A comparison of visual and auditory representational momentum in spatial tasks

Similarities have been observed in the localization of the final position of moving visual and moving auditory stimuli: Perceived endpoints that are judged to be farther in the direction of motion in both modalities likely reflect extrapolation of the trajectory, mediated by predictive mechanisms at higher cognitive levels. However, actual comparisons of the magnitudes of displacement between visual tasks and auditory tasks using the same experimental setup are rare. As such, the purpose of the present free-field study was to investigate the influences of the spatial location of motion offset, stimulus velocity, and motion direction on the localization of the final positions of moving auditory stimuli (Experiment 1 and 2) and moving visual stimuli (Experiment 3). To assess whether auditory performance is affected by dynamically changing binaural cues that are used for the localization of moving auditory stimuli (interaural time differences for low-frequency sounds and interaural intensity differences for high-frequency sounds), two distinct noise bands were employed in Experiments 1 and 2. In all three experiments, less precise encoding of spatial coordinates in paralateral space resulted in larger forward displacements, but this effect was drowned out by the underestimation of target eccentricity in the extreme periphery. Furthermore, our results revealed clear differences between visual and auditory tasks. Displacements in the visual task were dependent on velocity and the spatial location of the final position, but an additional influence of motion direction was observed in the auditory tasks. Together, these findings indicate that the modality-specific processing of motion parameters affects the extrapolation of the trajectory.     

Textures shape the attentional focus: Evidence from exogenous and endogenous cueing

The spatial cueing paradigm (Posner Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 32:3–25, 1980) has often been used to investigate the time course of the deployment of visual attention in space. In a series of eight experiments we investigated whether spatial cues would not only enhance processing of stimuli presented at cued locations, but also enhance processing of the entire texture in which the stimuli were presented. Results showed highest accuracy for responses to stimuli presented at cued locations, a replication of the traditional cueing effect (Posner 1980). Additionally, stimuli presented at uncued locations were responded to with higher accuracy when they were presented inside the same texture as the cued location, as compared with stimuli presented outside the texture with the cued location. To investigate this texture advantage for both automatic and voluntary attention deployment, exogenous and endogenous cues were used. The texture advantage was observed for short interstimulus intervals (ISIs) of 50 and 100 ms for exogenous cues and for a longer ISI of 200 ms for endogenous cues. These findings indicate that the arrangement of task-irrelevant visual stimuli also can have a large impact on the cueing effect. This suggests that visual spatial attention spreads texture-wise across the visual field. Control experiments revealed that the homogeneity within texture elements contributes most to the effect but that the texture advantage is a function of both orientation contrast at the texture border and homogeneity within texture elements.     

Towards a New Epistemology of Mathematics

In this introduction we discuss the motivation behind the workshop “Towards a New Epistemology of Mathematics” of which this special issue constitutes the proceedings. We elaborate on historical and empirical aspects of the desired new epistemology, connect it to the public image of mathematics, and give a summary and an introduction to the contributions to this issue.

---

Cortical regions activated by the subjective sense of perceptual coherence of environmental sounds: A proposal for a neuroscience of intuition

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, intuition is “the ability to understand or know something immediately, without conscious reasoning.” In other words, people continuously, without conscious attention, recognize patterns in the stream of sensations that impinge upon them. The result is a vague perception of coherence, which subsequently biases thought and behavior accordingly. Within the visual domain, research using paradigms with difficult recognition has suggested that the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) serves as a fast detector and predictor of potential content that utilizes coarse facets of the input. To investigate whether the OFC is crucial in biasing task-specific processing, and hence subserves intuitive judgments in various modalities, we used a difficult-recognition paradigm in the auditory domain. Participants were presented with short sequences of distorted, nonverbal, environmental sounds and had to perform a sound categorization task. Imaging results revealed rostral medial OFC activation for such auditory intuitive coherence judgments. By means of a conjunction analysis between the present results and those from a previous study on visual intuitive coherence judgments, the rostral medial OFC was shown to be activated via both modalities. We conclude that rostral OFC activation during intuitive coherence judgments subserves the detection of potential content on the basis of only coarse facets of the input.     

OGAMA (Open Gaze and Mouse Analyzer): Open-source software designed to analyze eye and mouse movements in slideshow study designs

In the present article, a new software is introduced that allows the recording and analyzing of eye- and mouse-tracking data from slideshow-based experiments in parallel. The Open Gaze and Mouse Analyzer (OGAMA) is written in C#.NET and has been released as an open-source project. Its main features include slide-show design, the recording of gaze and mouse data, database-driven preprocessing and filtering of gaze and mouse data, the creation of attention maps, areas-of-interest definition, and replay. Eyetracking and/or presentation soft- and hardware recordings in ASCII format can be imported. Data output is provided that can be used directly with different statistical software packages. Because it is open source, one can easily adapt it to suit one’s needs.     

Touchant-touché: the role of self-touch in the representation of body structure

The "body image" is a putative mental representation of one's own body, including structural and geometric details, as well as the more familiar visual and affective aspects. Very little research has investigated how we learn the structure of our own body, with most researchers emphasising the canonical visual representation of the body when we look at ourselves in a mirror. Here, we used non-visual self-touch in healthy participants to investigate the possibility that primary sensorimotor experience may influence cognitive representations of one's own body structure. Participants used the fingers of one hand (the 'active' hand), to touch the fingers of the other (the 'passive' hand). A conflict between the experience of the active and passive hand was introduced by experimenter interleaving their fingers with the fingers of the participant's passive hand. This led to the active hand experiencing that it touched more fingers than the passive hand felt it was being touched by. The effects on representation of body structure were assessed using an implicit measure based on Kinsbourne and Warrington's 'in-between task'. We found an underestimation of the number of fingers in the central part of the hand specifically linked to the experience of self-touch. This pattern of results corresponds to the experience of the passive hand, but not the active hand. Nevertheless, comparable reorganisation of fingers within the hand representation was found for both active and passive hands. We show that primary sensorimotor experience can modify the representation of body structure. This modification is driven by the passive experience of being touched, rather than by the active experience of touching. We believe this is the first experimental study of effects of self-touch on the mental representation of the body.     

Impact of Self Monitoring and Gender on Coping Strategies in Intimate Relationships Among Turkish University Students

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of self monitoring and gender on coping strategies in intimate relationships. The Self Monitoring Scale and Multidimensional Intimate Coping Questionnaire were given to 224 heterosexual Turkish undergraduate students. Results showed that high self monitors had higher scores on focusing on relationship, seeking external support, alcohol and drug use, self-bolstering, and humor coping than low self monitors. Females reported greater negative and passive coping, positive and active coping, self-bolstering, religious coping and seeking external support than males did. Males reported greater alcohol and drug use than females did. Consequently, this study showed that both self monitoring (high–low) and gender affect on coping strategies among Turkish undergraduate sample.     

Logical recoding of S-R rules can reverse the effects of spatial S-R correspondence

Two experiments investigated competing explanations for the reversal of spatial stimulus—response (S—R) correspondence effects (i.e., Simon effects) with an incompatible S—R mapping on the relevant, nonspatial dimension. Competing explanations were based on generalized S—R rules (logical-recoding account) or referred to display—control arrangement correspondence or to S—S congruity. In Experiment 1, compatible responses to finger—name stimuli presented at left/right locations produced normal Simon effects, whereas incompatible responses to finger—name stimuli produced an inverted Simon effect. This finding supports the logical-recoding account. In Experiment 2, spatial S—R correspondence and color S—R correspondence were varied independently, and main effects of these variables were observed. The lack of an interaction between these variables, however, disconfirms a prediction of the display—control arrangement correspondence account. Together, the results provide converging evidence for the logical-recoding account. This account claims that participants derive generalized response selection rules (e.g., the identity or reversal rule) from specific S—R rules and inadvertently apply the generalized rules to the irrelevant (spatial) S—R dimension when selecting their response.     

The detection of feature singletons defined in two dimensions is based on salience summation, rather than on serial exhaustive or interactive race architectures

Influential models of visual search assume that dimension-specific feature contrast signals are summed into a master saliency map in a coactive fashion. The main source of evidence for coactivation models, and against parallel race models, is violations of the race model inequality (RMI; Miller, 1982) by redundantly defined singleton feature targets. However, RMI violations do not rule out serial exhaustive (Townsend & Nozawa, 1997) or interactive race (Mordkoff & Yantis, 1991) architectures. These alternatives were tested in two experiments. In Experiment 1, we used a double-factorial design with singleton targets defined in two dimensions and at two levels of intensity, to distinguish between serial versus parallel models and self-terminating versus exhaustive stopping rules. In Experiment 2, we manipulated contingency benefits that are expected to affect the magnitude of redundancy gains and/or RMI violations on the assumption of an interactive race. The results of both experiments revealed redundancy gains as well as violations of the RMI, but the data pattern excluded serial-exhaustive and interactive race models as possible explanations for RMI violations. This result supports saliency summation (coactivation) models of search for singleton feature targets.     

Evidence for mental ability related individual differences in the attentional blink obtained by an analysis of the P300 component

Attentional blink (AB) refers to impaired identification of a target (T2) when this target follows a preceding target (T1) after about 150-450 ms within a stream of rapidly presented stimuli. Previous research on a possible relation between AB and mental ability (MA) turned out to be highly ambiguous. The present study investigated MA-related individual differences in consolidation of T2 in working memory during the AB as indicated by the P300 component of the event-related potential. Thirty high (HA) and 30 low MA (LA) female participants performed an AB task while their brain activity was recorded. The AB did not differ between the two groups. HA individuals exhibited a larger P300 amplitude and longer P300 latencies during the AB suggesting higher mental effort. This higher mental effort, however, did not result in better performance presumably because of more competition between target and distractor stimuli in HA than LA individuals.