Haptic identification of objects and their depictions

Haptic identification of real objects is superior to that of raised two-dimensional (2-D) depictions. Three explanations of real-object superiority were investigated: contribution of material information, contribution of 3-D shape and size, and greater potential for integration across the fingers. In Experiment 1, subjects, while wearing gloves that gently attenuated material information, haptically identified real objects that provided reduced cues to compliance, mass, and part motion. The gloves permitted exploration with free hand movement, a single outstretched finger, or five outstretched fingers. Performance decreased over these three conditions but was superior to identification of pictures of the same objects in all cases, indicating the contribution of 3-D structure and integration across the fingers. Picture performance was also better with five fingers than with one. In Experiment 2, the subjects wore open-fingered gloves, which provided them with material information. Consequently, the effect of type of exploration was substantially reduced but not eliminated. Material compensates somewhat for limited access to object structure but is not the primary basis for haptic object identification.     

Visual awareness of objects and their colour

At any given moment, our awareness of what we 'see' before us seems to be rather limited. If, for instance, a display containing multiple objects is shown (red or green disks), when one object is suddenly covered at random, observers are often little better than chance in reporting about its colour (Wolfe, Reinecke, & Brawn, Visual Cognition, 14, 749-780, 2006). We tested whether, when object attributes (such as colour) are unknown, observers still retain any knowledge of the presence of that object at a display location. Experiments 1-3 involved a task requiring two-alternative (yes/no) responses about the presence or absence of a colour-defined object at a probed location. On this task, if participants knew about the presence of an object at a location, responses indicated that they also knew about its colour. A fourth experiment presented the same displays but required a three-alternative response. This task did result in a data pattern consistent with participants' knowing more about the locations of objects within a display than about their individual colours. However, this location advantage, while highly significant, was rather small in magnitude. Results are compared with those of Huang (Journal of Vision, 10(10, Art. 24), 1-17, 2010), who also reported an advantage for object locations, but under quite different task conditions.     

Pigeons see correspondence between objects and their pictures

The extent to which nonhumans recognize the correspondence between static pictures and the objects they represent remains an interesting and controversial issue. Pictures displayed on computers are used extensively for research on behavioral and neural mechanisms of cognition in birds, yet attempts to show that birds recognize the objects seen in pictures have produced mixed and inconclusive results. We trained pigeons to discriminate between two identically colored but differently shaped three-dimensional objects seen directly or as pictures, and we found clear bidirectional transfer of the learned object discrimination. Transfer from objects to pictures occurred even when pigeons were trained with 12 views and only novel views of the objects were presented in transfer. This study provides the strongest evidence yet that pigeons can recognize the correspondence between objects and pictures.     

Attitudes toward the male role and their correlates

This study investigated relationships between college men's attitudes toward the male role and five theoretical concomitants of the role. It was expected that males endorsing traditional male-role norms would be more homophobic, more strongly support the Type A behavior orientation, support less self-disclosure to male and female friends, and approve of the maintenance of asymmetrical decision-making power with their intimate partner. Men from two liberal arts college in a New England metropolitan area (N=223) provided the data to test the hypotheses. Endorsement of the traditional role was associated with all predicted concomitants, expect the measure of disclosure to male friend. The results are discussed in terms of the pervasive nature of the antifemininity norm within the male role.An earlier version of this article was presented as a paper at the meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society, Boston, 1984.     

The perception of digital objects and their impact on development

Clinical work with adolescents and young people over the last decade has indicated that an intense relationship to digital objects was a major aspect of their mental lives. Digital objects have become embedded, inextricably, within our psychology, emphasising the earliest drives and phantasies at some moments, yet giving rise to less familiar phenomena at other times. The aim of this paper is to consider how the rise in digital media and social networking is impacting upon the lives of young people and influencing the course of their development, with particular reference to the impact of visual media within social networks and how this has a distinct influence on mental functioning. In attempting to describe these processes, it is hoped that we can become more able to accompany younger or older people in their exploration of the digital world, which will be as important to them in their future adult lives as their mastery of the physical, external world was in early childhood. The need is pressing, since access to the digital world has significantly increased through the use of mobile, connected devices, and the further evolution of new technologies, such as ‘the internet of everything’ and ‘wearable tech’, are almost upon us.     

Agents,objects, and their powers in Suarez and Hobbes

The paper examines the place of power in the action theories of Francisco Suarez and Thomas Hobbes. Power is the capacity to produce or determine outcomes. Two cases of power are examined. The first is freedom or the power of agents to determine for themselves what they do. The second is motivation, which involves a power to which agents are subject, and by which they are moved to pursue a goal. Suarez, in the Metaphysical Disputations, uses Aristotelian causation to model these two forms of power. Freedom is efficient causation, but in a special form that I explain as involving something that ordinary causation does not – the contingent determination of outcomes. Motivating power is final causation, which Suarez characterizes as the power of a goal or end to move us to attain it through its goodness or desirability. Suarez regards these two forms of power as consistent – we can be moved by the goodness of a goal freely to determine for ourselves that we act in order to attain it. Hobbes denied the existence of all forms of power beyond ordinary causation, the power of one motion in matter to determine another. So he denied the very existence both of freedom and of any form of motivating power beyond the ordinary causal power of desires as materially based psychological states to produce actions. The goodness itself of a goal never moves us, whether to desire the goal in the first place or to act in order to attain it. The paper examines Hobbes’s arguments and their consequence – establishing the foundations for Hume’s scepticism about practical reason.     

Seriality of phonological encoding in naming objects and reading their names

There is a remarkable lack of research bringing together the literatures on oral reading and speaking. As concerns phonological encoding, both models of reading and speaking assume a process of segmental spellout for words, which is followed by serial prosodification in models of speaking (e.g., Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999). Thus, a natural place to merge models of reading and speaking would be at the level of segmental spellout. This view predicts similar seriality effects in reading and object naming. Experiment 1 showed that the seriality of encoding inside a syllable revealed in previous studies of speaking is observed for both naming objects and reading their names. Experiment 2 showed that both object naming and reading exhibit the seriality of the encoding of successive syllables previously observed for speaking. Experiment 3 showed that the seriality is also observed when object naming and reading trials are mixed rather than tested separately, as in the first two experiments. These results suggest that a serial phonological encoding mechanism is shared between naming objects and reading their names.     

The interaction of semantic features of transitive verbs and their objects

Summary Proceeding from the assumption that verbs imply their potential objects, an attempt was made to vary this implication by combining specific and general verbs (e.g. to adopt/to wash) with specific or general objects, respectively (e.g. boy/child). These 4 verb-object combinations were presented visually in simple subject-predicate-object sentences in a multitrial, free recall learning experiment. A highly significant interaction was found between verb and object variation. Specific verbs were better recalled when associated with general objects while general verbs were better recalled in association with specific objects.

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Zusammenfassung Ausgehend von der Annahme, daß Verben ihre möglichen Objekte bereits implizieren, wurde versucht, die Implikation für spezifische und allgemeine Verben dadurch zu variieren, daß sie mit jeweils einem spezifischen bzw. allgemeinen Objekt kombiniert wurden. Die 4 Verb-Objekt-Kombinationen wurden in einfachen Subjekt-Prädikat-Objekt-Sätzen in einem multitrial free recall Versuch optisch zum Lernen angeboten. Es zeigte sich eine hochsignifikante Wechselwirkung zwischen Verb- und Objektvariation. Spezifische Verben werden besser mit allgemeinen Objekten, allgemeine Verben besser mit spezifischen Objekten behalten.

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The paper is based on an experiment conducted and evaluated by Anke Grashorn, as part of her diploma thesis, under the author's supervision.     

The Significance of Parents' Evaluations of their Own School for their Educational Attitudes

The study set out to examine parents' evaluations of the school they had attended and the role of these evaluations in the formation of parental attitudes towards education. A group of vocationally educated (N = 343) and a group of academically educated (N = 231) parents were asked to think back to their primary school days and evaluate the functioning of their school; they were also requested to indicate their opinions on a set of attitude statements and to predict their preschool-aged child's future direction in secondary education. The parents' evaluation of their schools averaged at satisfactory, with the highest grade given to the quality of the instruction and the lowest grades to the giving of encouragement and the capability of taking individual needs into consideration. The school evaluations were organized by the school generation and, in particular, by the educational position of the subject, so that those parents who had gone to the (new) comprehensive school and those who were university-educated gave more positive evaluations of their schools than did those who had gone to the (old) folk school and those who were vocationally educated. The critical educational attitudes corresponding to the educational position of the academically educated parents were enhanced if their evaluation of their own school was negative, whereas the positive educational attitudes corresponding to the educational position of the vocationally educated parents were enhanced if their evaluation of their own school was positive. With the vocationally educated parents, their school evaluation also organized their prediction of their child's secondary education: a positive evaluation raised and a negative evaluation lowered the likelihood of vocational education as the predicted alternative.     

Similarity between Fourier transforms of objects predicts their experimental confusions

Two sets of stimuli were presented tachistoscopically to 4 subjects. On each trial, a single stimulus was presented, and the subject was required to identify the stimulus by verbal response. An exposure duration was chosen such that the subject's identification performance fell within a range from faultless identification to chance guessing. The object-identification data of each subject obtained for all stimulus exposures were pooled to form an object confusion matrix. A model of visual processing based on two-dimensional spatial frequency content (Fourier transforms) was used to predict confusions among stimulus pairs. The model properties that appear to be the most essential are those that allow it (1) to account for the obvious dependence of the Fourier transform on the choice of an origin point; and (2) choose the point of origin for each object separately, irrespective of other objects of the set. The point of origin of the reference frame, in which Fourier transforms are performed, is chosen so as to minimize the low-frequency phase component for each object. A high correlation (up to .96) between confusion matrices and model interobject distances was attained. The results demonstrate that such a distance measure gives a good prediction of object confusability.     

On being dropped and picked up: adopted children and their internal objects

The field of adoption has changed over the past years from one where there were babies available for many adoptive couples to one where increasingly the children who are needing adoption are those who have already suffered deprivations and difficulties in their families of origin, with disrupted attachments and a consequent traumatizing effect of their early history on their internal worlds. Professionals working with these children, who have in effect been 'dropped', face the difficult task not only of placing them appropriately but of supporting their adoptive families. With the new experience of a secure base the original trauma may be reworked, and the new framework tested by these damaged and consequently often damaging children as they replay their feelings of being unwanted and unwantable. In describing once-weekly work with a 6-year-old adopted boy, I suggest that the primary disillusion of his neonatal experience caused an internal catastrophe which was then reworked in his adoptive placement. This child did not experience what Winnicott (1971) called 'gradual disillusion' in terms of his belief that he creates the needed breast, and thus integration of love and hate of the primary object, but remained in a state of hyper-vigilance because of the deficits in his internal world. These deficits have been able partially to be addressed in psychotherapy treatment.     

Attitudes toward accompanied driving: The views of teens and their parents

In Israel, a new driver must be accompanied by an experienced driver for the first 3 months after licensure. In the case of teens, the accompanying driver is usually one of the parents. However, no previous study set to examine the relationship between parents’ and offsprings’ attitudes toward accompanied driving (ATAD), and the associations between the way parents habitually drive and their offsprings’ ATAD. The current study examined the associations between young drivers’ ATAD on the one hand, and parents’ ATADs, driving styles, and driving history, on the other. One hundred and twenty-nine young drivers completed a questionnaire assessing their ATAD, and their principal accompanying driver completed the same ATAD scale along with the Multi-dimensional Driving Style Inventory. The findings indicate a correspondence between parents’ and children’s ATAD scores, as well as significant associations between teens’ ATADs and their parents’ driving styles and involvement in car crashes. Specifically, higher Tension, Relatedness, Avoidance, Disapproval, and Anxiety reported by the young driver were positively correlated with higher reports on the same attitudes by parents. In addition, parents’ maladaptive driving styles were positively associated with their offspring’s Tension, Avoidance, Disapproval and Anxiety ATADs, whereas parents’ careful driving style was related to offspring’s higher relatedness and lower negative ATADs. Higher involvement of parents in car crashes contributed significantly to teens’ higher Tension, Disapproval, and Anxiety, and lower relatedness. The results are discussed in respect to the relationship between the parental model and the young driver’s attitude toward accompanied driving, pointing to the importance of parents’ role in promoting young drivers’ safety attitudes and behaviors.     

Observing and engaging in purposeful actions with objects influences estimates of their size

A ladle was recalled as being taller by participants who observed tedious removal of sand from it with a small teaspoon than by those who observed removal with a larger spoon. A second experiment showed that the number of darts thrown in order to hit a target correlated negatively with memory estimates of the size of the target, a finding replicated in a third experiment with size estimates made while the target was visible. The first two experiments suggest that the way an object is used can influence memory of its size. The third experiment supports the hypothesis that in vivo size estimation of familiar objects may employ a mechanism that derives size from memory and that size memory can be distorted by the way an object was used.     

Independent processing of parts and of their spatial organization in complex visual objects

A visual search experiment using synthetic three-dimensional objects is reported. The target shared its constituent parts, the spatial organization of its parts, or both with the distractors displayed with it. Sharing of parts and sharing of spatial organization both negatively affected visual search performance, and these effects were strictly additive. These findings support theories of complex visual object perception that assume a parsing of the stimulus into its higher-order constituents (volumetric parts or visible surfaces). The additivity of the effects demonstrates that information on parts and information on spatial organization are processed independently in visual search.     

Grasping objects by their handles: a necessary interaction between cognition and action

Research has illustrated dissociations between "cognitive" and "action" systems, suggesting that different representations may underlie phenomenal experience and visuomotor behavior. However, these systems also interact. The present studies show a necessary interaction when semantic processing of an object is required for an appropriate action. Experiment 1 demonstrated that a semantic task interfered with grasping objects appropriately by their handles, but a visuospatial task did not. Experiment 2 assessed performance on a visuomotor task that had no semantic component and showed a reversal of the effects of the concurrent tasks. In Experiment 3, variations on concurrent word tasks suggested that retrieval of semantic information was necessary for appropriate grasping. In all, without semantic processing, the visuomotor system can direct the effective grasp of an object, but not in a manner that is appropriate for its use.     

Actions travel with their objects: evidence for dynamic event files

Moving a visual object is known to lead to an update of its cognitive representation. Given that object representations have also been shown to include codes describing the actions they were accompanied by, we investigated whether these action codes “move” along with their object. We replicated earlier findings that repeating stimulus and action features enhances performance if other features are repeated, but attenuates performance if they alternate. However, moving the objects in which the stimuli appeared in between two stimulus presentations had a strong impact on the feature bindings that involved location. Taken together, our findings provide evidence that changing the location of an object leaves two memory traces, one referring to its original location (an episodic record) and another referring to the new location (a working-memory trace).     

Recognition by humans and pigeons of novel views of 3-D objects and their photographs

Humans and pigeons were trained to discriminate between 2 views of actual 3-D objects or their photographs. They were tested on novel views that were either within the closest rotational distance between the training views (interpolated) or outside of that range (extrapolated). When training views were 60 degrees apart, pigeons, but not humans, recognized novel views of actual objects better than their pictures. Further, both species recognized interpolated views of both stimulus types better than extrapolated views, but a single distinctive geon enhanced recognition of novel views only for humans. When training views were 90 degrees apart, pigeons recognized interpolated views better than extrapolated views with actual objects but not with photographs. Thus, pigeons may represent actual objects differently than their pictures.