A cluster‐based factor rotation

A new oblique factor rotation method is proposed, the aim of which is to identify a simple and well‐clustered structure in a factor loading matrix. A criterion consisting of the complexity of a factor loading matrix and a between‐cluster dissimilarity is optimized using the gradient projection algorithm and the k‐means algorithm. It is shown that if there is an oblique rotation of an initial loading matrix that has a perfect simple structure, then the proposed method with Kaiser's normalization will produce the perfect simple structure. Although many rotation methods can also recover a perfect simple structure, they perform poorly when a perfect simple structure is not possible. In this case, the new method tends to perform better because it clusters the loadings without requiring the clusters to be perfect. Artificial and real data analyses demonstrate that the proposed method can give a simple structure, which the other methods cannot produce, and provides a more interpretable result than those of widely known rotation techniques.     

Relating tests given to different samples

Suppose a collection of standard tests is given to all subjects in a random sample, but a different new test is given to each group of subjects in nonoverlapping subsamples. A simple method is developed for displaying the information that the data set contains about the correlational structure of the new tests. This is possible to some extent, even though each subject takes only one new test. The method uses plausible values of the partial correlations among the new tests given the standard tests in order to generate plausible simple correlations among the new tests and plausible multiple correlations between composites of the new tests and the standard tests. The real data example included suggests that the method can be useful in practical problems.     

Sequential estimation in multidimensional scaling

The concept of sequential estimation is introduced in multidimensional scaling (MDS). The sequential estimation method developed in this paper refers to continually updating estimates of a configuration as new observations are added. This method has a number of advantages, such as a locally optimal design of the experiment can be easily constructed, and dynamic experimentation is made possible. Using artificial data, the performance of our sequential method is illustrated.We are indebted to anonymous reviewers for their suggestions. In addition, we thank Dr. Frank Critchley for his helpful comments on our Q/S algorithm.     

Least squares metric,unidimensional unfolding

The partial derivatives of the squared error loss function for the metric unfolding problem have a unique geometry which can be exploited to produce unfolding methods with very desirable properties. This paper details a simple unidimensional unfolding method which uses the geometry of the partial derivatives to find conditional global minima; i.e., one set of points is held fixed and the global minimum is found for the other set. The two sets are then interchanged. The procedure is very robust. It converges to a minimum very quickly from a random or non-random starting configuration and is particularly useful for the analysis of large data sets with missing entries.This paper benefits from many conversations with and suggestions from Howard Rosenthal.     

Familiarity from the configuration of objects in 3-dimensional space and its relation to déjà vu: a virtual reality investigation

Déjà vu is the striking sense that the present situation feels familiar, alongside the realization that it has to be new. According to the Gestalt familiarity hypothesis, déjà vu results when the configuration of elements within a scene maps onto a configuration previously seen, but the previous scene fails to come to mind. We examined this using virtual reality (VR) technology. When a new immersive VR scene resembled a previously-viewed scene in its configuration but people failed to recall the previously-viewed scene, familiarity ratings and reports of déjà vu were indeed higher than for completely novel scenes. People also exhibited the contrasting sense of newness and of familiarity that is characteristic of déjà vu. Familiarity ratings and déjà vu reports among scenes recognized as new increased with increasing feature-match of a scene to one stored in memory, suggesting that feature-matching can produce familiarity and déjà vu when recall fails.     

The creation and reversal of the Müller-Lyer illusion through attentional manipulation

A configuration is presented in which both the overestimated and the underestimated portions of the Müller-Lyer illusion are embedded. In free viewing no distortion of length occurs; however, overestimation or underestimation illusions can be produced by simple manipulation of the attentional set, thus demonstrating one cognitive component in the formation of the Müller-Lyer distortion.     

Spatiotemporal configuration of memory arrays as a component of VWM representations

Visual working memory (VWM) has been found to support a very limited representation of visual information and yet relatively little is known about the mechanisms that underlie this important cognitive construct. Prior investigations have revealed that VWM performance can be affected by relatively minor changes in the test method as well as the method of encoding. In the present two experiments, we separately investigated these two factors. The results suggest that sequential object displays can improve VWM performance significantly but that a lack of context relatedness between encoding and retrieval impairs performance. This impairment seems to be caused by a mismatch in the spatiotemporal configuration of the memory and test displays, and, importantly, cannot be compensated by selective attention. These findings suggest that spatiotemporal configuration information may be a fundamental component of the information that is stored in VWM as suggested by a number of influential theories.     

Serious metaphysics and the vindication of reductions

What would be sufficient to show of some apparently higher-level property that it is ‘nothing over and above’ some complex configuration of more basic properties? This paper defends a new method for justifying reductions by demonstrating its comparative advantages over two methods recently defended in the literature. Unlike its rivals, what I’ll call “the semantic method” makes a reduction’s truth epistemically transparent without relying on conceptual analyses.     

A note on the use of triads for paired comparisons

When scaling a large number of stimuli from comparative judgments, considerable savings in time and labor may be realized if stimuli are presented in triad form rather than in pairs. If, forN stimuli, the proper configuration of triads can be assembled so that all possible pairs appear once, the paired judgment matrix may be reproduced with one-third fewer judgments and two-thirds fewer presentations than would be required with complete pairing. A simple procedure is described for enumerating triad configurations for whichN is an odd multiple of three.     

The role of peripheral vision in implicit contextual cuing

Implicit contextual cuing refers to the ability to learn the association between contextual information of our environment and a specific target, which can be used to guide attention during visual search. It was recently suggested that the storage of a snapshot image of the local context of a target underlies implicit contextual cuing. To make such a snapshot, it is necessary to use peripheral vision. In order to test whether peripheral vision can underlie implicit contextual cuing, we used a covert visual search task, in which participants were required to indicate the orientation of a target stimulus while foveating a fixation cross. The response times were shorter when the configuration of the stimuli was repeated than when the configuration was new. Importantly, this effect was still found after 10 days, indicating that peripherally perceived spatial context information can be stored in memory for long periods of time. These results indicate that peripheral vision can be used to make a snapshot of the local context of a target.     

Threshold estimation in two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) tasks: the Spearman-Kärber method

The Spearman-K?rber method can be used to estimate the threshold value or difference limen in two-alternative forced-choice tasks. This method yields a simple estimator for the difference limen and its standard error, so that both can be calculated with a pocket calculator. In contrast to previous estimators, the present approach does not require any assumptions about the shape of the true underlying psychometric function. The performance of this new nonparametric estimator is compared with the standard technique of probit analysis. The Spearman-K?rber method appears to be a valuable addition to the toolbox of psychophysical methods, because it is most accurate for estimating the mean (i.e., absolute and difference thresholds) and dispersion of the psychometric function, although it is not optimal for estimating percentile-based parameters of this function.     

Threshold estimation in two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) tasks: The Spearman-Kärber method

The Spearman-Kärber method can be used to estimate the threshold value or difference limen in two-alternative forced-choice tasks. This method yields a simple estimator for the difference limen and its standard error, so that both can be calculated with a pocket calculator. In contrast to previous estimators, the present approach does not require any assumptions about the shape of the true underlying psychometric function. The performance of this new nonparametric estimator is compared with the standard technique of probit analysis. The Spearman-Kärber method appears to be a valuable addition to the toolbox of psychophysical methods, because it is most accurate for estimating the mean (i.e., absolute and difference thresholds) and dispersion of the psychometric function, although it is not optimal for estimating percentile-based parameters of this function.     

Thresholds for detection and awareness of masked facial stimuli

It has been suggested that perception without awareness can be demonstrated by a dissociation between performance in objective (forced-choice) and subjective (yes–no) tasks, and such dissociations have been reported both for simple stimuli and more complex ones including faces. However, signal detection theory (SDT) indicates that the subjective measures used to assess awareness in such studies can be affected by response bias, which could account for the observed dissociation, and this was confirmed by Balsdon and Azzopardi (2015) using simple visual targets. However, this finding may not apply to all types of stimulus, as the detectability of complex targets such as faces is known to be affected by their configuration as well as by their stimulus energy. We tested this with a comparison of forced-choice and yes–no detection of facial stimuli depicting happy or angry or fearful expressions using a backward masking paradigm, and using SDT methods including correcting for unequal variances in the underlying signal distributions, to measure sensitivity independently of response criterion in 12 normal observers. In 47 out 48 comparisons there was no significant difference between sensitivity (d_a) in the two tasks: hence, across the range of expressions tested it appears that the configuration of complex stimuli does not enhance detectability independently of awareness. The results imply that, on the basis of psychophysical experiments in normal observers, there is no reason to postulate that performance and awareness are mediated by separate processes.     

An alphanumeric display program for a PDP-8

Alphanumeric and special characters composed of 5 by 7 dot matrices can be displayed on a cathode ray tube by use of a program written for the PDP-8 family of computers. The CRT surface is specified to contain up to 32 rows with up to 32 characters per row. The 35 dots defining each character require 1.5 msec to generate. Every possible arrangement of spatial and temporal organization among and between strings of characters can be created by simple parameter specification before each trial. The program is designed to operate with a minimal 4k-memory computer configuration, with no special hardware other than an oscilloscope display. The program also permits efficient on-line operation so that an entire experiment can be run quickly and efficiently without further programming. A large number of examples are detailed, and operating procedures are specified.     

Factors in the learning behavior of the albino rat

The table of intercorrelations published by Dr. R. L. Thorndike in theGenetic Psychology Monographs, 1935,17, No. 1, has been reanalyzed into ten factors. Rotation of the reference vectors resulted in a configuration which, for all practical purposes, may be said to show a simple structure and (except for one variable on one factor) a positive manifold. Five of the factors can be interpreted with some confidence, one only with considerable caution; three factors are specific to the apparatus employed, and for the one remaining factor, no interpretation is attempted; it appears to be a residual plane.     

Effects of minimal social cues on trust in the investment game

In anonymous game tasks, individuals’ prosocial behaviour was shown to increase when those individuals were provided with social cues from a third party or bystander. It has been suggested that those social cues can be presented using a configuration suggestive of a face with ‘watching eyes’. This led us to question whether it was possible to provide the watching‐eyes configuration with even weaker facial information, such as a simple dot pattern. By using a minimal social cue paradigm, such as the one described above, the present research found that individuals’ trust toward the trustee increased when they detected the watching‐eyes dot pattern as a source of social cues in two settings: a hypothetical investment game for both college students (Study 1) and customs officers (Study 2); and an actual investment game for college students (Study 3).     

Technical clarification to Silbert and Thomas (2013): “Decisional separability,model identification,and statistical inference in the general recognition theory framework”

We offer a minor technical correction to the published proof of part (ii) of the main theorem in Silbert and Thomas (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 20, 1–20, 2013) that somewhat limits the scope of the equivalence observed in that work. Specifically, in order for a mean shift integrality with decisional separability to be mimicked by a perceptually separable but nondecisionally separable configuration, one needs to assume stimulus invariance. This holds when all of the covariance matrices in the stimulus configuration are equal to each other. We note that part (i) of the theorem is unaffected by this modification; an empirical finding of perceptual separability and the failure of decisional separability can be mimicked by a perceptually nonseparable, decisionally separable configuration without restricting the covariance matrices to be equal. We also note that stimulus invariance is often assumed in simple designs (e.g., Macmillan & Ornstein in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 97, 1261–1285, 1998), due to the implausibility of different perceptual correlations being present within stimuli perched very closely in perceptual space.     

Aristotelian Logic Axioms in Propositional Logic: The Pouch Method

A new theoretical approach to Aristotelian Logic (AL) based on three axioms has been recently introduced. This formalization of the theory allowed for the unification of its uncommunicated traditional branches, thus restoring the theoretical unity of AL. In this brief paper, the applicability of the three AL axioms to Propositional Logic (PL) is explored. First, it is shown how the AL axioms can be applied to some simple PL arguments in a straightforward manner. Second, the development of a proof method for PL inspired by the AL axioms is presented. This method mimics the underlying mechanics of the proof method from AL, and offers a complementary alternative to proof methods such as truth trees.     

The principle of good continuation in space and time can guide visual search in absence of priming or contextual cueing

Previous research has shown that repetition of the same target features and/or spatial location over time can improve detection, discrimination, and identification. It has also been shown that repetition of the same distractor features or spatial layout can similarly improve search performance. Thus, it appears that target and distractor features and positions are stored in memory and used to guide visual processes such as object recognition and search. Here we introduce a new paradigm for manipulating the sequential structure of target position across trials independently of target features, position priming, and contextual configuration. Results show that facilitation or inhibition in visual search occurs when the target appears at an implicitly expected or unexpected location, respectively, according to the Gestalt's principle of good continuation of the target's successive positions across trials. These findings provide evidence that the simple rule of good continuation can act as a spatiotemporal cue and guide where to attend while searching for the target.     

The shape of threat: simple geometric forms evoke rapid and sustained capture of attention

Previous work has indicated that simple geometric shapes underlying facial expressions are capable of conveying emotional meaning. Specifically, a series of studies found that a simple shape, a downward-pointing "V," which is similar to the geometric configuration of the face in angry expressions, is perceived as threatening. A parallel line of research has determined that threatening stimuli more readily capture attention. In five experiments, the authors sought to determine whether this preferential processing was also present for the simple geometric form of a downward-pointing "V." Using a visual search paradigm, across these experiments the authors found that, when embedded in a field of other shapes, downward-pointing V's were detected faster and, in some cases, more accurately than identical shapes pointing upward. These findings indicate that the meaning of threat can be conveyed rapidly with minimal stimulus detail. In addition, in some cases, during trials of homogeneous fields of stimuli, fields of downward-pointing V's led to slower response times, suggesting that this shape's ability to capture attention may also extend to difficulty in disengaging attention as well.