Background stripes affect apparent speed of rotation

A gray line that rotated about its own center against a stationary background of vertical stripes appeared to double in perceptual speed as it rotated through the vertical position and thus momentarily aligned with the background. Four factors may contribute to this speed-up: (i) landmarks, in which the tip of the moving vertical line moves horizontally across the maximum number of stationary stripes; (ii) orientation repulsion of the moving line by the vertical stripes, which may distort the line's perceived position and hence its perceived speed; (iii) the orientation of an induced brightness pattern along the line; and (iv) the motion of the induced brightness pattern, which moves physically most rapidly along the line when the line is near vertical. To test these possibilities, an annulus display provided landmarks but no intersections, and this almost abolished the effect. A rotating-slit display provided an oriented, moving pattern that mimicked the induced brightness but had no landmarks, and this increased the effect. We conclude that the motion, but not the orientation, of the intersections [option (iv)] was responsible for the illusion. The fact that this motion along the length of the line affected the perceived speed of the line orthogonal to its own length indicates a failure on the part of the visual system to fully decouple tangential from radial motion.     

All Giraffes Have Female‐Specific Properties: Influence of Grammatical Gender on Deductive Reasoning About Sex‐Specific Properties in German Speakers

Grammatical gender is independent of biological sex for the majority of animal names (e.g., any giraffe, be it male or female, is grammatically treated as feminine). However, there is apparent semantic motivation for grammatical gender classes, especially in mapping human terms to gender. This research investigated whether this motivation affects deductive inference in native German speakers. We compared German with Japanese speakers (a language without grammatical gender) when making inferences about sex‐specific biological properties. We found that German speakers tended to erroneously draw inferences when the sex in the premise and grammatical gender of the target animal agreed. An over‐generalization of the grammar–semantics mapping was found even when the sex of the target was explicitly indicated. However, these effects occurred only when gender‐marking articles accompanied the nouns. These results suggest that German speakers project sex‐specific biological properties onto gender‐marking articles but not onto conceptual representations of animals per se.     

Motion impressions enhanced by converging motion lines

We investigated how motion lines drawn in the background of a running human silhouette affect motion impressions of a runner in a static image. Observers evaluated the strength and direction of motion impression. The results show that parallel lines do not enhance frontoparallel motion impressions, while converging lines do so in an in-depth direction. This is a counter-example to the hypothesis that motion lines in the background represent motion streaks of the background when one visually tracks a moving object.     

A developmental shift from similar to language-specific strategies in verb acquisition: A comparison of English,Spanish, and Japanese

The world’s languages draw on a common set of event components for their verb systems. Yet, these components are differentially distributed across languages. At what age do children begin to use language-specific patterns to narrow possible verb meanings? English-, Japanese-, and Spanish-speaking adults, toddlers, and preschoolers were shown videos of an animated star performing a novel manner along a novel path paired with a language-appropriate nonsense verb. They were then asked to extend that verb to either the same manner or the same path as in training. Across languages, toddlers (2- and 2.5-year-olds) revealed a significant preference for interpreting the verb as a path verb. In preschool (3- and 5-year-olds) and adulthood, the participants displayed language-specific patterns of verb construal. These findings illuminate the way in which verb construal comes to reflect the properties of the input language.     

Mental rotation of cubes with a snake face: The role of the human-body analogy revisited

ABSTRACT

Previous research has demonstrated repeatedly that the mental rotation of human-like objects can be performed more quickly than the mental rotation of abstract objects (a body analogy effect). According to existing accounts, the body analogy effect is mediated by projections of one’s own body axes onto objects (spatial embodiment), and the mental emulation of the observed body posture (motoric embodiment). To test whether motoric embodiment facilitates the mental rotation of human-like objects, we conducted an experiment using a snake-like object that had its own body axes but would be difficult to emulate. Twenty-four participants performed the mental rotation of snake-shaped cubes with or without a snake face as well as human-shaped cubes with or without a human face. Results showed that the presence of a face increased mental rotation speeds for both human-shaped and snake-shaped cubes, confirming both the human-body and snake analogy effects. More importantly, the snake analogy effect was equal to the human-body analogy effect. These findings contradict the motoric embodiment account and suggest that any object that can be regarded as a unit facilitates holistic mental rotation, which in turn leads to improved performance.