What Can Spatial Deficits Teach Us About Feature Binding and Spatial Maps?

The “binding problem” is discussed with reference to feature integration and visual search. Neuropsychological and neurophysiological findings support the existence of multiple visual areas within the primate cortex that respond to primary features of objects and spatial locations. Evidence from studies with hemineglect and Balint's syndrome supports the role of spatial attention in feature integration and demonstrates the necessity for an intact, explicitspatial representation. Some implicit spatial maps remain intact but are not sufficient to support the perception of properly bound features. The evidence suggests strong interactions between parietal spatial representations and temporal feature representations in feature integration.     

What Does Children's Spatial Language Reveal About Spatial Concepts? Evidence From the Use of Containment Expressions

Children's overextensions of spatial language are often taken to reveal spatial biases. However, it is unclear whether extension patterns should be attributed to children's overly general spatial concepts or to a narrower notion of conceptual similarity allowing metaphor‐like extensions. We describe a previously unnoticed extension of spatial expressions and use a novel method to determine its origins. English‐ and Greek‐speaking 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds used containment expressions (e.g., English into, Greek mesa) for events where an object moved into another object but extended such expressions to events where the object moved behind or under another object. The pattern emerged in adult speakers of both languages and also in speakers of 10 additional languages. We conclude that learners do not have an overly general concept of Containment. Nevertheless, children (and adults) perceive similarities across Containment and other types of spatial scenes, even when these similarities are obscured by the conventional forms of the language.     

Spatial sustained attention: better focused than divided?

Visuospatial attention was studied using three different reaction time tasks in a sustained attention paradigm (N = 35). Contrasting with findings from a phasic attention paradigm, our results suggest an equal ability to divide or focus sustained attention in the left and right fields in simple RT, a Go/No go-task, and choice RT.     

Spatial range of illusory effects in Müller-Lyer figures

The spatial range of the illusory effects in Müller-Lyer (M-L) figures was examined in three experiments. Experiments 1 and 2 assessed the pattern of bisection errors along the shaft of the standard or double-angle (experiment 1) and the single-angle (experiment 2) M-L figures: Subjects bisected the shaft and the resulting two half-segments of the shaft to produce apparently equal quarters, and then each of the quarters to produce eight equal-appearing segments. The bisection judgments of each segment were referenced to the segment's physical midpoints. The expansion or wings-out and the contraction or wings-in figures yielded similar patterns of bisection errors. For the standard M-L figures, there were significant errors in bisecting each half, and each end-quarter, but not the two central quarters of the shaft. For the single-angle M-L figures, there were significant errors in bisecting the length of the shaft, the half-segment, and the quarter, of the shaft adjacent to the vertex but not the second quarter from the vertex nor in dividing the half of the shaft at the open end of the figure into four equal intervals. Experiment 3 assessed the apparent length of the half-segment of the shaft at the open end of the single-angle figures. Length judgments were unaffected by the vertex at the opposite end of the shaft. Taken together, the results indicate that the length distortions in both the standard and single-angle M-L figures are not uniformly distributed along the shaft but rather are confined mainly to the quarters adjacent to the vertices. The present findings imply that theories of the M-L illusion which assume uniform expansion or contraction of the shafts are incomplete. Received: 15 December 2000 / Accepted: 5 June 2001     

Are Automatic Imitation and Spatial Compatibility Mediated by Different Processes?

Automatic imitation or “imitative compatibility” is thought to be mediated by the mirror neuron system and to be a laboratory model of the motor mimicry that occurs spontaneously in naturalistic social interaction. Imitative compatibility and spatial compatibility effects are known to depend on different stimulus dimensions—body movement topography and relative spatial position. However, it is not yet clear whether these two types of stimulus–response compatibility effect are mediated by the same or different cognitive processes. We present an interactive activation model of imitative and spatial compatibility, based on a dual‐route architecture, which substantiates the view they are mediated by processes of the same kind. The model, which is in many ways a standard application of the interactive activation approach, simulates all key results of a recent study by Catmur and Heyes (2011) . Specifically, it captures the difference in the relative size of imitative and spatial compatibility effects; the lack of interaction when the imperative and irrelevant stimuli are presented simultaneously; the relative speed of responses in a quintile analysis when the imperative and irrelevant stimuli are presented simultaneously; and the different time courses of the compatibility effects when the imperative and irrelevant stimuli are presented asynchronously.     

Spatial frequency processing in schizophrenia: trait or state marker?

B. F. O'Donnell et al. found impaired discrimination performances at low and medium spatial frequencies in patients with schizophrenia. In this study, the authors replicated this finding in a group of remitted, unmedicated, and highly functioning outpatients with spared IQ and attentional functions. However, the deficit was restricted to low spatial frequencies (0.5 cycles/degree), which suggests that this deficit is a trait marker of schizophrenia.     

Spatial orienting in the visual field: a unified perceptual space?

Visual attention can be oriented toward a spatial location in the visual field exogenously by an abrupt onset of a peripheral cue. In a series of behavioral studies on exogenous orienting of attention with a double-cue paradigm, we demonstrated a functional subdivision of perceptual space in the visual field. Specifically, inhibition of return (IOR) is much stronger at periphery relative to perifoveal visual field up to approximately 15° eccentricity, suggesting two dissociable functional areas in the visual field. To further investigate the generality of this functional subdivision of the visual field, we measured IOR effects with another single-cue paradigm and applied a very short cue-target interval that was typically anticipated not to observe any inhibitory effect at all. Consistent with this expectation, no IOR effects at the eccentricities up to 15° were observed. However, significant IOR effects beyond 15° eccentricities were consistently demonstrated. These results not only revealed an early onset of IOR for more peripheral stimuli, but also confirmed that the perceptual space in the visual field is not homogeneous but underlies a functional subdivision with a border of ca. 15° eccentricity.     

Spatial associations for musical stimuli: a piano in the head?

This study was aimed at examining whether pitch height and pitch change are mentally represented along spatial axes. A series of experiments explored, for isolated tones and 2-note intervals, the occurrence of effects analogous to the spatial numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect. Response device orientation (horizontal vs. vertical), task, and musical expertise of the participants were manipulated. The pitch of isolated tones triggered the automatic activation of a vertical axis independently of musical expertise, but the contour of melodic intervals did not. By contrast, automatic associations with the horizontal axis seemed linked to music training for pitch and, to a lower extent, for intervals. These results, discussed in the light of studies on number representation, provide a new example of the effects of musical expertise on music cognition.     

Spatial patterns in tactile perception: is there a tactile field?

Previous studies of tactile spatial perception focussed either on a single point of stimulation, on local patterns within a single skin region such as the fingertip, on tactile motion, or on active touch. It remains unclear whether we should speak of a tactile field, analogous to the visual field, and supporting spatial relations between stimulus locations. Here we investigate this question by studying perception of large-scale tactile spatial patterns on the hand, arm and back. Experiment 1 investigated the relation between perception of tactile patterns and the identification of subsets of those patterns. The results suggest that perception of tactile spatial patterns is based on representing the spatial relations between locations of individual stimuli. Experiment 2 investigated the spatial and temporal organising principles underlying these relations. Experiment 3 showed that tactile pattern perception makes reference to structural representations of the body, such as body parts separated by joints. Experiment 4 found that precision of pattern perception is poorer for tactile patterns that extend across the midline, compared to unilateral patterns. Overall, the results suggest that the human sense of touch involves a tactile field, analogous to the visual field. The tactile field supports computation of spatial relations between individual stimulus locations, and thus underlies tactile pattern perception.     

Spatial attention: different mechanisms for central and peripheral temporal precues?

The external noise paradigm (Z.-L. Lu & B. A. Dosher, 1998) was applied to investigate mechanisms of spatial attention in location precuing. Observers were precued or simultaneously cued to identify 1 of 4 pseudocharacters embedded in various amounts of external noise. The cues were either central or peripheral. Both central and peripheral precuing significantly reduced threshold in the presence of high external noise (16% and 17.5%). Only peripheral precuing significantly reduced threshold in the presence of low, or no, external noise (11%). A perceptual template model identified different mechanisms of attention for central and peripheral precuing, external noise exclusion for central precuing, and a combination of external noise exclusion and stimulus enhancement (or equivalently, internal additive noise reduction) for peripheral cuing.     

Spatial localization under conflict conditions: is there a single explanation?

Visual--auditory (VA) and visual--proprioceptive (VP) localization conflict paradigms were varied to explore the comparability of the conflict situations. In experiment 1 various attempts were made to decrease the dominance of visual information over proprioceptive and auditory target information. Pairing auditory with proprioceptive information against conflicting visual information did not lessen the visual dominance, nor did dimming the visual field. A 'cognitive' manipulation, in which the subject was led to doubt the reliability of the visual information, reduced visual dominance over audition but not visual dominance over proprioception. This difference between the two conflict situations was further explored and corroborated in experiment 2. In experiment 3 no attempt was made to lead the subject to believe that paired discrepant targets were related, and the visual dominance of audition was strong while the visual dominance of proprioception did not occur. The apparent differences between the VA and VP conflict situations are discussed with regard to the feability of generating a unitary explanation of localization conflict results. Several further factors are discussed that must be explored before undertaking such a unitary formulation.     

Spatial orienting in the visual field: a unified perceptual space?

Visual attention can be oriented toward a spatial location in the visual field exogenously by an abrupt onset of a peripheral cue. In a series of behavioral studies on exogenous orienting of attention with a double-cue paradigm, we demonstrated a functional subdivision of perceptual space in the visual field. Specifically, inhibition of return (IOR) is much stronger at periphery relative to perifoveal visual field up to approximately 15° eccentricity, suggesting two dissociable functional areas in the visual field. To further investigate the generality of this functional subdivision of the visual field, we measured IOR effects with another single-cue paradigm and applied a very short cue-target interval that was typically anticipated not to observe any inhibitory effect at all. Consistent with this expectation, no IOR effects at the eccentricities up to 15° were observed. However, significant IOR effects beyond 15° eccentricities were consistently demonstrated. These results not only revealed an early onset of IOR for more peripheral stimuli, but also confirmed that the perceptual space in the visual field is not homogeneous but underlies a functional subdivision with a border of ca. 15° eccentricity.     

Pigeons’ Performances of a Radial-Arm-Maze Analog Task: Effect of Spatial Distinctiveness

The Psychological Record - Pigeons were presented with a radial-arm-maze analog task involving five response keys in one of four spatial arrangements. Two of the arrangements involved...     

The Sound of Silence: Can Imagining Music Improve Spatial Rotation Performance?

We report two experiments exploring whether imagining music improves spatial rotation via increases in arousal and mood levels (Schellenberg 2005). To aid their imagination, participants were given instructions (none, basic or detailed) and lyrics (present or absent). Experiment 1 showed no effect of instructions or lyrics on performance although participants felt that the presence of the lyrics helped. Experiment 2 was identical to Experiment 1 except that the participants were musicians (as evidenced by musical experience and/or qualification). This time there was a significant effect of instructions in that those who received the detailed instructions performed significantly better than the no instruction condition although the presence of lyrics did not help. Further research is required to establish the similarity of the imagination to the traditional arousal and mood effect but the phenomenon may be useful for short-term boosts in spatial rotation activities.     

Spatial organisation in passive tactile perception: is there a tactile field?

The perceptual field is a cardinal concept of sensory psychology. 'Field' refers to a representation in which perceptual contents have spatial properties and relations which derive from the spatial properties and relations of corresponding stimuli. It is a matter of debate whether a perceptual field exists in touch analogous to the visual field. To study this issue, we investigated whether tactile stimuli on the palm can be perceived as complex stimulus patterns, according to basic spatial principles. Subjects judged the intensity of a target stimulus to the palm, ignoring two brief preceding touches at nearby flanker locations. We found that the judgements of the target intensity were boosted by flankers when the target lay on the line joining the flankers in comparison to when the target lay away from this line. Therefore, we suggest that a tactile spatial organisation, i.e. a tactile field, exists; the field supports the relation of collinearity; it is automatically and implicitly activated by touch, and it groups spatially coherent perceptual contents.     

Spatial cueing in time–space synesthetes: An event-related brain potential study

Some people report that they consistently and involuntarily associate time events, such as months of the year, with specific spatial locations; a condition referred to as time–space synesthesia. The present study investigated the manner in which such synesthetic time–space associations affect visuo-spatial attention via an endogenous cuing paradigm. Reaction times and ERPs were recorded as 12 time–space synesthetes and 12 control participants did a peripheral target detection task, cued by three different types of centrally presented cues: arrows pointing left or right, direction words “left” or “right”, and month names associated with either the left or the right side of the synesthete’s mental calendar (e.g., “October” or “May”). Cues were followed by probes on the left or right side of the screen, and participants responded to the probes with button presses. Behavioral and ERP data suggested that for synesthetes, month words functioned more effectively as cues to direct attention in space. In synesthetes but not controls, a comparison of ERPs to probes cued by months revealed effects of cue validity on the P3b component peaking 370 ms post-onset and on the subsequent positive slow wave (pSW) observed 600–900 ms post-onset (both larger for invalid probes). No effects of cue validity were observed on early visual potentials (N1) for probes cued by months. The findings suggest that in these time–space synesthetes cue validity influenced post-perceptual processes, such as stimulus evaluation and categorization, with no evidence for enhanced visual processing.     

Delineating the Boundaries of Infants’ Spatial Categories: The Case of Containment

Spatial categorization has a long history in the research of infant cognition and perception. Many conclusions are drawn from the approach wherein infants are habituated to examples of a spatial category X and then display an attention recovery (i.e., dishabituation) to a contrasting category Y. However, the distinction infants make between X and Y does not warrant a distinction between X and another category Z. Here we examine the boundaries of infants’ spatial categorization by contrasting the spatial category containment with support and occlusion. Eight-month-olds were habituated to 3 exemplars of containment and were tested with novel containment versus support events, or with novel containment versus occlusion events. The infants looked significantly longer at the support than at the containment events, but they looked about equally at the occlusion and containment events. The results suggest that 8-month-olds treated exemplars of containment as belonging to the same category, generalized this category to novel examples, and distinguished it from support but not from occlusion (this last distinction emerged by 11 months). Thus, spatial categorization in the 1st year, like several other domains of cognition, may be tied to specific contrasts. Whether infants form a broad or narrow spatial category depends on the contrasting category.     

Where are the Gender Differences? Male Priming Boosts Spatial Skills in Women

The effects of gender stereotype activation by priming on performance in a spatial task were investigated among a mixed adult sample (including students) of 161 men and women (mean age?=?31.90) from Austria (Europe). They were assigned to one of four experimental groups according to gender and stereotype activation condition. After a male or female gender stereotype activating task, participants worked on a test assessing mental rotation (three-dimensional cube test, Gittler 1990). A significant main effect of priming on the performance in the mental rotation task emerged. Cohen’s d showed a pronounced gender difference emerging only in the female priming condition (d?=?.59), whereas it disappeared in the male priming condition (d?=?.01).     

Spatial term apprehension with a reference object’s rotation in three-dimensional space

It has been reported that the overall shapes of spatial categorical patterns of projective spatial terms such as above and below are not influenced by the rotation of a reference object on a two-dimensional (2D) upright plane. However, is this also true in three-dimensional (3D) space? This study shows the dynamic aspects of the apprehension of projective spatial terms in 3D space by detailing how the rotation of a reference object with an inherent front influences the apprehension of projective spatial terms on a level plane by mapping their spatial categorical patterns. The experiment was designed to examine how spatial categorical patterns on a level plane changed with the rotation of a reference object with an inherent front in 3D computer graphics space. We manipulated the rotation of a reference object with an inherent front at three levels (0°, 90°, and 180° rotations) and examined how such manipulation changed the overall spatial categorical patterns of four basic Japanese projective spatial terms: mae, ushiro, hidari, and migi (similar to in front of, behind, to the left of, and to the right of in English, respectively). The results show that spatial term apprehension was affected by the rotation of the reference object in 3D space. In particular, rotation influenced the mae–ushiro and hidari–migi systems differently. The results also imply that our understanding of projective spatial terms on a level plane in 3D space is affected dynamically by visual information from 3D cues.