Prism adaptation to dynamic events

In the present study, we explored adaptation to prism-displaced dynamic and static events under conditions of minimal information. Many of our interactions with the world are dynamic and involve reaching for or intercepting moving objects. The consequences (or feedback) of those interactions entail the presence or absence of physical contact with the moving objects. In this study, humans learned, with only heptic feedback, to intercept optically displaced falling balls. To eliminate visual feedback, the falling balls disappeared behind an occluder (which systematically varied in size across groups) prior to either striking or missing a subject's hand. As occluder size decreased, adaptation increased. With minimum occluder sizes, the greatest adaptation occurred around the training position, and adaptation decreased as distance between training and testing positions increased. The results can best be described in terms of a generalization gradient centered around the training position. This generalization gradient was not present when subjects were trained with ecologically similar static arrays. Implications for models of adaptation are discussed.     

Changing scenes: memory for naturalistic events following change blindness

Research on scene perception indicates that viewers often fail to detect large changes to scene regions when these changes occur during a visual disruption such as a saccade or a movie cut. In two experiments, we examined whether this relative inability to detect changes would produce systematic biases in event memory. In Experiment 1, participants decided whether two successively presented images were the same or different, followed by a memory task, in which they recalled the content of the viewed scene. In Experiment 2, participants viewed a short video, in which an actor carried out a series of daily activities, and central scenes' attributes were changed during a movie cut. A high degree of change blindness was observed in both experiments, and these effects were related to scene complexity (Experiment 1) and level of retrieval support (Experiment 2). Most important, participants reported the changed, rather than the initial, event attributes following a failure in change detection. These findings suggest that attentional limitations during encoding contribute to biases in episodic memory.     

When movement patterns turn into events: Implications for the recognition of spatial configurations from different viewpoints

In the present paper, we examine the spatial representation of dynamic scenes. Particularly, we focus on the question whether recognition performance is viewpoint dependent or viewpoint invariant. In two experiments, the processing of events with regard to their spatial dimension was investigated. Dynamic scenes were varied in a manner that either retained or suppressed their event characteristics. It could be shown that the meaningful variant of the scene led to a viewpoint independent recognition performance, whereas the meaningless variant led to a viewpoint dependent recognition performance. Taken together, the experiments demonstrate that the event character of dynamic scenes enables viewers to encode the scene in a highly economic way and, therefore, has profound implications for the quality of spatial representation in terms of its abstract, viewpoint independent character.     

Changing history: doctored photographs affect memory for past public events

We investigated how doctored photographs of past public events affect memory for those events. Italian participants viewed either original images or misleading digitally doctored images depicting the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest in Beijing and a 2003 protest in Rome against the war in Iraq, and they subsequently answered questions about those events. Viewing the doctored images affected the way participants remembered the events. Those who viewed the doctored photograph of the Beijing event estimated that a larger number of people participated in it. Those who viewed the doctored photograph of the Rome event rated the event as more violent and more negative, recalled more physical confrontation, damage to property, and injuries to demonstrators, and were less inclined to participate in future protests. Both younger and older adult participants were affected by the manipulation. Results indicate that doctored photographs of past public events can influence memory, attitudes and behavioural intentions. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The logic of viewpoints

In this paper a propositional logic of viewpoints is presented. The language of this logic consists of the usual modal operatorsL (of necessity) andM (of possibility) as well as of two new operatorsA andR. The intuitive interpretations ofA andR are “from all viewpoints” and “from some viewpoint”, respectively. Semantically the language is interpreted by using Kripke models augmented with sets of “viewpoints” and with a new alternativeness relation for the operatorA. Truth values of formulas are evaluated with respect to a world and a viewpoint. Various axiomatizations of the logic of viewpoints are presented and proved complete. Finally, some applications are given.     

Changing beliefs about past public events with believable and unbelievable doctored photographs

Doctored photographs can shape what people believe and remember about prominent public events, perhaps due to their apparent credibility. In three studies, subjects completed surveys about the 2012 London Olympic torch relay (Experiment 1) or the 2011 Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton (Experiments 2–3). Some were shown a genuine photo of the event; others saw a doctored photo that depicted protesters and unrest. A third group of subjects saw a doctored photo whose inauthenticity had been made explicit, either by adding a written disclaimer (Experiment 1) or by making the digital manipulation deliberately poor (Experiments 2–3). In all three studies, doctored photos had small effects on a subset of subjects’ beliefs about the events. Of central interest though, comparable effects also emerged when the photos were overtly inauthentic. These findings suggest that cognitive mechanisms other than credibility – such as familiarity misattribution and mental imagery – can rapidly influence beliefs about past events even when the low credibility of a source is overt.     

Infants discriminate manners and paths in non-linguistic dynamic events

Do 14- to 17-month-olds notice the paths and manners of motion events? English- and Spanish-learning infants were habituated to an animated motion event including a manner (e.g., spinning) and a path (e.g., over). They were then tested on four types of events that changed either the manner, the path, both, or neither component. Both English- and Spanish-learning infants attended to changes of manner and changes of path. Thus, infants from two different language communities proved sensitive to components of events that undergird relational term learning.     

Characteristics of life events during adolescence

Two studies of the characteristics of life events during adolescence are reported. In the first, open-ended reports of major life events and daily events were obtained from early, middle, and late adolescents. Analyses of the frequency of past events perceived as positive versus negative revealed effects for type of event (major vs. daily), age, and gender. In contrast, anticipated events were perceived similarly across age and gender. The second study examined judgments by older adolescents of the valence, type, and domain of life events. Consensus regarding these characteristics was achieved on only a small portion of events. The implications of these findings for the measurement of life events during adolescence are highlighted.     

Temporal binding of auditory spatial information across dynamic binaural events

Simultaneity judgments were used to measure temporal binding windows (TBW) for brief binaural events (changes in interaural time and/or level differences [ITD and ILD]) and test the hypothesis that ITD and ILD contribute to perception via separate sensory dimensions subject to binding via slow (100+ ms)—presumably cortical—mechanisms as in multisensory TBW. Stimuli were continuous low-frequency noises that included two brief shifts of either type (ITD or ILD), both of which are heard as lateral position changes. TBW for judgments within a single cue dimension were narrower for ITD (mean = 444 ms) than ILD (807 ms). TBW for judgments across cue dimensions (i.e., one ITD shift and one ILD shift) were similar to within-cue ILD (778 ms). The results contradict the original hypothesis, in that cross-cue comparisons were no slower than within-cue ILD comparisons. Rather, the wide TBW values—consistent with previous estimates of multisensory TBW—suggest slow integrative processing for both types of judgments. Narrower TBW for ITD than ILD judgments suggests important cue-specific differences in the neural mechanisms or the perceptual correlates of integration across binaural-cue dimensions.     

Changing beliefs about implausible autobiographical events: a little plausibility goes a long way

Three experiments investigated the malleability of perceived plausibility and the subjective likelihood of occurrence of plausible and implausible events among participants who had no recollection of experiencing them. In Experiment 1, a plausibility-enhancing manipulation (reading accounts of the occurrence of events) combined with a personalized suggestion increased the perceived plausibility of the implausible event, as well as participants' ratings of the likelihood that they had experienced it. Plausibility and likelihood ratings were uncorrelated. Subsequent studies showed that the plausibility manipulation alone was sufficient to increase likelihood ratings but only if the accounts that participants read were set in a contemporary context. These data suggest that false autobiographical beliefs can be induced in clinical and forensic contexts even for initially implausible events.     

Recognizing people seen in events via dynamic "mug shots"

This study examined effects of an event and dynamic mug shots on facial recognition. Witnesses saw either a film of a liquor store holdup staged by six perpetrators, slides of the same targets, or freeze-framed views from the filmed event. Slides of different facial views of targets among 12 foils, or dynamic 180 degrees mug shots of the same men, or multiple static views were administered 24 hr later in yes-no recognition tests. Recognition (d') was poorer for the same men seen in the event than in slides, but better for dynamic than for static mug shots. Nondynamic event characteristics were responsible for poor recognition of people seen in events, whereas dynamic aspects of facial transformations, not multiple views, seemed responsible for the superiority of dynamic mug shots. The implications of these results for issues of ecological validity of traditional face recognition methodology and for static feature models vs. dynamic transformation models of face recognition are discussed.     

Gorillas we have missed: sustained inattentional deafness for dynamic events

It is now well-known that the absence of attention can leave us 'blind' to visual stimuli that are very obvious under normal viewing conditions (e.g. a person dressed as a gorilla; Simons & Chabris, 1999). However, the question of whether hearing can ever be susceptible to such effects remains open. Here, we present evidence that the absence of attention can leave people 'deaf' to the presence of an 'auditory gorilla' which is audible for 19s and clearly noticeable under full attention. These findings provide the first ever demonstration of sustained inattentional deafness. The effect is all the more surprising because it occurs within a lifelike, three-dimensional auditory scene in which the unnoticed stimulus moves through the middle of several other dynamic auditory stimuli.     

Gorillas in our midst: sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events

With each eye fixation, we experience a richly detailed visual world. Yet recent work on visual integration and change direction reveals that we are surprisingly unaware of the details of our environment from one view to the next: we often do not detect large changes to objects and scenes ('change blindness'). Furthermore, without attention, we may not even perceive objects ('inattentional blindness'). Taken together, these findings suggest that we perceive and remember only those objects and details that receive focused attention. In this paper, we briefly review and discuss evidence for these cognitive forms of 'blindness'. We then present a new study that builds on classic studies of divided visual attention to examine inattentional blindness for complex objects and events in dynamic scenes. Our results suggest that the likelihood of noticing an unexpected object depends on the similarity of that object to other objects in the display and on how difficult the priming monitoring task is. Interestingly, spatial proximity of the critical unattended object to attended locations does not appear to affect detection, suggesting that observers attend to objects and events, not spatial positions. We discuss the implications of these results for visual representations and awareness of our visual environment.     

Endpoints and viewpoints on spatial neglect

In this issue of the Journal of Neuropsychology, Abe and Ishiai (2022) report an experiment designed to probe the subjective experience of line bisection in neglect. A re-analysis of their data can also offer insights into how best to characterise neglect performance for this and other tasks. We show that sensitive measures of neglect can be obtained by quantifying the difference in the influence (or ‘weighting’) that each endpoint has on the response. The right endpoint is dramatically more influential than the left in people with neglect performing line bisection and endpoint reproduction tasks. This supports the view that neglect may limit the ability to simultaneously represent two locations, so that the response is determined primarily with respect to the right endpoint. We also discuss Abe and Ishiai's conclusion that bisection responses in neglect are accompanied by the subjective experience of a complete line extending equally to either side of the chosen midpoint.     

Controversies over integrity testing: Two viewpoints

In the August 1993 issue ofJournal of Applied Psychology, Deniz Ones, Vish Viswesvaran, and Frank Schmidt published a monograph on the validity of integrity tests as revealed by meta-analysis. They concluded that integrity tests have substantial and generalizable predictive validity for criteria of both overall job performance and counterproductive behaviors on the job (e.g., disciplinary problems, absenteeism, rule breaking, violence on the job, theft, etc.). During the Fall of 1992, the authors sent a preprint of this study to David Lykken of the University of Minnesota, stimulating the exchange of letters that is reproduced here. The doubts, concerns, and feelings about integrity tests expressed by Professor Lykken are likely to be shared by others. The responses by Professors Schmidt, Ones, and Viswesvaran attempt to show that these worries are unfounded.     

Inferences about predictable events: eye movements during reading

 Eye fixations were recorded to assess whether, how, and when readers draw inferences about predictable events. Predicting context sentences, or non-predicting control sentences, were presented, followed by continuation sentences in which a target word referred to a predictable event (inferential word) or an unlikely event (non-predictable word). There were no effects on initial target word processing measures, such as launch and landing sites, fixation probability, first-fixation duration, or first-pass reading time. However, relative to the control condition, the predicting context (1) speeded up reanalysis of the inferential word, as revealed by a reduction in second-pass reading time and regressions, and (2) interfered with processing of the non-predictable word, as shown by an increase in regressions. These results indicate that predictive inferences are active at late text integration processes, rather than at early lexical-access processes. The pattern of findings suggests that these inferences involve initial activation of rather general concepts following the inducing context, and that they are completed or refined with delay, after the inferential target word is read. Received: 4 January 2000 / Accepted: 23 October 2000     

Integration of visuospatial information encoded from different viewpoints

Two experiments investigated whether separate sets of objects viewed in the same environment but from different views were encoded as a single integrated representation or maintained as distinct representations. Participants viewed two circular layouts of objects that were placed around them in a round (Experiment 1) or a square (Experiment 2) room and were later tested on perspective-taking trials requiring retrieval of either one layout (within-layout trials) or both layouts (between-layout trials). Results from Experiment 1 indicated that participants did not integrate the two layouts into a single representation. Imagined perspective taking was more efficient on within- than on between-layout trials. Furthermore, performance for within-layout trials was best from the perspective that each layout was studied. Results from Experiment 2 indicated that the stable environmental reference frame provided by the square room caused many, but not all, participants to integrate all locations within a common representation. Participants who integrated performed equally well for within-layout and between-layout judgments and also represented both layouts using a common reference frame. Overall, these findings highlight the flexibility of organizing information in spatial memory.