On the rate of acquisition of visual information about space,time, and intensity

The temporal course of acquisition of visual information was mapped by measuring the speed and accuracy With which Ss could discriminate the position, intensity, or duration of a stimulus that was varied independently on these three binary dimensions. The speed-accuracy tradeoff was different for each of the three discrimination tasks, with performance substantially superior in the position discrimination task. In the intensity and duration discrimination tasks, there were systematic changes with RT in the relative influences of the three stimulus variables over the two alternative responses, suggesting .three phases of the corresponding perceptual processes: an initial dominance by position of the stimulus, a subsequent, joint influence by both intensity and duration, and finally an exclusive control by the correct dimension. The results demonstrate that Ss can selectively attend to various dimensions of the same stimulus, with concommitantly varying time constants. The perceptual processes being tapped by a discrimination task depend upon instructions and upon RT.     

Multiple temporal references in sensorimotor synchronization with metrical auditory sequences

A local phase perturbation in an auditory sequence during synchronized finger tapping elicits an automatic phase correction response (PCR). The stimulus for the PCR is usually considered to be the most recent tap-tone asynchrony. In this study, participants tapped on target tones ("beats") of isochronous tone sequences consisting of beats and subdivisions (1:n tapping). A phase perturbation was introduced either on a beat or on a subdivision. Both types of perturbation elicited a PCR, even though there was no asynchrony associated with a subdivision. Moreover, the PCR to a perturbed beat was smaller when an unperturbed subdivision followed than when there was no subdivision. The relative size of the PCRs to perturbed beats and subdivisions depended on tempo, on whether the subdivision was local or present throughout the sequence, and on whether or not participants engaged in mental subdivision, but not on whether or not taps were made on the subdivision level. The results show that phase correction in synchronization depends not merely on asynchronies but on perceptual monitoring of multiple temporal references within a metrical hierarchy.     

Perception of rhythmic grouping: testing the iambic/trochaic law

This study was designed to test the iambic/trochaic law, which claims that elements contrasting in duration naturally form rhythmic groupings with final prominence, whereas elements contrasting in intensity form groupings with initial prominence. It was also designed to evaluate whether the iambic/trochaic law describes general auditory biases, or whether rhythmic grouping is speech or language specific. In two experiments, listeners were presented with sequences of alternating /ga/ syllables or square wave segments that varied in either duration or intensity and were asked to indicate whether they heard a trochaic (i.e., strong-weak) or an iambic (i.e., weak-strong) rhythmic pattern. Experiment 1 provided a validation of the iambic/trochaic law in English-speaking listeners; for both speech and nonspeech stimuli, variations in duration resulted in iambic grouping, whereas variations in intensity resulted in trochaic grouping. In Experiment 2, no significant differences were found between the rhythmic-grouping performances of English- and French-speaking listeners. The speech/ nonspeech and cross-language parallels suggest that the perception of linguistic rhythm relies largely on general auditory mechanisms. The applicability of the iambic/trochaic law to speech segmentation is discussed.     

The multimodality of infant's rhythmic movements as a modulator of the interaction with their caregivers

Children’s rhythmic movements during the first year of life possess a meaningful predictive validity for later communicative development. However, their role within adult-child interactions is still underexplored. In this study, we examined whether children’s rhythmic movements were significantly responded by adults and the role of multimodality and object use in this process. We observed 22 dyads of 9-month-olds and their parents in natural play interactions. Infants’ multimodal rhythmic movements increased the probability of adult responding. Adults offered different types of responses and significantly followed the child’s focus of attention. These dynamics could support communicative development by promoting joint attention frameworks.     

汉语普通话母语者的节奏组块感知偏好

个体对声音节奏的感知具有明显的偏好,强度上表现为扬抑组块偏好,时长上表现为抑扬组块偏好,这被称作抑扬-扬抑规律,但这一感知规律是否具有跨语言的普遍性却存在争议。本研究以汉语普通话母语者为被试,考察他们对非语音音调序列的节奏组块感知情况,结果发现强度和时长参数下被试对扬抑形式的判断比例均显著高于随机水平,说明汉语普通话母语者在两个参数上的节奏感知中均表现出明显的扬抑偏好,在强度上支持节奏感知偏好具有跨语言普遍性的观点,在时长上不支持节奏感知偏好受到母语短语韵律特征影响的观点。     

Size judgment: The presence of a standard increases the exponent of the power law

Ss judged the size of circles by the methods of magnitude estimation and magnitude production, with or without a standard figure present. The presence of the standard raised the exponent of the power law. The effect was largely independent of the position of the standard in the range of stimuli. It is argued that the standard’s effect was not mediated by a difference in apparent size between perceived and remembered standards, a change in Ss’ response strategies, a decrease in sequential dependencies, or other previously identified bias effects.     

Effect of rhythmic grouping on stream segregation

Three experiments investigated the role of temporal grouping on auditory stream segregation. For sounds that formed frequency streams (e.g., 400 Hz, 500 Hz, 1600 Hz, and 2000 Hz), the effect of rhythm was minimal. Temporal grouping did not affect judgments of stream segregation and did not affect difficulty of sequence identification. In contrast, for sounds that tended to form one coherent sequence (e.g., 750 Hz, 1500 Hz, 3000 Hz, and 6000 Hz), temporal grouping affected judgments of stream segregation as well as difficulty of identification. The temporal grouping could space the three lower or three higher pitch tones equally in time and this induced isochronous stream segregation. Subjects could not interleave the resulting streams, and identification became far more difficult. The role of rhythmic grouping is therefore contextual, depending on the relationships between the elements as well as the order of the elements.     

SDT analysis of binary decisions and sensory intensity ratings to noxious thermal stimuli

During three sessions, each of 24 Ss responded to noxious thermal stimuli, using the following judgments: binary decision, S responded “high” or “low”; sensory intensity rating, S rated his sensory experience along a thermal intensity continuum; and concurrent report, S’s binary decision was followed by an intensity rating. The binary-decision d’ was significantly higher than the rating d′, suggesting that Ss could not maintain multiple thermal criteria in a consistent fashion. The criteria for pain obtained with single and concurrent intensity rating judgments did not differ. These results suggest that the most efficacious and valid method for the study of experimental pain is to obtain concurrent responses, and to use binary decisions to compute d’ and sensory intensity ratings to locate S’s criterion for reporting pain.     

“Moving to the beat” improves timing perception

Here, we demonstrate that “moving to the beat” can improve the perception of timing, providing an intriguing explanation as to why we often move when listening to music. In the first experiment, participants heard a series of isochronous beats and identified whether the timing of a final tone after a short silence was consistent with the timing of the preceding sequence. On half of the trials, participants tapped along with the beat, and on half of the trials, they listened without moving. When the final tone occurred later than expected, performance in the movement condition was significantly better than performance in the no-movement condition. Two additional experiments illustrate that this improved performance is due to improved timekeeping, rather than to a shift in strategy. This work contributes to a growing literature on sensorimotor integration by demonstrating body movement’s objective improvement in timekeeping, complementing previous explorations involving subjective tasks.     

Infants use meter to categorize rhythms and melodies: implications for musical structure learning

Little is known about whether infants perceive meter, the underlying temporal structure of music. We employed a habituation paradigm to examine whether 7-month-old infants could categorize rhythmic and melodic patterns on the basis of the underlying meter, which was implied from event and accent frequency of occurrence. In Experiment 1, infants discriminated duple and triple classes of rhythm on the basis of implied meter. Experiment 2 replicated this result while controlling for rhythmic grouping structure, confirming that infants perceived metrical structure despite occasional ambiguities and conflicting group structure. In Experiment 3, infants categorized melodies on the basis of contingencies between metrical position and pitch. Infants presented with metrical melodies detected reversals of pitch/meter contingencies, while infants presented with non-metrical melodies showed no preference. Results indicate that infants can infer meter from rhythmic patterns, and that they may use this metrical structure to bootstrap their knowledge acquisition in music learning.     

Effect of exteroceptive feedback in controlling electrodermal activity in pre-conditioned fears.

Ss with a strong fear of snakes were taught to increase and decrease their skin resistance during practice sessions with a continuous visual display. Ss were not aware that they were increasing or decreasing their levels of skin resistance and attempted only to influence the magnitude of the multimeter display, the polarity of which was controlled by the experimenter. The study used a within-subjects reversal design to investigate whether bidirectional control could be acquired over skin resistance level. To investigate whether this acquired control could affect the magnitude of elicited pre-conditioned autonomic responses, a pre- and post-training comparison was made between the GSRs elicited during test sessions in which Ss viewed slides of snakes while attempting to influence their electrodermal activity with the assistance of the visual display. The results suggest that Ss are able to acquire voluntarily bidirectional control of their level of skin resistance with continuous visual feedback and that this control can either depress or facilitate the magnitude of pre-conditioned emotional responses as a function of visual feedback.     

Unexceptional spatial memory in an exceptional memorist.

Rajan Mahadevan evidences an exceptional memory for arrays of digits. We tested whether Rajan's spatial memory was likewise exceptional. Eight control Ss and Rajan were instructed to remember the position and orientation of 48 images of common objects shown either to the left or the right of fixation and facing either left or right. Rajan's accuracy for judging whether the position and orientation of these pictures had changed when they were shown in a different sequence was lower than that of control Ss for both judgments. Rajan's exceptional memory capacity apparently does not extend to spatial relations.     

Gestural beats: The rhythm hypothesis

Gestural beats are typically small up and down or back and forth flicks of one or both hands. It has been assumed by researchers hypothesizing about the interaction of beats and speech that beats coincide with verbal stress. Microanalysis shows that gestural beats are organized in rhythmic patterns and do not necessarily cooccur with stressed syllables as previously assumed. Tone group nuclei appear to function as gestational points for rhythmic groups, which supports the theory that thinking utilizes words as cognitive tools and provides evidence that in some cases entire tone units are formed in advance. Evidence of an interpersonal gestural rhythm is also presented.This research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and from the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation.     

Language Experience Affects Grouping of Musical Instrument Sounds

Language experience clearly affects the perception of speech, but little is known about whether these differences in perception extend to non‐speech sounds. In this study, we investigated rhythmic perception of non‐linguistic sounds in speakers of French and German using a grouping task, in which complexity (variability in sounds, presence of pauses) was manipulated. In this task, participants grouped sequences of auditory chimeras formed from musical instruments. These chimeras mimic the complexity of speech without being speech. We found that, while showing the same overall grouping preferences, the German speakers showed stronger biases than the French speakers in grouping complex sequences. Sound variability reduced all participants’ biases, resulting in the French group showing no grouping preference for the most variable sequences, though this reduction was attenuated by musical experience. In sum, this study demonstrates that linguistic experience, musical experience, and complexity affect rhythmic grouping of non‐linguistic sounds and suggests that experience with acoustic cues in a meaningful context (language or music) is necessary for developing a robust grouping preference that survives acoustic variability.     

Order of report and processing in tachistoscopic recognition

Two groups of 12 Ss were shown tachistoscopically 4 letters and 4 numbers. Within these alpha-numeric sequences, three variables were systematically manipulated: grouping of items, initial item, and familiarity of the letter sequences. One group of Ss reported first letters then numbers from each sequence; the other group reported numbers then letters. The results indicated that grouping, redundancy, and order of report had significant effects on letter accuracy but not on number accuracy. These effects were interpreted in terms of processing, particularly the use of spatial and identity information during recognition.     

Recognition and Recall-Like Processes in the Long-Term Reconstruction of Order

Abstract

Four experiments examined whether the recovery of an item's position in a sequence taps processes similar to recognition and/or recall. Across the experiments, subjects either recalled, recognised, or made position judgements about list items that differed in word frequency. Typical word frequency effects were found in recall and recognition, but frequency failed to affect measures of position memory consistently across the four experiments. Despite the apparent procedural similarities across tasks, it appears that the recovery of position information may tap mnemonic processes that are different from those tapped by recognition and recall. Implications of these findings for current models of position memory are discussed.     

On the psychological reality of a natural rule of syllable structure

If natural rules in phonology, such as the rule which deletes a word final consonant before a consonant, are frequently found in unrelated languages, it must be because they tap universal features of production and/or perception. The present experiment employed a learning task to see whether naive subjects have a predisposition for the natural rule as opposed to its converse (consonant deletion before a vowel). The Ss first learned four novel words (nouns) - two beginning with a consonant, two with a vowel - as paired associates to English ‘translations’. Then three novel adjectives were combined with each of the four nouns, following the natural rule for one group of Ss, the unnatural rule for the other. The twelve phrases were cued by their English translations and the S had to respond to each with the phonologically correct sequence of adjective and noun; confirmation followed each response. The Ss learning the unnatural corpus had a strong tendency to give natural responses, whereas the converse was not true. Consequently they made many more errors en route to mastery than their natural counterparts, even when the operative rule was displayed on the first trial by presenting in turn each adjective with its four following nouns. It appears that our Ss had implicit knowledge of the natural rule, even though it does not operate to any significant extent in English.     

Saccades predict and synchronize to visual rhythms irrespective of musical beats

ABSTRACT

Music has been shown to entrain movement. One of the body’s most frequent movements, saccades, are arguably subject to a timer that may also be susceptible to musical entrainment. We developed a continuous and highly-controlled visual search task and varied the timing of the search target presentation, it was either gaze-contingent, tap-contingent, or visually-timed. We found: (1) explicit control of saccadic timing is limited to gross duration variations and imprecisely synchronized; (2) saccadic timing does not implicitly entrain to musical beats, even when closely aligned in phase; (3) eye movements predict visual onsets produced by motor-movements (finger-taps) and externally-timed sequences, beginning fixation prior to visual onset; (4) eye movement timing can be rhythmic, synchronizing to both motor-produced and externally timed visual sequences; each unaffected by musical beats. These results provide evidence that saccadic timing is sensitive to the temporal demands of visual tasks and impervious to influence from musical beats.     

On the nature of interactions between the past and the present.

We conceptualize the past and the present as dimensions of experience and ask whether past processing must affect decisions about the present and whether present processing must affect decisions about the past. The paradigm is speeded classification: Ss classified a stimulus's past spatial position and tried to ignore information about present position (Experiments 1-4), or classified present position, while attempting to ignore past position (Experiments 5-6). We found that in classifying the past, Ss were unable to ignore present position, unless it was processed apart from the retrieval cue. In classifying the present, subjects could ignore past position completely. We conclude that a processing asymmetry exists, reflecting perhaps a logical asymmetry in the information required to make past or present decisions.     

The perception of eye contact

Ss made judgments of whether or not they were being looked in the eye as an E fixated several points on and off their faces.Distance between sender and receiver, sex, and whether the sender made a sequence of fixation sprior to the terminal fixation were variables of interest. The sender-receiver distance produced less effect than predicted from the hypothesis that receiver judgments were determined solely by the discrepancy between the sender’s iris/sclera configuration (ISC) during true eye contact and the current fixation point. There was no stable differencein accuracy as a function of whether the sender’s terminal fixation was preceded by other fixations or not. These findings cast doubt on the belief expressed in recent studies that the ISC can be used to accurately discriminate eye gazes from other gazes. The results also suggest that fixations on some portions of the face yield a judgment of eye contact which might be predicted on the basis of social experience.