Haptic dominance in form perception: vision versus proprioception.

An experiment placed vision and touch in conflict by the use of a mirror placed perpendicular to a letter display. The mirror induced a discrepancy in direction and form. Subjects touched the embossed tangible letters p, q, b, d, W, and M, while looking at them in a mirror, and were asked to identify the letters. The upright mirror produced a vertical inversion of the letters, and visual inversion of the direction of finger movement. Thus, subjects touched the letter p, but saw themselves touching the letter b in the mirror. There were large individual differences in reliance on the senses. The majority of the subjects depended on touch, and only one showed visual dominance. Others showed a compromise between the senses. The results were consistent with an attentional explanation of intersensory dominance.     

Tactual perception of embossed Morse code and braille: the alliance of vision and touch

In three experiments observers made visual matches to tangible embossed patterns. Stained glass was used to blur vision and thus allow the effect of visual guidance of tactual exploration on the accuracy of symbol recognition to be evaluated. Stained glass rendered the embossed code invisible, but allowed sight of the hand. In the first experiment subjects identified patterns made up of dots and dashes drawn from Morse code; in the second and third experiments they studied braille. The results show that subjects are more accurate in 'reading' tangible codes when provided with visual guidance. Performance was higher for braille than for Morse code. Vision aided touch through the provision of a frame of reference and through sight of scanning movements. Naive sighted observers were able to identify invisible braille dots by watching other individuals touch the symbols, suggesting the importance of vision of kinesthetic patterns.     

Objects, raised lines, and the haptic horizontal-vertical illusion

Experiments were conducted to determine whether the haptic horizontal-vertical illusion occurs with solid, three-dimensional objects as well as with tangible lines. The objects consisted of round or square bases, with dowel rods projecting above them at heights equal to the widths of the horizontal bases. A negative illusion, with overestimation of horizontals, was found with free haptic exploration, but not with tracing with the fingertip. The negative illusion occurred when subjects felt wooden Ls and inverted Ts with a grasping, pincers motion of the index finger and thumb. The presence or absence of illusory misperception was dependent upon exploration strategy, since the negative illusion vanished with finger tracing. A negative illusion was also found when subjects adjusted a vertical dowel so that it was judged to be equal in extent to a round or square base. A general overestimation of judged size derived from the pincers response measure, but was not found with the use of a tangible ruler. Comparable illusory results are most likely when drawings and objects promote similar haptic scanning methods. The results were consistent with the idea that the orientation of an edge or line is more important than whether one explores a tangible line or a three-dimensional object.     

The Dispositional Sources of Job Satisfaction: A Comparative Test

This study related three personality taxonomies—positive affectivity and negative affectivity (PA and NA), the five-factor model (the "Big Five"), and core self-evaluations—to job satisfaction in an integrative test. In a longitudinal design with multi-source data, results indicated that the traits from all three taxonomies generally were significantly related to job satisfaction, even when the traits and job satisfaction were measured with independent sources. However, when all three typologies were examined concurrently, the core self-evaluations typology was the only typology that was significantly related to job satisfaction. The study extends research on the validation of these frameworks by assessing convergent and discriminant validity issues, and shows that core self-evaluations adds to our understanding of the dispositional source of job satisfaction.     

Context-effect bias in capuchin monkeys (Sapajus spp.): exploring decoy influences in a value-based food choice task

Animal Cognition - Decision making is known to be liable to several context effects. In particular, adding a seemingly irrelevant alternative (decoy) to a set of options can modify preferences:...