Cues to speech segmentation: Evidence from juncture misperceptions and word spotting

The question of whether Dutch listeners rely on the rhythmic characteristics of their native language to segment speech was investigated in three experiments. In Experiment 1, listeners were induced to make missegmentations of continuous speech. The results showed that word boundaries were inserted before strong syllables and deleted before weak syllables. In Experiment 2, listeners were required to spot real CVC or CVCC words (C = consonant, V = vowel) embedded in bisyllabic nonsense strings. For CVCC words, fewer errors were made when the second syllable of the nonsense string was weak rather than strong, whereas for CVC words the effect was reversed. Experiment 3 ruled out an acoustic explanation for this effect. It is argued that these results are in line with an account in which both metrical segmentation and lexical competition play a role.     

Visual object agnosia as a problem in integrating parts and part relations

Current models of vision generally assume that the recognition of visual objects is achieved by encoding their component parts, as well as the spatial relations among parts. The current study examined how the processing of parts and their configurations may be affected in visual agnosia due to brain damage. Both a visual agnosic patient (AR) and healthy control subjects performed a visual search task in which they had to discriminate between targets and distractors that varied according to whether they shared their parts and/or their configuration. The results show that AR's visual search rates are disproportionally slow when targets and distractors share the same configuration than when they have different configurations. AR is also found to be disproportionately slow in discriminating targets and distractors that share identical parts when the targets and distractors share the same configuration. With differently configured targets and distractors, AR shows no part sharing effect. For controls, in contrast, the part and configuration sharing effects occur independently of one another. It is concluded that AR's object recognition deficit arises from difficulties in discriminating objects that share their configuration, and from an abnormal dependency of part information processing upon object configuration.     

Hedonic contrast and condensation: Good stimuli make mediocre stimuli less good and less different

Loud sounds make soft sounds softer (contrast) and also make them less discriminable (which we callcondensation). We report on parallel phenomena in hedonics: Good stimuli reduce the pleasantness of less good stimuli, and also reduce people’s preferences among the less good stimuli. In Experiment 1, subjects rated the pleasantness of fruit juices diluted to approximate hedonic neutrality. Subjects who had just previously drunk and rated some good-tasting full-strength juices rated the diluted juices lower than did subjects who had not (hedonic contrast). In Experiment 2, subjects drank pairs of diluted juices and rated their preference for one juice over the other. Subjects who had just previously drunk and rated pairs of full-strength juices gave lower preference ratings between the diluted juices than did subjects who had not (condensation). Thus the same stimulus set produced contrast in Experiment 1 and condensation in Experiment 2, paralleling results in loudness.     

Mental body distance comparison: A tool for assessing clinical disturbances in visual body image

Despite numerous body size estimation studies, it cannot be concluded that the disturbance of body image in anorexia nervosa (AN) is specifically one of the visual body images.We adopted a visual imagery method, the Distance Comparison task, to enable across-population testing of differences in visual body image with respect to shape. Participants were asked to mentally scan across two body widths (e.g. hips and shoulders) and to decide as quickly as possible which one was longer or shorter. If the mental representation accessed to make such comparisons is visual, an inverse relation would be expected between RT and distance difference on the body to be judged (i.e. actual difference in size between the two body widths), with accuracy increasing with increasing distance difference. Females with high body shape concern (scoring high on the Body Shape Questionnaire: BSQ, n = 23) were compared to females with low body shape concern (scoring low on the BSQ, n = 19).RT and distance differences on the body demonstrated standard distance differences effects: RT increased and accuracy decreased with decreasing distance differences on the body. Groups differed with respect to accuracy, in that females high on body shape concern were significantly less accurate than females low on body shape concern when making evaluations involving small (?9 cm) differences, which implies a less appropriate visual image of the own body in the former group. With respect to the relation between RT and body distance difference, on the other hand, there were no differences between groups. We concluded that evaluations of own body size employ visual imagery and that the distance comparison task holds promise for the assessment of visual disturbances in body image in clinical populations.