Effects of fluency on psychological distance and mental construal (or why New York is a large city, but New York is a civilized jungle)

People construe the world along a continuum from concretely (focusing on specific, local details) to abstractly (focusing on global essences). We show that people are more likely to interpret the world abstractly when they experience cognitive disfluency, or difficulty processing stimuli in the environment, than when they experience cognitive fluency. We observed this effect using three instantiations of fluency: visual perceptual fluency (Study 1b), conceptual priming fluency (Study 2b), and linguistic fluency (Study 3). Adopting the framework of construal theory, we suggest that one mechanism for this effect is perceivers' tendency to interpret disfluently processed stimuli as farther from their current position than fluently processed stimuli (Studies 1a and 2a).     

Laterality effects with visual perception of

Using the paradigm denoting a contralateral relationship between visual field and brain hemisphere, laterality effects with music notation and dots were investigated. Two groups of readers of advanced piano music were selected, one good, one poor. Each group participated in two visual half-field experiments, one using random dot patterns and the other using musical chords. Significant opposite field effects were found for the two kinds of stimuli across reading groups, the left field for dots and the right field for chords. With dots, a significant sex effect emerged, with males superior to females across groups. The only significant group difference appeared in the chord experiment, in which the good group was superior. A practice effect also was found only with chords. Results suggest that the left hemisphere is more important for recognition of music notation than the right.     

The role of line junctions in object recognition: The case of reading musical notation

Previous work has shown that line junctions are informative features for visual perception of objects, letters, and words. However, the sources of such sensitivity and their generalizability to other object categories are largely unclear. We addressed these questions by studying perceptual expertise in reading musical notation, a domain in which individuals with different levels of expertise are readily available. We observed that removing line junctions created by the contact between musical notes and staff lines selectively impaired recognition performance in experts and intermediate readers, but not in novices. The degree of performance impairment was predicted by individual fluency in reading musical notation. Our findings suggest that line junctions provide diagnostic information about object identity across various categories, including musical notation. However, human sensitivity to line junctions does not readily transfer from familiar to unfamiliar object categories, and has to be acquired through perceptual experience with the specific objects.     

Crossmodal transfer of arousal, but not pleasantness, from the musical to the visual domain

Arousal and valence (pleasantness) are considered primary dimensions of emotion. However, the degree to which these dimensions interact in emotional processing across sensory modalities is poorly understood. We addressed this issue by applying a crossmodal priming paradigm in which auditory primes (Romantic piano solo music) varying in arousal and/or pleasantness were sequentially paired with visual targets (IAPS pictures). In Experiment 1, the emotion spaces of 120 primes and 120 targets were explored separately in addition to the effects of musical training and gender. Thirty-two participants rated their felt pleasantness and arousal in response to primes and targets on equivalent rating scales as well as their familiarity with the stimuli. Musical training was associated with elevated familiarity ratings for high-arousing music and a trend for elevated arousal ratings, especially in response to unpleasant musical stimuli. Males reported higher arousal than females for pleasant visual stimuli. In Experiment 2, 40 nonmusicians rated their felt arousal and pleasantness in response to 20 visual targets after listening to 80 musical primes. Arousal associated with the musical primes modulated felt arousal in response to visual targets, yet no such transfer of pleasantness was observed between the two modalities. Experiment 3 sought to rule out the possibility of any order effect of the subjective ratings, and responses of 14 nonmusicians replicated results of Experiment 2. This study demonstrates the effectiveness of the crossmodal priming paradigm in basic research on musical emotions.     

Default spacing is the optimal spacing for word reading

Increased interletter spacing is thought to reduce crowding effects and to enhance fluent reading. Several studies have shown beneficial effects of increased interletter spacing on reading speed and accuracy, especially in poor readers. Therefore, increased interletter spacing appears to be a relatively easy way to enhance reading performance. However, in adult readers reading speed was shown to be impeded with increased interletter spacing. Thus, findings on interletter spacing are still inconclusive. In the current study we examined the effect of a range of interletter spacings (?0.5, default, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2) on naming fluency of monosyllabic and bisyllabic words in beginning (Grade 2) and more advanced (Grade 4) readers. Additionally we tested the effects of spacing in a subsample of poor readers. In contrast to previous findings, neither beginning nor advanced readers benefited from an increase in interletter spacing. However, they did show reduced reading fluency when letter spacing was smaller than the default spacing, which may be indicative of a crowding effect. Poor readers showed a similar pattern. We conclude that an increase in interletter spacing has no effect on word naming fluency.     

Holistic processing of musical notation: Dissociating failures of selective attention in experts and novices

Holistic processing (i.e., the tendency to process objects as wholes) is associated with face perception and also with expertise individuating novel objects. Surprisingly, recent work also reveals holistic effects in novice observers. It is unclear whether the same mechanisms support holistic effects in experts and in novices. In the present study, we measured holistic processing of music sequences using a selective attention task in participants who vary in music-reading expertise. We found that holistic effects were strategic in novices but were relatively automatic in experts. Correlational analyses revealed that individual holistic effects were predicted by both individual music-reading ability and neural responses for musical notation in the right fusiform face area (rFFA), but in opposite directions for experts and novices, suggesting that holistic effects in the two groups may be of different natures. To characterize expert perception, it is important not only to measure the tendency to process objects as wholes, but also to test whether this effect is dependent on task constraints.     

Cross-modal interactions in the experience of musical performances: physiological correlates

This experiment was conducted to investigate cross-modal interactions in the emotional experience of music listeners. Previous research showed that visual information present in a musical performance is rich in expressive content, and moderates the subjective emotional experience of a participant listening and/or observing musical stimuli [Vines, B. W., Krumhansl, C. L., Wanderley, M. M., & Levitin, D. J. (2006). Cross-modal interactions in the perception of musical performance. Cognition, 101, 80--113.]. The goal of this follow-up experiment was to replicate this cross-modal interaction by investigating the objective, physiological aspect of emotional response to music measuring electrodermal activity. The scaled average of electrodermal amplitude for visual-auditory presentation was found to be significantly higher than the sum of the reactions when the music was presented in visual only (VO) and auditory only (AO) conditions, suggesting the presence of an emergent property created by bimodal interaction. Functional data analysis revealed that electrodermal activity generally followed the same contour across modalities of presentation, except during rests (silent parts of the performance) when the visual information took on particular salience. Finally, electrodermal activity and subjective tension judgments were found to be most highly correlated in the audio-visual (AV) condition than in the unimodal conditions. The present study provides converging evidence for the importance of seeing musical performances, and preliminary evidence for the utility of electrodermal activity as an objective measure in studies of continuous music-elicited emotions.     

Auditory and visual memory in musicians and nonmusicians

Numerous studies have shown that musicians outperform nonmusicians on a variety of tasks. Here we provide the first evidence that musicians have superior auditory recognition memory for both musical and nonmusical stimuli, compared to nonmusicians. However, this advantage did not generalize to the visual domain. Previously, we showed that auditory recognition memory is inferior to visual recognition memory. Would this be true even for trained musicians? We compared auditory and visual memory in musicians and nonmusicians using familiar music, spoken English, and visual objects. For both groups, memory for the auditory stimuli was inferior to memory for the visual objects. Thus, although considerable musical training is associated with better musical and nonmusical auditory memory, it does not increase the ability to remember sounds to the levels found with visual stimuli. This suggests a fundamental capacity difference between auditory and visual recognition memory, with a persistent advantage for the visual domain.     

基于视听双通道的音乐情绪加工机制及情绪类型和音乐经验的影响

为了探讨视听双通道下的音乐情绪加工机制及音乐情绪类型和音乐训练背景对加工机制的影响,本研究采用表达开心和悲伤的音乐表演视频为材料,比较音乐组被试和非音乐组被试在单听觉通道、单视觉通道和视听双通道三种情境下的情绪评定速度、正确率和强度。结果发现：1）视听双通道与单视觉通道差异显著,与单听觉通道差异不显著。2）非音乐组被试对悲伤的评定正确率高于音乐组被试,对开心的评定正确率低于音乐组被试。说明音乐情绪加工的视听双通道整合优势仅相对单视觉通道存在;非音乐组被试对视觉通道情绪信息的变化更敏感,音乐组被试更依赖音乐经验;可在音乐表演时加入协调的视觉通道情绪信息帮助没有音乐训练经验的听赏者。     

Norming the odd: Creation,norming, and validation of a stimulus set for the study of incongruities across music and language

Research into similarities between music and language processing is currently experiencing a strong renewed interest. Recent methodological advances have led to neuroimaging studies presenting striking similarities between neural patterns associated with the processing of music and language—notably, in the study of participants’ responses to elements that are incongruous with their musical or linguistic context. Responding to a call for greater systematicity by leading researchers in the field of music and language psychology, this article describes the creation, selection, and validation of a set of auditory stimuli in which both congruence and resolution were manipulated in equivalent ways across harmony, rhythm, semantics, and syntax. Three conditions were created by changing the contexts preceding and following musical and linguistic incongruities originally used for effect by authors and composers: Stimuli in the incongruous–resolved condition reproduced the original incongruity and resolution into the same context; stimuli in the incongruous–unresolved condition reproduced the incongruity but continued postincongruity with a new context dictated by the incongruity; and stimuli in the congruous condition presented the same element of interest, but the entire context was adapted to match it so that it was no longer incongruous. The manipulations described in this article rendered unrecognizable the original incongruities from which the stimuli were adapted, while maintaining ecological validity. The norming procedure and validation study resulted in a significant increase in perceived oddity from congruous to incongruous–resolved and from incongruous–resolved to incongruous–unresolved in all four components of music and language, making this set of stimuli a theoretically grounded and empirically validated resource for this growing area of research.     

Visual processing of music notation: a study of event-related potentials

In reading music, the acquisition of pitch information depends mostly on the spatial position of notes, hence more spatial processing, whereas the acquisition of temporal information depends mostly on the visual features of notes and object recognition. This study used both electrophysiological and behavioral methods to compare the processing of pitch and duration in reading single musical notes. It was observed that in the early stage of note reading, identification of pitch could elicit greater N1 and N2 amplitude than identification of duration at the parietal lobe electrodes. In the later stages of note reading, identifying pitch elicited a greater negative slow wave at parietal electrodes than did identifying note duration. The sustained contribution of parietal processes for pitch suggests that the dorsal pathway is essential for pitch processing. However, the duration task did not elicit greater amplitude of any early ERP components than the pitch task at temporal electrodes. Accordingly, a double dissociation, suggesting involvement of the dorsal visual stream, was not observed in spatial pitch processing and ventral visual stream in processing of note durations.     

Action-video-game experience alters the spatial resolution of vision

Playing action video games enhances several different aspects of visual processing; however, the mechanisms underlying this improvement remain unclear. Here we show that playing action video games can alter fundamental characteristics of the visual system, such as the spatial resolution of visual processing across the visual field. To determine the spatial resolution of visual processing, we measured the smallest distance a distractor could be from a target without compromising target identification. This approach exploits the fact that visual processing is hindered as distractors are brought close to the target, a phenomenon known as crowding. Compared with nonplayers, action-video-game players could tolerate smaller target-distractor distances. Thus, the spatial resolution of visual processing is enhanced in this population. Critically, similar effects were observed in non-video-game players who were trained on an action video game; this result verifies a causative relationship between video-game play and augmented spatial resolution.     

Effects of inter-character spacing on saccade programming in beginning readers and dyslexics

The present study investigated the impact of inter-character spacing on saccade programming in beginning readers and dyslexic children. In two experiments, eye movements were recorded while dyslexic children, reading-age, and chronological-age controls, performed an oculomotor lateralized bisection task on words and strings of hashes presented either with default inter-character spacing or with extra spacing between the characters. The results of Experiment 1 showed that (1) only proficient readers had already developed highly automatized procedures for programming both left- and rightward saccades, depending on the discreteness of the stimuli and (2) children of all groups were disrupted (i.e., had trouble to land close to the beginning of the stimuli) by extra spacing between the characters of the stimuli, and particularly for stimuli presented in the left visual field. Experiment 2 was designed to disentangle the role of inter-character spacing and spatial width. Stimuli were made the same physical length in the default and extra-spacing conditions by having more characters in the default spacing condition. Our results showed that inter-letter spacing still influenced saccade programming when controlling for spatial width, thus confirming the detrimental effect of extra spacing for saccade programming. We conclude that the beneficial effect of increased inter-letter spacing on reading can be better explained in terms of decreased visual crowding than improved saccade targeting.     

Exploring the association between visual perception abilities and reading of musical notation

In the reading of music, the acquisition of pitch information depends primarily upon the spatial position of notes as well as upon an individual's spatial processing ability. This study investigated the relationship between the ability to read single notes and visual-spatial ability. Participants with high and low single-note reading abilities were differentiated based upon differences in musical notation-reading abilities and their spatial processing; object recognition abilities were then assessed. It was found that the group with lower note-reading abilities made more errors than did the group with a higher note-reading abilities in the mental rotation task. In contrast, there was no apparent significant difference between the two groups in the object recognition task. These results suggest that note-reading may be related to visual spatial processing abilities, and not to an individual's ability with object recognition.     

Perceptual fluency can be used as a cue for categorization decisions

Learning in the prototype distortion task is thought to involve perceptual learning in which category members experience an enhanced visual response (Ashby & Maddox. Annual Review of Psychology, 56, 149-178, 2005). This response likely leads to more-efficient processing, which in turn may result in a feeling of perceptual fluency for category members. We examined the perceptual-fluency hypothesis by manipulating fluency independently from category membership. We predicted that when perceptual fluency was induced using subliminal priming, this fluency would be misattributed to category membership and would affect categorization decisions. In a prototype distortion task, the participants were more likely to judge stimuli that were not members of the category as category members when the nonmembers were made perceptually fluent with a matching subliminal prime. This result suggests that perceptual fluency can be used as a cue during some categorization decisions. In addition, the results provided converging evidence that some types of categorization are based on perceptual learning.     

Naming fluency in dyslexic and nondyslexic readers: Differential effects of visual crowding in foveal,parafoveal, and peripheral vision

Reading fluency is often indexed by performance on rapid automatized naming (RAN) tasks, which are known to reflect speed of access to lexical codes. We used eye tracking to investigate visual influences on naming fluency. Specifically, we examined how visual crowding affects fluency in a RAN-letters task on an item-by-item basis, by systematically manipulating the interletter spacing of items, such that upcoming letters in the array were viewed in the fovea, parafovea, or periphery relative to a given fixated letter. All lexical information was kept constant. Nondyslexic readers’ gaze durations were longer in foveal than in parafoveal and peripheral trials, indicating that visual crowding slows processing even for fluent readers. Dyslexics’ gaze durations were longer in foveal and parafoveal trials than in peripheral trials. Our results suggest that for dyslexic readers, influences of crowding on naming speed extend to a broader visual span (to parafoveal vision) than that for nondyslexic readers, but do not extend as far as peripheral vision. The findings extend previous research by elucidating the different visual spans within which crowding operates for dyslexic and nondyslexic readers in an online fluency task.     

Effects of number-of-letters on eye movements during reading are independent from effects of spatial word length

Word length is an important determinant of eye movement behaviour in reading. The current study is the first attempt to disconfound a word's number of letters from its spatial extent. In a sentence-reading experiment using closely matched stimuli, clear differences were observed between target words that subtended the same visual angle but differed in number of letters: the more letters in the word, the more fixations made on the word, and the longer the duration of these fixations. Analyses of the full set of sentence words confirmed these results for a wider range of word lengths, and are consistent with a role for number-of-letters distinct from spatial extent. The most plausible explanation for these findings is that long words are subject to a reater degree of visual crowding, which is costly for both temporal and spatial eye movement systems.     

视觉复杂性和字间距调节汉语发展性阅读障碍儿童的视觉拥挤效应:来自眼动的证据

采用眼动追踪技术,通过笔画数多少构成高低不同的视觉复杂性,操纵文本的字间距,来考察视觉复杂性和字间距对汉语发展性阅读障碍儿童的视觉拥挤效应的影响。结果发现,阅读障碍儿童阅读低视觉复杂性文本时,随着字间距的不断增加,字间距增加到一定程度时（+6 pt）阅读时间最长、总注视次数最多,随后在本实验字间距最大条件下（+12 pt）阅读时间变短、总注视次数变少,正常儿童不存在这种现象。结果表明,文本阅读中,字间距和视觉复杂性对阅读障碍儿童的视觉拥挤效应起到调节作用,低视觉复杂性文本可以降低阅读障碍儿童的视觉拥挤效应,阅读障碍儿童的视觉拥挤效应强度和字间距大小的数量关系呈非线性。