Categorical perception of morphed objects using a free-naming experiment

Morphed figures entail a dominant and nondominant interpretation. Testing perception of morphed objects using forced-choice methods demonstrates that morphed figures are perceived as their dominant interpretation (“categorical perception”, or CP). Using a more natural free-naming response could reveal whether CP is an effect independent of method. In Experiment 1, therefore, series of morphed figures were tested for CP using free naming. Half of the morph series were identified as CP patterns. In Experiment 2, we used forced choice to investigate CP, resulting in an increase of number of CP series compared to free naming. The overlap between CP series of Experiments 1 and 2 was small, however. Experiment 3 revealed that higher perceptual similarity between the extremes of the series was strongly related to CP for the free-naming method, in contrast to the forced-choice method. We conclude that the observation of CP depends on the intactness of the intrinsic object structure caused by the morphing procedure.     

Vierordt's The Experimental Study of the Time Sense (1868) and its legacy

The paper discusses the results from Vierordt's 1868 book Der Zeitsinn nach Versuchen [The Experimental Study of the Time Sense]. Illustrations of “Vierordt's Law”, the proposition that short durations are judged as longer than they really are, whereas long durations are judged as shorter, with an “indifference point” in between, are provided, mainly from reproduction experiments where Vierordt and his students or colleagues served as experimental participants. Other work from Der Zeitsinn including time discrimination and categorical timing procedures is also presented. Some subsequent research on Vierordt's Law and the “indifference point” is discussed with respect to some issues in contemporary timing theory.     

Discrimination of sea-bird sounds vs. garden-bird songs: Do Scottish and German-Saxon infants show the same preferential looking behaviour as adults?

Birdsong and human speech share some genetic origins (Haesler, Rochefort, Georgi, Licznerski, Osten, & Scharff, 2007 Haesler, S., Rochefort, C., Georgi, B., Licznerski, P., Osten, P. and Scharff, C. 2007. Incomplete and inaccurate vocal imitation after knockdown of FoxP2 in songbird basal ganglia nucleus area X. PLOS Biology, 5: e312–e321.  [Google Scholar]; Vargha-Khadem, Gadian, Copp, & Mishkin, 2005 Vargha-Khadem, F., Gadian, D. G., Copp, A. and Mishkin, M. 2005. FoxP2 and the neuroanatomy of speech and language. Nature Review of Neuroscience, 6: 131–138. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). In two studies (N = 67 infants and N = 28 adults) in Scotland (UK) and Saxony (Germany), perceptual discrimination of innate, repetitive, lower frequency sea-bird sounds vs. learned, melodic, higher frequency garden-bird songs was tested in infants in their first year as well as in adults, using the conditioned head-turn procedure (CHTP; e.g., Jusczyk, Friederici, Wessels, Svernkerud, & Jusczyk, 1993 Jusczyk, P. W. and Krumhansl, C. L. 1993. Pitch and rhythmic patterns affecting infants' sensitivity to musical phrase structure. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 19: 627–640.  [Google Scholar]). Infants and adults reliably distinguished between the two types of sounds. Independently of environment, infants paid more attention to sea-bird sounds than to garden-bird songs, while adults showed the reverse preference. Further analysis revealed additional insights into the underlying processes.     

Linguistic and nonlinguistic influences on the eyes' landing positions during reading

Two eye tracking experiments show that, for near launch sites, the eyes land nearer to the beginning of words with orthographically irregular than with regular initial letter sequences. In addition, the characteristics of words, at least at the level of orthography, influence the direction and length of within-word saccades. Importantly, these effects hold both for lower case and for visually less distinctive upper case text. Furthermore, contrary to previous evidence (Tinker & Paterson, 1939), there is little effect of type case on reading times. Additional analyses of oculomotor behaviour suggest that there is an inverted optimal viewing position for single fixation durations on words. Both the supplementary analyses and the effects of orthography on fixation positions are relevant to current models of eye movements in reading.     

Categorical perception along the happy–angry and happy–sad continua in the first year of life

The current study investigated 6-, 9- and 12-month old infants’ ability to categorically perceive facial emotional expressions depicting faces from two continua: happy–sad and happy–angry. In a between-subject design, infants were tested on their ability to discriminate faces that were between-category (across the category boundary) or within-category (within emotion category). Results suggest that 9- and 12 month-olds can discriminate between but not within categories, for the happy–angry continuum. Infants could not discriminate between cross-boundary facial expressions in the happy–sad continuum at any age. We suggest a functional account; categorical perception may develop in conjunction with the emotion's relevance to the infant.     

How Does Kant Justify the Universal Objective Validity of the Law of Right?

Abstract

Since more than 50 years Kant scholars debate the question whether the Law of Right as introduced in the Metaphysics of Morals by Kant can be justified by the Categorical Imperative. On the one hand we have those who think that Kant’s theory of right depends from the Categorical Imperative, on the other hand we find a growing group of scholars who deny this. However, the debate has been flawed by confusion and misunderstanding of the crucial terms and principles. Therefore, my first task will be to clarify these terms and principles by introducing distinctions that have been neglected too often. After this I try to show a) that the Law of Right can in fact be justified by using the testing method the Categorical Imperative prescribes and b) that there is no other way to justify it. Doing this I criticize in detail the new arguments adherents of the independence thesis have recently put forward.     

Aphasic patients exhibit a reversal of hemispheric asymmetries in categorical color discrimination

Patients with left hemisphere (LH) or right hemisphere (RH) brain injury due to stroke were tested on a speeded, color discrimination task in which two factors were manipulated: (1) the categorical relationship between the target and the distracters and (2) the visual field in which the target was presented. Similar to controls, the RH patients were faster in detecting targets in the right visual field when the target and distracters had different color names compared to when their names were the same. This effect was absent in the LH patients, consistent with the hypothesis that injury to the left hemisphere handicaps the automatic activation of lexical codes. Moreover, the LH patients showed a reversed effect, such that the advantage of different target-distracter names was now evident for targets in the left visual field. This reversal may suggest a reorganization of the color lexicon in the right hemisphere following left hemisphere brain injury and/or the unmasking of a heightened right hemisphere sensitivity to color categories.     

Alternative Multiple Imputation Inference for Categorical Structural Equation Modeling

The use of item responses from questionnaire data is ubiquitous in social science research. One side effect of using such data is that researchers must often account for item level missingness. Multiple imputation is one of the most widely used missing data handling techniques. The traditional multiple imputation approach in structural equation modeling has a number of limitations. Motivated by Lee and Cai’s approach, we propose an alternative method for conducting statistical inference from multiple imputation in categorical structural equation modeling. We examine the performance of our proposed method via a simulation study and illustrate it with one empirical data set.     

An ordinal evaluation of categorical judgement data by random utilities and a corresponding correlation analysis

Categorical judgement data are analyzed along the lines of random utility theory. A class of orders is introduced (categorical weak orders); their characteristic vectors are regarded as points in a Euclidean space; their convex hull forms a polytope whose facets are fully characterized. This polytope is shown to correspond to an order polytope. Furthermore, its relation to the biorder polytope is pointed out. The convex representations of a given point of the polytope are discussed. The impact of these results on the methods of analyzing data arising from a categorical judgement procedure is outlined. In particular, some consequences are drawn with respect to the usual evaluation of correlations of such data.     

Categorical perception of speech sounds in illiterate adults

Children affected by dyslexia exhibit a deficit in the categorical perception of speech sounds, characterized by both poorer discrimination of between-category differences and by better discrimination of within-category differences, compared to normal readers. These categorical perception anomalies might be at the origin of dyslexia, by hampering the set up of grapheme-phoneme correspondences, but they might also be the consequence of poor reading skills, as literacy probably contributes to stabilizing phonological categories. The aim of the present study was to investigate this issue by comparing categorical perception performances of illiterate and literate people. Identification and discrimination responses were collected for a /ba-da/ synthetic place-of-articulation continuum and between-group differences in both categorical perception and in the precision of the categorical boundary were examined. The results showed that illiterate vs. literate people did not differ in categorical perception, thereby suggesting that the categorical perception anomalies displayed by dyslexics are indeed a cause rather than a consequence of their reading problems. However, illiterate people displayed a less precise categorical boundary and a stronger lexical bias, both also associated with dyslexia, which might, therefore, be a specific consequence of written language deprivation or impairment.