Ultrafast scene detection and recognition with limited visual information

Humans can detect target colour pictures of scenes depicting concepts like picnic or harbour in sequences of six or 12 pictures presented as briefly as 13?ms, even when the target is named after the sequence. Such rapid detection suggests that feedforward processing alone enabled detection without recurrent cortical feedback. There is debate about whether coarse, global, low spatial frequencies (LSFs) provide predictive information to high cortical levels through the rapid magnocellular (M) projection of the visual path, enabling top-down prediction of possible object identities. To test the “Fast M” hypothesis, we compared detection of a named target across five stimulus conditions: unaltered colour, blurred colour, greyscale, thresholded monochrome, and LSF pictures. The pictures were presented for 13–80?ms in six-picture rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) sequences. Blurred, monochrome, and LSF pictures were detected less accurately than normal colour or greyscale pictures. When the target was named before the sequence, all picture types except LSF resulted in above-chance detection at all durations. Crucially, when the name was given only after the sequence, performance dropped and the monochrome and LSF pictures (but not the blurred pictures) were at or near chance. Thus, without advance information, monochrome and LSF pictures were rarely understood. The results offer only limited support for the Fast M hypothesis, suggesting instead that feedforward processing is able to activate conceptual representations without complementary reentrant processing.     

All new kids on the block? Impaired holistic processing of personally familiar faces in a kindergarten teacher with acquired prosopagnosia

Acquired prosopagnosia is primarily defined as a defect in recognizing familiar faces. Nonetheless, for practical and methodological reasons, studies of such rare patients typically use pictures of unfamiliar faces. Here, we report an extensive investigation (17 behavioural tasks grouped in nine experiments) with a homogenous set of personally familiar faces in patient PS (Rossion et al., 2003 Rossion, B., Caldara, R., Seghier, M., Schuller, A.-M., Lazeyras, F., &; Mayer, E. (2003). A network of occipito-temporal face-sensitive areas besides the right middle fusiform gyrus is necessary for normal face processing. Brain, 126, 2381–2395. doi: 10.1093/brain/awg241[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. A network of occipito-temporal face-sensitive areas besides the right middle fusiform gyrus is necessary for normal face processing.), a well-documented case of acquired prosopagnosia with intact object recognition. PS’s recognition of the face pictures of 3–4-year-old children of her kindergarten is severely impaired—both in terms of accuracy and speed of recognition—and differs qualitatively from her colleagues’ performance. Relative to these typical individuals, PS relies more on external features, colour and local details of faces. She is also specifically impaired at processing the eye region in two-alternative face matching tasks, as well as in a familiar face recognition task performed both with pre-defined isolated parts and with randomly placed apertures revealing selective parts (“Bubbles”, >20.000 trials) of the personally familiar faces. These observations indicate that the same impairment observed previously with unfamiliar faces for PS and other cases of acquired prosopagnosia is associated with a deficient long-term representation of the eye region. Various manipulations that differentially affect the processing of the eye region suggest that this impairment is a consequence of the inability to represent the multiple parts of the eye region, and of the whole familiar face, as a single unit. This impairment in holistic processing is further evidenced here across different paradigms with composite faces, wholes and parts, and configurally distorted faces, mirroring and strengthening previous observations made with unfamiliar faces in PS and other cases of acquired prosopagnosia. Altogether, these observations suggest that prosopagnosia following brain damage affects unfamiliar and familiar face processing in a qualitatively similar way.     

Eye-tracking the own-gender bias in face recognition: Other-gender faces are viewed differently to own-gender faces

Research on the own-gender bias in face recognition has indicated an asymmetrical effect: an effect found only in women. We investigated the own-gender bias, using an eye-tracker to examine whether the own-gender bias is associated with differential processing strategies. We found an own-gender bias in our female participants. Our eye-tracking analysis indicated different scanning behaviours when processing own- and other-gender faces, with longer and more fixations to the eyes when viewing own-gender faces. Our results favour the socio-cognitive model, whilst acknowledging the role of perceptual expertise in the own-gender bias.     

Antimnemonic effects of schemas in young and older adults

Schema-consistent material that is aligned with an individual’s knowledge and experience is typically more memorable than abstract material. This effect is often more extreme in older adults and schema use can alleviate age deficits in memory. In three experiments, young and older adults completed memory tasks where the availability of schematic information was manipulated. Specifying nonobvious relations between to-be-remembered word pairs paradoxically hindered memory (Experiment 1). Highlighting relations within mixed lists of related and unrelated word pairs had no effect on memory for those pairs (Experiment 2). This occurred even though related word pairs were recalled better than unrelated word pairs, particularly for older adults. Revealing a schematic context in a memory task with abstract image segments also hindered memory performance, particularly for older adults (Experiment 3). The data show that processing schematic information can come with costs that offset mnemonic benefits associated with schema-consistent stimuli.     

How older adults use cognition in sentence-final word recognition

This study examined the effects of executive control and working memory on older adults’ sentence-final word recognition. The question we addressed was the importance of executive functions to this process and how it is modulated by the predictability of the speech material. To this end, we tested 173 neurologically intact adult native English speakers aged 55–84 years. Participants were given a sentence-final word recognition test in which sentential context was manipulated and sentences were presented in different levels of babble, and multiple tests of executive functioning assessing inhibition, shifting, and efficient access to long-term memory, as well as working memory. Using a generalized linear mixed model, we found that better inhibition was associated with higher accuracy in word recognition, while increased age and greater hearing loss were associated with poorer performance. Findings are discussed in the framework of semantic control and are interpreted as supporting a theoretical view of executive control which emphasizes functional diversity among executive components.     

Inhibitory phonetic priming: Where does the effect come from?

Both phonological and phonetic priming studies reveal inhibitory effects that have been interpreted as resulting from lexical competition between the prime and the target. We present a series of phonetic priming experiments that contrasted this lexical locus explanation with that of a prelexical locus by manipulating the lexical status of the prime and the target and the task used. In the related condition of all experiments, spoken targets were preceded by spoken primes that were phonetically similar but shared no phonemes with the target (/bak/–/dεt/). In Experiments 1 and 2, word and nonword primes produced an inhibitory effect of equal size in shadowing and same–different tasks respectively. Experiments 3 and 4 showed robust inhibitory phonetic priming on both word and nonword targets in the shadowing task, but no effect at all in a lexical decision task. Together, these findings show that the inhibitory phonetic priming effect occurs independently of the lexical status of both the prime and the target, and only in tasks that do not necessarily require the activation of lexical representations. Our study thus argues in favour of a prelexical locus for this effect.     

Word Meaning Frequencies Affect Negative Compatibility Effects In Masked Priming

Negative compatibility effects (NCEs)—that is, slower responses to targets in related than unrelated prime-target pairs, have been observed in studies using stimulus-response (S-R) priming with stimuli like arrows and plus signs. Although there is no consensus on the underlying mechanism, explanations tend to locate NCEs within the motor-response system. A characteristic property of perceptuo-motor NCEs is a biphasic pattern of activation: A brief period in which very briefly presented (typically) masked primes facilitate processing of related targets is followed by a phase of target processing impairment. In this paper, we present data that suggest that NCEs are not restricted to S-R priming with low-level visual stimuli: The brief (50 ms), backward masked (250 ms) presentation of ambiguous words (bank) leads to slower responses than baseline to words related to the more frequent (rob) but not less frequent meaning (swim). Importantly, we found that slowed responses are preceded by a short phase of response facilitation, replicating the biphasic pattern reported for arrows and plus signs. The biphasic pattern of priming and the fact that the NCEs were found only for target words that are related to their prime word’s more frequent meaning has strong implications for any theory of NCEs that locate these effects exclusively within the motor-response system.     

Tragic Recognition: Revisiting Hegel’s Conception of Ethical Life

This paper interprets Hegel’s engagement with tragedy and especially tragic action as an interpretive model for understanding ethical life in complex societies in which independent value spheres collide. Tragic recognition, in contrast to the kind of recognition introduced in the master and slave dialectic, is not based on desire, but arises from the suffering deriving from clashing value spheres. As a coming to terms with one’s finitude, tragic recognition presents an important corrective to the account of mutual recognition that has been the reference point of contemporary interpretations of Hegel’s social and political philosophy. The paper concludes by pointing to some of the limits of tragedy as a universal interpretive framework for modern societies.     

Psychotic symptoms and violence toward others — a literature review of some preliminary findings: Part 2. Hallucinations

According to the clinical impressions of a number of authors and mental health professionals, an increased risk of violence is associated with the presence of hallucinations and — in particular — command hallucinations. In contrast to this, some empirical studies have reported that there is no evidence of such a relationship. The present review examines the role of hallucinations in violence toward others. Possible empirical evidence for a violence-escalating interaction between delusions and hallucinations is also analyzed. Among the main findings were: There appears to be no evidence that auditory command hallucinations are dangerous per se. However, there is some evidence that voices ordering acts of violence toward others may increase compliance and thereby be conducive to violent behavior. Finally, the evidence for or against the existence of a possible violence-escalating interaction between delusions and hallucinations is inconclusive. The findings are discussed particularly in relation to problems of measurement and other research design factors. Discrepancies between some of the findings of the present review and current clinical lore are also briefly considered.     

结构对称汉字识别的加工机制——部件识别的实验研究

从部件加工的角度设计了两个实验,分别运用部件启动作业和部件启动再认范式,考察了结构对称汉字识别的加工特点。结果发现:在部件加工层面也存在着显著的结构对称效应。即同一个部件,作为结构对称字的构成部件的启动效应明显大于它作为非对称字的构成部件的启动效应;作为结构对称字的构成部件被识别的反应时和错误率均显著地小于它构成非对称字时被识别的反应时和错误率。这意味着结构对称汉字中的部件(或笔画)比非对称汉字中的同样部件(或笔画)具有加工优势。显示出多层次的结构对称效应。