需要时才进行,并且捆绑的过程符合特征捆绑的双阶段理论。     

Incidental visual memory for targets and distractors in visual search

We explored incidental retention of visual details of encountered objects during search. Participants searched for conjunction targets in 32 arrays of 12 pictures of real-world objects and then performed a token discrimination task that examined their memory for visual details of the targets and distractors from the search task. The results indicate that even though participants had not been instructed to memorize the objects, the visual details of search targets and distractor objects related to the targets were retained after the search. Distractor objects unrelated to the search target were remembered more poorly. Eye-movement measures indicated that the objects that were remembered were looked at more frequently during search than those that were not remembered. These results provide support that detailed visual information is included incidentally in the visual representation of an object after the object is no longer in view.     

Mental rotation depends on the number of objects rather than on the number of image fragments

It is often intuitively assumed that disconnected image fragments result in a representation of separate objects. When objects are partly occluded, disconnected image fragments can still result in a representation of a single object, based on visual completion. In a simultaneous matching task, displays showing one object, partly occluded objects, or two objects were compared with each other. When only a translation was required to match pairs of displays, one-object displays were matched faster than both occluded-object and two-object displays, which did not differ significantly from each other. When mental rotation and translation were required, the one-object displays were again matched the fastest. In addition, an advantage for occluded-object displays compared with two-object displays was found. We conclude that when the generation of a mental representation is likely, object-based connectedness determines object matching. Mental rotation then seems to depend on the number of objects rather than on the number of image fragments.     

Multidimensional shape similarity in the development of visual object classification

The current work examined age differences in the classification of novel object images that vary in continuous dimensions of structural shape. The structural dimensions employed are two that share a privileged status in the visual analysis and representation of objects: the shape of discrete prominent parts and the attachment positions of those parts. Experiment 1 involved a triad classification task in which participants at each of three different ages (5 years, 8 years, and adult) classified object images from two distinct stimulus sets. Across both sets, the youngest children demonstrated a systematic bias toward the shape of discrete parts during their judgments. With increasing age, participants increasingly came to select both the shape and the position of parts when classifying the images. The findings from Experiment 2 indicate that the local shape bias observed in young children's classifications is not merely a consequence of a discrimination advantage for that dimension. Results are discussed in relation to corresponding age-related changes in other functional contexts of visual processing.     

Generalization of equivalence relations from photos to objects by preschool children

Generalized equivalence classes are stimulus classes that consist of equivalent stimuli and other physically similar class‐member stimuli. The present study evaluated whether preschool children would form equivalence classes among photos of abstract objects (2D) and show equivalence generalization to the corresponding objects (3D), printed photos (2D stimuli), and to black‐and‐white drawn pictures (2D stimuli). Six typically developing children were taught arbitrary relations to establish three 3‐member equivalence classes with 2D stimuli presented on a computer screen. AB‐AC baseline relations (for half of the participants) and AB‐BC relations (for the other half) were taught using a multiple‐probe design to assess taught and tested relations. After class formation, three types of generalization probes were conducted: generalization to 3D stimuli, generalization between 2D (printed photos) and 3D stimuli, and generalization to drawn pictures (2D). All of the participants formed the equivalence classes. Two participants met the criterion for all three generalization probe types. Two participants presented mixed results across tests, and two participants did not exhibit equivalence generalization. The results demonstrated equivalence generalization from 2D to 3D stimuli in preschool children, although the variability across participants suggests that such generalization cannot be assumed a priori.     

Visual transformation of size.

To investigate human visual identification of different-sized objects as identically shaped, matching reaction times were measured for pairs of simultaneously presented random figures. In three experiments, reaction time for correct reactions to test pairs of figures of the same shape and orientation consistently increased approximately linearly as a function of the linear size ratio of the figures. In the second experiment, where this ratio was defined for control pairs as well as for test pairs, reaction time for correct reactions to control pairs showed a similar increase as a function of size ratio. The results suggest that the task was performed by a gradual process of mental size transformation of one of the members of each pair of figures to the format of the other one.     

THE INFLUENCE OF SEX OF SUBJECT AND PHOTO IN THE HEMISPHERIC SPECIALIZATION OF FACIAL RECOGNITION

This study was conducted to assess the effects of sex of subject, sex of photo, and hemispheric specialization on the ability of male (n = 21) and female (n = 21) subjects to recognize previously seen black and white male and female faces. Results indicated better performance with female faces and a significant interaction for sex of photo and laterality. Overall performance was best for female photos and worst for male photos in the LVF. A greater number of false alarms occurred in the LVF with male photos. The differential processing of distinctive cues of male and female faces by the LVF and RVF was discussed.     

Incidental picture exposure affects later reading: evidence from the N400

Language comprehenders form a mental representation of the implied shape of objects mentioned in the text. In the present study, the influence of prior visual experience on subsequent reading was assessed. In two separate phases, participants saw a picture of an object and read a text about the object, suggesting the same or a different shape. When the shapes in the two phases mismatched, ERPs during reading showed a larger N400 amplitude than when the shapes matched, suggesting that a picture presented incidentally 15 min earlier affected reading. These results further strengthen the case for the interaction of language and visual experience during language comprehension.     

The Shape Bias is Affected by Differing Similarity Among Objects

Previous research has demonstrated that visual properties of objects can affect shape-based categorization in a novel-name extension task; however, we still do not know how a relationship between visual properties of objects affects judgments in a novel-name extension task. We examined effects of increased visual similarity among the target and test objects in a shape bias task in young children and adults. Experiment 1 assessed college students with sets of objects whose similarity between target and test objects was either low or high similarity. Adults preferred shape when the similarity among objects was minimized. Experiment 2 tested 24-month olds in their use of the shape bias using the Intermodal Preferential Looking Paradigm. Children showed a shape bias only with items whose similarity to each other was low. These findings suggest that the visual properties of objects affect shape bias performance.     

Mental simulation of four visual object properties: similarities and differences as assessed by the sentence–picture verification task

In the sentence–picture verification (SPV) task, people read sentences implying the shape/size/colour/orientation of objects. They then verify whether pictured objects, which either match or mismatch the implied visual information mentioned in the sentence. Faster verification times on matching trials (match advantage) are considered supportive to the notion that readers perform mental simulations during sentence comprehension. This study advances this work by applying a within-subjects design to the SPV-task, enabling us to directly address the strength of and correlation between the match advantages for the properties shape, size, colour, and orientation. Results showed varying match advantages with colour showing the strongest effect, and no match advantage for orientation. Shape, size, and colour were significantly correlated, whereas there were no significant correlations with orientation. These findings suggest that interpretations of match advantages could benefit from a re-evaluation of mental simulation accountsby distinguishing between intrinsic (shape, size, and colour) and extrinsic (orientation) object properties.     

Object-based apparent motion

The interpretation of a dynamic visual scene requires integrating information within frames (grouping and completion) and across frames (correspondence matching). Fragmentary views of objects were used in five experiments. These views could not be matched with each other by any similarity transformation on the basis of their explicit visual features, but their completed versions were related by a rotational transformation. When the fragmentary images were successively presented to observers, it was found that they produced apparent motion in the picture plane and in depth. Thus, apparent motion is capable of establishing correspondence at the level of perceptually recovered objects in three-dimensional space.     

Facial Recognition: Weapon Effect and Attentional Focus1

The present experiment investigated the hypothesis that a weapon can serve as a cue that will interfere with the eyewitness’ encoding of the weapon-holder's facial features. Extrapolating from Easterbrook's cue utilization hypothesis, an interaction between arousal and attentional focus was predicted. White female college students played a bogus visual discrimination game in which they saw a total of 24 target photos: six black targets holding a weapon in their hands, six white targets holding weapons, six black targets holding objects other than weapons, and six white targets holding objects other than weapons. Subjects were randomly assigned to view the photos while experiencing white noise and threat of electric shock (high arousal) or without such factors (low arousal). Subjects were also randomly assigned to one of four attentional focus levels: face focus, hand focus, background focus, and free focus. A signal detection-type task provided an assessment of identification accuracy. The data revealed a significant “weapon effect”: Subjects were better at identifying photos of targets who were not holding a weapon than they were at identifying photos of targets who were holding a weapon. Focus of attention and race of target also significantly affected recognition accuracy, as did arousal in one of two analyses. No support was found, however, for the predicted interaction between arousal and attentional focus. Finally, subjects showed a strong criterion shift according to the race of target; they were much more likely to make a “seen before” response to other-race (black) faces than to same-race faces.