The effect of gap depth on the perception of whether a gap is crossable

Four experiments were performed in order to examine the effect of gap depth on human observers’ perception of whether or not a gap is crossable. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that as the gap’s depth increased, observers tended to increasingly underestimate the maximum width of a gap they could step across. Experiments 3 and 4 clarified this finding: The observed covariation of perceived gap crossability and gap depth depended on the observer’s direction of gaze, rather than on the physical depth of the gap. The optical relations to which observers might be attending are discussed, as well as the possibility that cognitive-affective processes might have contributed to observers’ underestimation of their actual capabilities.     

The impact of spatiotemporal sampling on time-to-contact judgments

When motion in the frontoparallel plane is temporally sampled, it is often perceived to be slower than its continuous counterpart. This finding stands in contrast to humans' ability to extrapolate and anticipate constant-velocity motion. We investigated whether this sampling bias generalizes to motion in the sagittal plane (i.e., objects approaching the observer). We employed a paradigm in which observers judged the arrival time of an oncoming object. We found detrimental effects of time sampling on both perceived time to contact and time to passage. Observers systematically overestimated the time it would take a frontally approaching object to intersect their eye plane. To rule out artifacts inherent in computer simulation, we replicated the experiment, using real objects. The bias persisted and proved to be robust across a large range of temporal and spatial variations. Energy and pooling mechanisms are discussed in an attempt to understand the effect.     

The future is now: the impact of present fluency in judgments about the future

Recent research has emphasised the role of episodic memory in both remembering past events and in envisaging future events. On the other hand, it has been repeatedly shown that judgments about past events are affected by the fluency with which retrieval cues are processed. In this paper we investigate whether perceptual fluency also plays a role in judgments about future events. For this purpose we conducted four experiments. The first experiment replicated recent findings showing that stimuli that are processed fluently tend to be wrongly recognised as having been encountered in the past outside the laboratory walls [Brown, A. S., & Marsh, E. J. (2009). Creating illusions of past encounter through brief exposure. Psychological Science, 20, 534–538. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02337.x]. Two follow-up experiments using Brown and Marsh’s [(2009). Creating illusions of past encounter through brief exposure. Psychological Science, 20, 534–538. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02337] task tested the influence of perceptual fluency on future judgments. The fourth and last experiment was designed to rule out a potential confounding factor in the two previous experiments. Across experiments, we found that people rely on fluency when making judgments about events that are yet to come. These results suggest that fluency is an equally valid cue for past and future judgments.     

The importance of a visual horizon for distance judgments under severely degraded vision

In two experiments we examined the role of visual horizon information on absolute egocentric distance judgments to on-ground targets. Sedgwick [1983, in Human and Machine Vision (New York: Academic Press) pp 425-458] suggested that the visual system may utilize the angle of declination from a horizontal line of sight to the target location (horizon distance relation) to determine absolute distances on infinite ground surfaces. While studies have supported this hypothesis, less is known about the specific cues (vestibular, visual) used to determine horizontal line of sight. We investigated this question by requiring observers to judge distances under degraded vision given an unaltered or raised visual horizon. The results suggest that visual horizon information does influence perception of absolute distances as evident through two different action-based measures: walking or throwing without vision to previously viewed targets. Distances were judged as shorter in the presence of a raised visual horizon. The results are discussed with respect to how the visual system accurately determines absolute distance to objects on a finite ground plane and for their implications for understanding space perception in low-vision individuals.     

The impact of social roles on trait judgments: a critical reexamination

Consistent with social role theory's assumption that the role behavior of men and women shapes gender stereotypes, earlier experiments have found that men's and women's occupancy of the same role eliminated gender-stereotypical judgments of greater agency and lower communion in men than women. The shifting standards model raises the question of whether a shift to within-sex standards in judgments of men and women in roles could have masked underlying gender stereotypes. To examine this possibility, two experiments obtained judgments of men and women using measures that do or do not restrain shifts to within-sex standards. This measure variation did not affect the social role pattern of smaller perceived sex differences in the presence of role information. These findings thus support the social role theory claim that designations of identical roles for subgroups of men and women eliminate or reduce perceived sex differences.     

The impact of hedged testimony on judgments of credibility

We tested whether people are attuned to critical memory factors, such as age at the timing of encoding and hedge words when judging the credibility of testimony. In two experiments, participants read a 19‐year‐old's testimony regarding a sexual assault. We manipulated whether participants learned that the assault occurred 4 years ago (when the claimant was 15 years old) or 15 years ago (when the claimant was 4 years old) and whether the claimant used hedge words in her testimony. In Experiment 2, we included a cross‐examination. Without the cross‐examination, participants rated the testimony as more credible when the assault had occurred 15 years ago. However, with the inclusion of a cross‐examination, participants rated the testimony more reliable when the event occurred 4 years ago and the claimant did not use hedge words. We discuss the implications our results have, particularly for historical cases, where memory is a key factor.     

Imagined haptic exploration in judgments of object properties

In Experiment 1, each subject rated a single, named object for its roughness, hardness, temperature, weight, size, or shape. In Experiment 2, each subject compared one pair of objects along the same dimensions. In both studies, a substantial proportion of subjects who judged the first four dimensions imagined a hand making exploratory movements appropriate for the designated information. The proportion of hand-exploration images decreased substantially when judging size or shape, or when judgments could be made readily through general semantic knowledge. The results suggest that the incorporation of haptic exploration into visual imagery provides access to information about haptically accessible object properties.     

The effect of motion on tactile and visual temporal order judgments

Four experiments were conducted, three with tactile stimuli and one with visual stimuli, in which subjects made temporal order judgments (TOJs). The tactile stimuli were patterns that moved laterally across the fingerpads. The subject's task was to judge which finger received the pattern first. Even though the movement was irrelevant to the task, the subjects' TOJs were greatly affected by the direction of movement of the patterns. Accuracy in judging temporal order was enhanced when the patterns moved in a direction that was consistent with the temporal order of presentation--for example, when the movement on each fingerpad was from right to left and the temporally leading site of stimulation was to the right of the temporally trailing site of stimulation. When movement was inconsistent with the temporal order of presentation, accuracy was considerably reduced, often well below chance.The bias in TOJs was unaffected by training or by presenting the stimuli to fingers on opposite hands. In a fourth experiment, subjects judged the temporal order of visual stimuli that, like the tactile stimuli, moved in a direction that was either consistent or inconsistent with the TOJ. The results were similar to those obtained with tactile stimuli. It is suggested that the bias may be affected by attentional mechanisms and by apparent motion generated between the two sites on the skin.     

The impact of domain-specific beliefs on decisions and causal judgments

Extensive evidence suggests that people often rely on their causal beliefs in their decisions and causal judgments. To date, however, there is a dearth of research comparing the impact of causal beliefs in different domains. We conducted two experiments to map the influence of domain-specific causal beliefs on the evaluation of empirical evidence when making decisions and subsequent causal judgments. Participants made 120 decisions in a two-alternative forced-choice task, framed in either a medical or a financial domain. Before each decision, participants could actively search for information about the outcome (“occurrence of a disease” or “decrease in a company's share price”) on the basis of four cues. To analyze the strength of causal beliefs, we set two cues to have a generative relation to the outcome and two to have a preventive relation to the outcome. To examine the influence of empirical evidence, we manipulated the predictive power (i.e., cue validities) of the cues. Both experiments included a validity switch, where the four selectable cues switched from high to low validity or vice versa. Participants had to make a causal judgment about each cue before and after the validity switch. In the medical domain, participants stuck to the causal information in causal judgments, even when evidence was contradictory, while decisions showed an effect of both empirical and causal information. In contrast, in the financial domain, participants mainly adapted their decisions and judgments to the cue validities. We conclude that the strength of causal beliefs (1) is shaped by the domain, and (2) has a differential influence on the degree to which empirical evidence is taken into account in causal judgments and decision making.     

The effect of verbal size information upon visual judgments of absolute distance

When an 0 views a blank triangle of light under completely reduced conditions, he is able to make use of verbally conveyed information about the size of this stimulus when he is attempting to judge the absolute distance of the stimulus. Although between-Os variance is rather large in this situation, group mean distance estimates are highly veridical. This is further evidence for the view that, when the 0 is given a retinal subtense, any kind of information about size enables him to make a judgment of absolute distance, just as information about distance enables him to make a judgment of absolute size.     

The influence of haptic size information upon visual judgments of absolute distance

When O views a blank triangle of light under completely reduced conditions, he is able to use information about the size of this visual stimulus conveyed via the haptic modality when he is attempting to judge the absolute distance of the visual stimulus. However, distance is consistently underesti-mated in this situation. When haptically-indicated size is held constant, judged distance varies inversely with retinalsubtense, even though the different retinal subtenses are viewed by different Os. A variant of the size-distance invariance hypothesis also appears to hold in these circumstances.     

Psychological distance and judgments of causal impact

When assessing causal impact, individuals have to consider two pieces of information: the magnitude of the cause that resulted in an effect, and the magnitude of the resulting effect. In the present research, participants judged the causal impact of cause–effect relationships in which the magnitude of causes and effects varied independently. Participants mainly relied on effect magnitude, rating causal impact to be much higher when strong (vs. weak) effects emerged. When participants took cause magnitude into account (which they did, but to a lesser extent), their judgments reflected a covariation rule (i.e., causal impact being maximal for strong causes generating strong effects) rather than a ratio rule (i.e., causal impact being maximal for weak causes generating strong effects). These distinct views on causal impact were moderated by psychological distance: Effect magnitude dominated judgments of proximal events, whereas cause magnitude had relatively more impact on causal judgments of distal events.     

The egocentric reference for visual exploration and orientation

Clinical signs of damage to the egocentric reference system range from the inability to detect stimuli in the real environment to a defect in recovering items from an internal representation. Despite clinical dissociations, current interpretations consider all symptoms as due to a single perturbation, differentially expressed according to the medium explored (perceptual or representational). We propose an alternative account based on the functional distinction between two separate egocentric mechanisms: one allowing construction of the immediate point of view, the other extracting a required perspective within a mental representation. Support to this claim comes from recent results in the domain of navigation, showing that separate cognitive mechanisms maintain the egocentric reference when actively exploring the visual space as opposed to moving according to an internal map. These mechanisms likely follow separate developmental pathways, seemingly depend on distinct neural pathways and are used independently by healthy adults, reflecting task demands and individual cognitive style. Implications for spatial cognition and social skills are discussed.     

The explanatory gap is still there

I argue that O'Regan & No?'s (O&N's) theory is in a no better position than any other theory to solve the "hard problem" of consciousness. Getting rid of the explanatory gap by exchanging sensorimotor contingencies for neural representations is an illusion.     

Naloxone modulates visual judgments of similarity but not dissimilarity

Endogenous opioids have been implicated in mediating (placebo) analgesia, in reward processes, and in the regulation of socially relevant emotions. To explore their potential contributions to higher cognitive functions, we used a novel task with tachistoscopically presented (for 150 ms) pairs of meaningless figures. Healthy right-handed men judged the similarities and dissimilarities between the two figures on a visual analogue scale (VAS) in two separate runs. In a double-blind, between-subjects design, subjects were administered intravenously either 0.2-mg/kg naloxone or placebo 10 min prior to the task, and VAS judgments and response latencies were measured. We found a significant interaction between substance group and type of judgment: The magnitude of the similarity judgments was lower in the naloxone than in the placebo group, while dissimilarity judgments remained uninfluenced by the treatment. Reaction latencies and mood scores, assessed before and after substance administration, did not differ between the two groups, indicating that the findings did not rely on altered motor performance or motivation. We suggest that naloxone decreased the “similarity criterion” in comparative judgments, indicating its potentially modulatory effect on visual cognition. The task introduced here could be used for the implicit study and quantification of subtle affective–cognitive processes beyond the level of mere questionnaire data.     

Effects of redundant visual stimuli on temporal order judgments

Four experiments were conducted in order to compare the effects of stimulus redundancy on temporal order judgments (TOJs) and reaction times (RTs). In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were presented in each trial with a tone and either a single visual stimulus or two redundant visual stimuli. They were asked to judge whether the tone or the visual display was presented first. Judgments of the relative onset times of the visual and the auditory stimuli were virtually unaffected by the presentation of redundant, rather than single, visual stimuli. Experiments 3 and 4 used simple RT tasks with the same stimuli, and responses were much faster to redundant than to single visual stimuli. It appears that the traditional speedup of RT associated with redundant visual stimuli arises after the stimulus detection processes to which TOJs are sensitive.