Upright versus upside-down faces: How interface attractiveness varies with orientation

A choice experiment is reported in which all pairs and triples of faces from a set of eight moderately attractive faces were presented, both upright and upside down, to 103 subjects. In each orientation, the subjects had to select the face that appeared more (pairs) or most (triples) attractive to them. For each orientation, the preference probabilities that arose from the pair and triple comparisons could be described by the BTL rule (Luce, 1959). Thus, each face was represented by two scores, one reflecting its attractiveness in the upright orientation and the other reflecting its attractiveness in the inverted orientation. Orientation affected the preference probabilities. Qualitatively, score ratios between faces decreased from upright to inverted orientation, suggesting that the faces became less discriminable by inversion. Quantitatively, the effect of inversion could be described by a simple rule that assumes a face’s two attractiveness scores to be affinely related across orientations. This result indicates that inversion affected all faces about equally. The present findings are discussed with respect to faces’ first- and second-order relational properties, a distinction emphasized in current theories of face perception. They suggest that the processing of first- and secondorder relational properties is impaired by inversion to roughly the same degree.     

Acuity for orientation measured with a sequential recognition task and signal detection methods

An orientation recognition task with two stimuli was employed as the basis of a psychophysical method for measuring sensitivity to orientation. Essentially, this method depends on a subject’s ability to discriminate between two stimuli differing in orientation and presented to the same retinal area in random succession from trial to trial. Advantages of this sequential method over traditional simultaneous matching methods are discussed. Its feasibility is demonstrated in a signal detection analysis of acuity for the orientation of short luminous slits presented foveally on a dark field at seven reference orientations varying between 0° and 90°. In both subjects employed, sensitivity was greater for horizontal and vertical orientations than for other slopes (the oblique effect).     

Aspects of verbal processing in relation to perceptual disembedding ability

In this study an attempt was made to extend the notion of disembedding from the perceptual to the verbal semantic domain. Fifty-two undergraduates were presented with the Group Embedded Figure Test (GEFT) and with seven verbal tasks. A Factor analysis made on test scores, as well as other factors, evidenced a factor that linked to gether the GEFT and one of the verbal tasks (Word groups). It is argued that both tasks require the restructuring of an organized context according to new given rules, and that disembedding is a mental operation which applies to both verbal and perceptual domains.     

Knowing but not remembering: Adult age differences in recollective experience

Age differences in recollective experience were examined in two experiments in which younger and older adults used their self-generated associations as retrieval cues. When recalling an item, subjects indicated whether they consciously remembered its prior occurrence, or merely knew that it was presented previously. The results of both experiments showed that aging selectively impaired retention accompanied by recollective experience, as measured byremember responses, but had no effects in the absence of recollective experience, as measured byknow responses. In Experiment 2, a similar pattern of data was obtained for a group of younger adults by increasing the rate of presentation at study. The results also indicated that judgments of recollective experience were related to type of encoding: Subjects who generated detailed associations reported higher levels of remember responses and lower levels of know responses than did subjects who generated fewer detailed associations. The results are discussed in terms of processes related to perceptual familiarity and contextual detail.     

Event-related brain potentials reflect traces of echoic memory in humans

In sequences of identical auditory stimuli, infrequent deviant stimuli elicit an event-related brain potential component called mismatch negativity (MMN). MMN is presumed to reflect the existence of a memory trace of the frequent stimulus at the moment of presentation of the infrequent stimulus. This hypothesis was tested by applying the recognition-masking paradigm of cognitive psychology. In this paradigm, a masking sound presented shortly before or after a test stimulus diminishes the recognition memory of this stimulus, the more so the shorter the interval between the test and masking stimuli. This interval was varied in the present study. It was found that the MMN amplitude strongly correlated with the subject’s ability to discriminate between frequent and infrequent stimuli. This result strongly suggests that MMN providesa measure for a trace of sensory memory, and further, that with MMN, this memory can be studied without performance-related distortions.     

Realism of confidence in sensory discrimination: The underconfidence phenomenon

This paper documents a very pervasive underconfidence bias in the area of sensory discrimination. In order to account for this phenomenon, a subjective distance theory of confidence in sensory discrimination is proposed. This theory, based on the law of comparative judgment and the assumption of confidence as an increasing function of the perceived distance between stimuli, predicts underconfidence—that is, that people should perform better than they express in their confidence assessments. Due to the fixed sensitivity of the sensory system, this underconfidence bias is practically impossible to avoid. The results of Experiment 1 confirmed the prediction of underconfidence with the help of present-day calibration methods and indkated-a-good quantitative fit of the theory. The results of Experiment 2 showed that prolonged experience of outcome feedback (160 trials) had no effect on underconfidence. It is concluded that the subjective distance theory provides a better explanation of the underconfidence phenomenon than-do previous accounts in terms of subconscious processes.     

Reaction time and movement time measured in a key-press and a key-release condition.

Reaction time (RT) and movement time (MT) are measured in two conditions, a key-press and a key-release condition. The latter makes a greater demand on perceptual feedback than the former. RT increases in the key-release condition and a fraction of MT denoted key-press time (KT) decreases in the key-press condition. It is argued that KT of a response button in the simple reaction-time experiment may serve as a proper measure of the motor component. The foreperiod prior to onset of the reacting stimulus affects RT, KT, and MT, suggesting that preparatory set or expectancy influences both the perceptual and motor components of simple human performance. The results indicate that the relation of RT and MT depends upon methodological conditions.