What is being masked in object substitution masking?

Object substitution masking (OSM) is said to occur when a perceptual object is hypothesized that is mismatched by subsequent sensory evidence, leading to a new hypothesized object being substituted for the first. For example, when a brief target is accompanied by a longer lasting display of nonoverlapping mask elements, reporting of target features may be impaired. J. T. Enns and V. Di Lollo (2000) considered it an outstanding question whether OSM masks some or all aspects of a target. The authors report three experiments demonstrating that OSM can selectively affect target features. Participants may be able to detect a target while being unable to report other aspects of it or to report the color but not the orientation of a target (or vice versa). We discuss these findings in relation to two other visual phenomena. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Gaze cueing of attention: Visual attention, social cognition, and individual differences.

During social interactions, people's eyes convey a wealth of information about their direction of attention and their emotional and mental states. This review aims to provide a comprehensive overview of past and current research into the perception of gaze behavior and its effect on the observer. This encompasses the perception of gaze direction and its influence on perception of the other person, as well as gaze-following behavior such as joint attention, in infant, adult, and clinical populations. Particular focus is given to the gaze-cueing paradigm that has been used to investigate the mechanisms of joint attention. The contribution of this paradigm has been significant and will likely continue to advance knowledge across diverse fields within psychology and neuroscience. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Using visual reinforcement to establish stimulus control of responding of Siamese fighting fish (Betta splendens).

Stimulus control of ring swimming was studied with male Siamese fighting fish (Betta splendens) using 2-component multiple schedules in which the components were correlated with the presence or absence of air bubbles in the water. In Experiment 1, either response-independent mirror presentations or extinction was juxtaposed with immediate response-dependent mirror presentations. Rates of ring swimming generally were higher with immediate reinforcement than with either response-independent mirror presentations or extinction. In Experiment 2, different durations of response-dependent mirror presentations were juxtaposed. Generally, higher rates of ring swimming occurred with 15-s than with 0-, 1-, or 3-s durations. Results demonstrate that stimulus control of responding can be established with these fish under several conditions of differential reinforcement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Garner interference reveals dependencies between emotional expression and gaze in face perception.

The relationship between facial expression and gaze processing was investigated with the Garner selective attention paradigm. In Experiment 1, participants performed expression judgments without interference from gaze, but expression interfered with gaze judgments. Experiment 2 replicated these results across different emotions. In both experiments, expression judgments occurred faster than gaze judgments, suggesting that expression was processed before gaze could interfere. In Experiments 3 and 4, the difficulty of the emotion discrimination was increased in two different ways. In both cases, gaze interfered with emotion judgments and vice versa. Furthermore, increasing the difficulty of the emotion discrimination resulted in gaze and expression interactions. Results indicate that expression and gaze interactions are modulated by discriminability. Whereas expression generally interferes with gaze judgments, gaze direction modulates expression processing only when facial emotion is difficult to discriminate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A hemispheric division of labor aids mental rotation.

In the present study, we investigated whether a hemispheric division of labor is most advantageous to performance when lateralized inputs place unequal resource demands on the left and right cerebral hemispheres. In each trial, participants decided whether 2 rotated letters, presented either in the same visual field (within-field trials) or in opposite visual fields (across-field trials), were both of normal orientation, or whether one was normal and the other was mirror-reversed. To discriminate a letter's orientation, one must rotate the letter to the upright position. Therefore, we manipulated whether the two letters imposed similar or dissimilar demands on cognitive resources by varying the number of degrees that each letter needed to be rotated to reach the upright position. As predicted, in 2 experiments we found that the across-field advantage increased as the number of degrees each letter needed to be rotated became more dissimilar. These findings support a current model of hemispheric interactions, which posits that an unequal hemispheric distribution of cognitive load allows the cerebral hemispheres to take the lead for different aspects of cognitive processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lexical Influences in Audiovisual Speech Perception.

Phoneme identification with audiovisually discrepant stimuli is influenced hy information in the visual signal (the McGurk effect). Additionally, lexical status affects identification of auditorily presented phonemes. The present study tested for lexical influences on the McGurk effect. Participants identified phonemes in audiovisually discrepant stimuli in which lexical status of the auditory component and of a visually influenced percept was independently varied. Visually influenced (McGurk) responses were more frequent when they formed a word and when the auditory signal was a nonword (Experiment 1). Lexical effects were larger for slow than for fast responses (Experiment 2), as with auditory speech, and were replicated with stimuli matched on physical properties (Experiment 3). These results are consistent with models in which lexical processing of speech is modality independent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Plasticity of feature-based selection in triple-conjunction search.

Two experiments examined the disruption of feature-based selection in triple-conjunction search at multiple target transfers. In Experiment 1, after 10 training sessions, a new target possessing previous distractor features was introduced. This produced disruption in RT and fixation number, but no disruption in feature-based selection. Specifically, there was a tendency to fixate objects sharing the target's contrast polarity and shape and this did not change even upon transfer to the new target. In Experiment 2, 30 training sessions were provided with three target transfers. At the first transfer, the results replicated Experiment 1. Subsequent transfers did not produce disruption on any measure. These findings are discussed in terms of strength theory, Guided Search, rule-based approaches to perceptual learning, and the area activation model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Failures of retrieval and comparison constrain change detection in natural scenes.

In a change detection paradigm, a target object in a natural scene either rotated in depth, was replaced by another object token, or remained the same. Change detection performance was reliably higher when a target postcue allowed participants to restrict retrieval and comparison processes to the target object (Experiment 1). Change detection performance remained excellent when the target object was not attended at change (Experiment 2) and when a concurrent verbal working memory load minimized the possibility of verbal encoding. (Experiment 3). Together, these data demonstrate that visual representations accumulate in memory from attended objects as the eyes and attention are oriented within a scene and that change blindness derives, at least in part, from retrieval and comparison failure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Powers of observation in creative design

Being perceptive is a trait highly valued in scientific and engineering professions. What a scientist or engineer notices while considering a problem, evaluating alternatives, or interpreting data has a profound impact on how a problem is viewed and solved. This paper focuses on processes we believe underlie being perceptive: firstly, preparation—becoming attuned to salient or important features; secondly, assimilation-detection and exploration of patterns (invariants) as well as anomalies; and thirdly, strategic control-heuristic strategies for exploring the implications of what has been observed. These processes play an integral role in characteristic activities within creative design, including problem reformulation, the emergence of properties and constraints on the solution, and the ability to incorporate into the design experimental feedback from the environment and from experiences with prototypes and previous designs. The paper presents a computational model incorporating these ideas, implemented in a system called IMPROVISER.     

Perceptually Grounded Language Learning: Part 2—DETE: A Neural/Procedural Model

In Part 1 of this two-part series, we introduced Katamic memory—a neural network architecture capable of robust sequence learning and recognition. In Part 2, we introduce the Blobs World taskjdomain for language learning and describe the DETE language learning system, which is composed of over 50 Katamic memory modules. DETE currently learns small subsets of English and Spanish via association with perceptual! motor inputs. In addition to Kaiamic memory, DETE employs several other novel features: (1) use of feature planes, to encode visual shapes, spatial relationships and the motions of objects, (2) phase-locking of neural firing, in order to represent focus of atention and to bind objects across multiple feature planes, and (3) a method for encoding temporal relationships, so that DETE can learn utterances involving the immediate past and future. We compare DETE to related models and discuss the implications of this approach for language-learning research.