Lateral differences in visual inspection time? The role of apparent motion cues

There are a number of reports of a left hemisphere advantage for visual inspection time, but some investigators employing slightly different methodologies have failed to replicate the effect. The present experiment was an attempt to identify one of the factors that could have lead to these discrepant findings: The role of apparent motion cues. In Experiment 1, a lateralized version of the inspection time task was administered via a computer monitor wherein the pi stimulus was masked with a figure vulnerable to apparent motion cues. With this mask, a strong left hemisphere advantage was observed. In Experiments 2 and 3, the test was administered on a tachistoscope or computer monitor, but in both cases the stimulus was masked with a pattern "forest" mask. Under these conditions, there was no lateral difference. This result implies that the left hemisphere advantage for inspection time relies on apparent motion cues.     

The role of motion and intensity in deaf children’s recognition of real human facial expressions of emotion

There is substantial evidence to suggest that deafness is associated with delays in emotion understanding, which has been attributed to delays in language acquisition and opportunities to converse. However, studies addressing the ability to recognise facial expressions of emotion have produced equivocal findings. The two experiments presented here attempt to clarify emotion recognition in deaf children by considering two aspects: the role of motion and the role of intensity in deaf children’s emotion recognition. In Study 1, 26 deaf children were compared to 26 age-matched hearing controls on a computerised facial emotion recognition task involving static and dynamic expressions of 6 emotions. Eighteen of the deaf and 18 age-matched hearing controls additionally took part in Study 2, involving the presentation of the same 6 emotions at varying intensities. Study 1 showed that deaf children’s emotion recognition was better in the dynamic rather than static condition, whereas the hearing children showed no difference in performance between the two conditions. In Study 2, the deaf children performed no differently from the hearing controls, showing improved recognition rates with increasing rates of intensity. With the exception of disgust, no differences in individual emotions were found. These findings highlight the importance of using ecologically valid stimuli to assess emotion recognition.     

The effect of experience and of dots’ density and duration on the detection of coherent motion in dogs

Knowledge about the mechanisms underlying canine vision is far from being exhaustive, especially that concerning post-retinal elaboration. One aspect that has received little attention is motion perception, and in spite of the common belief that dogs are extremely apt at detecting moving stimuli, there is no scientific support for such an assumption. In fact, we recently showed that dogs have higher thresholds than humans for coherent motion detection (Kanizsar et al. in Sci Rep UK 7:11259, 2017). This term refers to the ability of the visual system to perceive several units moving in the same direction, as one coherently moving global unit. Coherent motion perception is commonly investigated using random dot displays, containing variable proportions of coherently moving dots. Here, we investigated the relative contribution of local and global integration mechanisms for coherent motion perception, and changes in detection thresholds as a result of repeated exposure to the experimental stimuli. Dogs who had been involved in the previous study were given a conditioned discrimination task, in which we systematically manipulated dot density and duration and, eventually, re-assessed our subjects’ threshold after extensive exposure to the stimuli. Decreasing dot duration impacted on dogs’ accuracy in detecting coherent motion only at very low duration values, revealing the efficacy of local integration mechanisms. Density impacted on dogs’ accuracy in a linear fashion, indicating less efficient global integration. There was limited evidence of improvement in the re-assessment but, with an average threshold at re-assessment of 29%, dogs’ ability to detect coherent motion remains much poorer than that of humans.     

The two‐thirds power law in motion perception

If a visual motion abruptly vanishes, the vanishing point is mislocalized in the anticipated direction of the motion (cf. Freyd & Finke, 1984; Hubbard & Bharucha, 1988; Verfaillie & d'Ydewalle, 1991). Here, we replicate this effect for curvilinear motions, showing that the compatibility with human movements, as expressed by the two‐thirds power law (cf. Lacquaniti, Terzuolo, & Viviani, 1983; Viviani, 2002), specifically contribute to this anticipation error. Thus, the compatibility effect does not manifest itself solely in an overshooting of the judged vanishing position in comparison to the objective vanishing position, but also in a more accurate anticipation of the curvilinearity of the forthcoming motion. The latter effect only occurred for spatially unpredictable target motions. Spatially more predictable target motions allowed for a different kind of anticipation, which overrode the compatibility effect. The results are discussed with regard to the notion of an action‐related influence on motion perception.     

Frames of reference in preschoolers’ perception of motion

Experiments 1 and 2 established children’s (mean age 3 years, 7 months) subject-relative and object-relative motion thresholds at 1°31.37′/sec and 1°9.33′/sec, respectively, speeds well above those found for adults. Experiment 3 established that preschoolers, like adults, attribute object-relative motion to the smaller of two objects, with the inducing properties of the larger stimulus greatest when it is surrounding rather than adjacent to a smaller stimulus. The inducing advantage of surroundedness was equivalent for a single-element square frame and a multielement six-dot frame.     

The role of attention in motion extrapolation: are moving objects 'corrected' or flashed objects attentionally delayed?

Objects flashed in alignment with moving objects appear to lag behind [Nijhawan, 1994 Nature (London) 370 256-257]. Could this 'flash-lag' effect be due to attentional delays in bringing flashed items to perceptual awareness [Titchener, 1908/1973 Lectures on the Elementary Psychology of Feeling and Attention first published 1908 (New York: Macmillan); reprinted 1973 (New York: Arno Press)]? We overtly manipulated attentional allocation in three experiments to address the following questions: Is the flash-lag effect affected when attention is (a) focused on a single event in the presence of multiple events, (b) distributed over multiple events, and (c) diverted from the flashed object? To address the first two questions, five rings, moving along a circular path, were presented while observers attentively tracked one or multiple rings under four conditions: the ring in which the disk was flashed was (i) known or (ii) unknown (randomly selected from the set of five); location of the flashed disk was (i) known or (ii) unknown (randomly selected from ten locations). The third question was investigated by using two moving objects in a cost-benefit cueing paradigm. An arrow cued, with 70% or 80% validity, the position of the flashed object. Observers performed two tasks: (a) reacted as quickly as possible to flash onset; (b) reported the flash-lag effect. We obtained a significant and unaltered flash-lag effect under all the attentional conditions we employed. Furthermore, though reaction times were significantly shorter for validly cued flashes, the flash-lag effect remained uninfluenced by cue validity, indicating that quicker responses to validly cued locations may be due to the shortening of post-perceptual delays in motor responses rather than the perceptual facilitation. We conclude that the computations that give rise to the flash-lag effect are independent of attentional deployment.     

Reduction of the Zöllner illusion with motion of inducing figure

The magnitude of the Zöllner illusion was measured when the inducing lines moved rightward or leftward and were tracked by subjects. Motion of the inducing lines significantly reduced the magnitude of illusion, as in the Poggendorff illusion. Increasing velocity markedly increased the reduction, and, again, this effect was not significantly different from that obtained with the Poggendorff illusion. The current evidence seems to support the suggestion outlined earlier in relation to the Poggendorff illusion, that is, moving and stationary figures are processed by separate channels and, therefore, the interaction between them is reduced.     

Does binocular disparity facilitate the detection of transparent motion?

Recent physiological studies have established that cortical cells that are tuned for the direction of motion may also exhibit tuning for binocular disparity. This tuning does not appear to provide any advantage in discriminating the direction of global motion in random-dot kinematograms. Here we investigated the possibility that this tuning may be important in the perception of transparent motion. Random-dot kinematograms were presented which contained coherent motion in a single direction or in two opposing directions. A greater proportion of signal dots was required for the detection of transparent motion than of motion in a single direction. This difference vanished when the two opposite directions of motion were presented with different disparities. These results suggest that the direction of global motion can be computed separately for surfaces which are clearly segregated in depth.     

Investigation of jog motion in γ-TiAl via molecular dynamics

The elastic displacement field of a jogged screw dislocation is obtained analytically from Burgers equation. With this analytic solution, a pair of jogs in a screw dislocation is implemented into molecular-dynamics simulations. The dislocation line bows out between two jog pinning points and breaks away when the line tension of the dislocation exceeds a certain critical value. The creation of vacancies and interstitials is observed during the non-conservative motion of the jogged screw dislocation in γ-TiAl. The structures of vacancies and interstitials are discussed.     

Sociability modifies dogs’ sensitivity to biological motion of different social relevance

Preferential attention to living creatures is believed to be an intrinsic capacity of the visual system of several species, with perception of biological motion often studied and, in humans, it correlates with social cognitive performance. Although domestic dogs are exceptionally attentive to human social cues, it is unknown whether their sociability is associated with sensitivity to conspecific and heterospecific biological motion cues of different social relevance. We recorded video clips of point-light displays depicting a human or dog walking in either frontal or lateral view. In a preferential looking paradigm, dogs spontaneously viewed 16 paired point-light displays showing combinations of normal/inverted (control condition), human/dog and frontal/lateral views. Overall, dogs looked significantly longer at frontal human point-light display versus the inverted control, probably due to its clearer social/biological relevance. Dogs’ sociability, assessed through owner-completed questionnaires, further revealed that low-sociability dogs preferred the lateral point-light display view, whereas high-sociability dogs preferred the frontal view. Clearly, dogs can recognize biological motion, but their preference is influenced by their sociability and the stimulus salience, implying biological motion perception may reflect aspects of dogs’ social cognition.     

Infants’ cortical processing of biological motion configuration – A fNIRS study

Biological motion perception is a key component of action perception contributing to social cognition in crucial ways. Contemporary neuroimaging studies show that biological motion is processed differently in the human brain from other types of motion. In particular, the right posterior Superior Temporal Sulcus (rpSTS), an area known for its central role in social perception, has been consistently associated with the perception of biological motion in the mature brain. By contrast, most findings investigating the development of biological motion perception in infancy come from behavioral studies, and far less is known regarding the right STS’ role in processing biological motion.The current study used fNIRS to measure brain activation to biological motion in the rSTS region of 7–8-month-old infants. Infants were presented with two conditions: an approaching coherent motion of a person walking (coherent point-light-walker, PLW); and a spatially scrambled version of this display, where the global configuration of a person walking was disrupted (scrambled PLW).We found a functional activation, i.e., a significant increase in HbO₂ concentration in relation to baseline, in the right middle-posterior temporal cortex only when infants viewed the coherent point-light-walker. This activation statistically differed from the scrambled point-light-walker, and no significant activations were found for viewing the scrambled motion.Our study adds evidence pointing to rSTS’ sensitivity to the global human configuration in biological motion processing during infancy. The rSTS seems thus to become functionally specialized in biological motion configuration as early as at 7–8 months of age.     

The Behavior of Organisms?

The Psychological Record - The term & #x2018;organism & #x2018; enjoys a revered place within the vocabulary of behavior analysis, most notably perhaps within the title of...     

The Sexualisation of Culture?

This article examines contemporary debates about the ‘sexualisation of culture’. It sets out the context for claims that Western societies are becoming more sexualised and it explores a number of competing perspectives about sexualisation. It then looks in more detail at the nature of claims about sexualisation as they emerge from the different disciplinary perspectives of Psychology and Media and Cultural Studies, contrasting the strengths and weaknesses of each, and raising criticisms of both. In a final discussion section, the article considers the usefulness or otherwise of the notion of ‘sexualisation’ as analytic category and points to the need to go beyond polarised positions. It advocates a psychosocial approach that takes seriously differences and power in considering the contemporary proliferation of ‘sexualised’ images, practices and media.     

The boston bio-bang: The emergence of a “Regional system of innovation”

In this article we will describe the emergence of a great number of small, regionally concentrated, innovative biotech companies. We see these organizations as “hosts” of concepts and ideas, greatly influencing their spreading over the sector. We have chosen an evolutionary perspective following individual companies in their struggle for survival, describing it as “obtaining food” and “fooling predators.” This struggle gives insight in the behavior of the biotech companies and related institutions as a “system of innovation.” One of our findings is that the variety of biotech companies is conditioned by their selection environment, but that this selection environment allows great variety and even encourage variety by keeping the companies small. Haiko Van der Voort is a research associate who lectures and publishes in a wide range of issues including precess management and system innovations. Martin De Jong is associate professor of public management.     

The Critical Reception of Michelangelo's ‘The Last Judgement': The Theological Context

Abstract

Considered here will be the question of how the hostility of the clerical elite in sixteenth-century Italy to Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ‘Last Judgment’ may be explained. The problem arose from the many nude figures that the fresco contained. Why was nudity in Church so unpopular with the clerical elite in 1541 and for sixty years afterwards, bearing in mind that it had not raised an outcry in roughly similar circumstances earlier in the century? No real answers to these questions are to be found either in the Trent Decree on sacred images, or in the work of such sixteenth-century critics as Gilio da Fabriano. This study aims to shed more light on the matter. Some help is forthcoming from modern writers like Romeo de Maio and Bernardine Barnes. They emphasize the leading role of the ‘Theatine’ prelates, but without exposing the basic assumptions on which the ‘Theatine’ attitude depends. These basic assumptions can be probed to assess whether the objection was only to nudity in sacred spaces or to nudity tout court, and with particular reference to the argument of one theologian—Catharinus—who opted for comprehensive restrictions. In an argument directed against the Erasmian view of marriage, Catharinus identified Erasmus as a Pelagian and summarized the Augustinian argument against the Pelagians. His emphasis is on the fundamental depravity of all human beings after the Fall, a depravity that involved the stigmatization of the body and particularly of the sexual organs, since sin is a sexually transmitted disease. The upshot is that much of the human body is only presentable when veiled. In other words, nude art—'pagan art'—is not compatible with the Christian ethos.     

When is motion 'motion'?

Examples of visual motion have become more and more abstract over the years, leading up to 'third-order' stimuli where direction is actually determined by the observer through top - down attention. But how far can this be pushed--are there motion stimuli that are yet more arbitrary and abstract? Actually, there is a broad class of 'conceptual motion' stimuli--things like a moving grating of faces, or a shifting pattern of words--that are perfect analogs to traditional 'perceptual motion' stimuli, solvable by the same motion computation and for which observers can readily make direction-of-motion judgments. Interestingly though, these do not produce a sensation of motion (among other automatic consequences of motion detection). Here we compare a luminance-based perceptual motion stimulus to a semantic-based conceptual motion stimulus to contrast the psychophysical hallmarks of these motion categories.