Intrasensory and intersensory perception of temporal sequences during infancy.

Investigated sensory integration in infants. 40 Ss in 2 groups were repeatedly presented with a standard visual or auditory temporal sequence in a habituation period. In the test period, each group was divided into 4 subgroups in which the presentation modality and/or the temporal sequence remained the same or were different. Ss who were presented a different temporal sequence in the test period produced larger responses than did Ss who were presented the same standard temporal sequence. This differential magnitude of responding occurred regardless of the sensory modality in which the temporal sequences were presented. Results support the conclusion that infants as young as 7 mo of age are capable of perceiving equivalences and differences in temporal sequential information within and across sensory modalities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The development of infant intersensory perception: Advantages of a comparative convergent-operations approach.

Despite impressive demonstrations of human infants' intersensory capabilities over the past several decades, there has been little focus on the contributions of prenatal and postnatal experience or the specific developmental processes underlying the emergence of intersensory functioning. Research with nonhuman animals has, however, provided a number of advances in understanding early intersensory perception. The authors explore the value of a comparative, convergent-operations approach to the study of early intersensory perception and examine how this approach has highlighted the study of (a) prenatal factors, (b) brain–behavior relations, and (c) context and experience variables contributing to infants' intersensory responsiveness. The authors review the conceptual frameworks guiding most theory and research in the area of human infant intersensory development over the past 30 yrs. Examples of how human and animal research programs can cross-fertilize one another in their attempts to understand developmental processes underlying intersensory perception are considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The spatial constraint in intersensory pairing: No role in temporal ventriloquism.

A sound presented in temporal proximity to a light can alter the perceived temporal occurrence of that light (temporal ventriloquism). The authors explored whether spatial discordance between the sound and light affects this phenomenon. Participants made temporal order judgments about which of 2 lights appeared first, while they heard sounds before the 1st and after the 2nd light. Sensitivity was higher (i.e., a lower just noticeable difference) when the sound-light interval was ～100 ms rather than ～0 ms. This temporal ventriloquist effect was unaffected by whether sounds came from the same or a different position as the lights, whether the sounds were static or moved, or whether they came from the same or opposite sides of fixation. Yet, discordant sounds interfered with speeded visual discrimination. These results challenge the view that intersensory interactions in general require spatial correspondence between the stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The perception of organizational climate: The customer's view.

Conducted a study with 674 present and 87 former bank-account holders in which climate was defined as the summary perception that bank customers have of their bank, and perceived climate was conceptualized as an intervening variable (i.e., a summary perception based on specific service-related events but preceding customer account switching). Questionnaire data indicate that (a) present-customer intentions to switch accounts were more strongly related to summary perceptions than to specific service-related event perceptions of the bank and (b) former customers had significantly more negative perceptions of the bank and its employees than did present customers. Implications for future organizational climate research and for the relationship between employee and customer are discussed. (20 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Talent and its development: An emergenic and epigenetic model.

Although superior performance in games, sports, science, and the arts is often ascribed to talent, the hypothesized phenomenon may not be fully understood unless it is conceived as a multidimensional and multiplicative developmental process. This point is elaborated in the form of a 2-part emergenic–epigenetic model. The emergenic part treats domain specificity, profile heterogeneity, cross-sectional distributions and predictability, familial heritability, and domain complexity. The epigenetic part treats early versus late bloomers, early signs, cross-sectional distribution across the life span, talent loss and shifts in talent domain, and longitudinal predictability. Besides explaining the available cross-sectional and longitudinal data, the resulting model has critical implications for how best to investigate the development of exceptional performance in all talent domains. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Embodied temporal perception of emotion.

The role of embodiment in the perception of the duration of emotional stimuli was investigated with a temporal bisection task. Previous research has shown that individuals overestimate the duration of emotional, compared with neutral, faces (S. Droit-Volet, S. Brunot, & P. M. Niedenthal, 2004). The authors tested a role for embodiment in this effect. Participants estimated the duration of angry, happy, and neutral faces by comparing them to 2 durations learned during a training phase. Experimental participants held a pen in their mouths so as to inhibit imitation of the faces, whereas control participants could imitate freely. Results revealed that participants overestimated the duration of emotional faces relative to the neutral faces only when imitation was possible. Implications for the role of embodiment in emotional perception are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The development of infant discrimination of affect in multimodal and unimodal stimulation: The role of intersensory redundancy.

This research examined the developmental course of infants' ability to perceive affect in bimodal (audiovisual) and unimodal (auditory and visual) displays of a woman speaking. According to the intersensory redundancy hypothesis (L. E. Bahrick, R. Lickliter, & R. Flom, 2004), detection of amodal properties is facilitated in multimodal stimulation and attenuated in unimodal stimulation. Later in development, however, attention becomes more flexible, and amodal properties can be perceived in both multimodal and unimodal stimulation. The authors tested these predictions by assessing 3-, 4-, 5-, and 7-month-olds' discrimination of affect. Results demonstrated that in bimodal stimulation, discrimination of affect emerged by 4 months and remained stable across age. However, in unimodal stimulation, detection of affect emerged gradually, with sensitivity to auditory stimulation emerging at 5 months and visual stimulation at 7 months. Further temporal synchrony between faces and voices was necessary for younger infants' discrimination of affect. Across development, infants first perceive affect in multimodal stimulation through detecting amodal properties, and later their perception of affect is extended to unimodal auditory and visual stimulation. Implications for social development, including joint attention and social referencing, are considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Tactual roughness perception: Spatial and temporal determinants.

Investigated M. M. Taylor and S. J. Lederman's (see record 1975-10788-001) model of tactual roughness perception. According to this model, felt roughness is best predicted by modeling the intensive aspects of instantaneous skin displacement, as determined primarily by groove and ridge width and by finger force. Two experiments involving a total of 14 young right-handed adults were conducted. Exp I showed that magnitude estimates of the felt roughness of linear gratings were not affected by either spatial period or groove-to-ridge ratio. Exp II found only negligible effects on perceived roughness of varying the relative speed of motion between skin and surface, whether active or passive touch was used. The results of both experiments argue strongly against a temporal coding theory of roughness perception, and serve to clarify and strengthen Taylor and Lederman's model. (French abstract) (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A comparative view of face perception.

Face perception serves as the basis for much of human social exchange. Diverse information can be extracted about an individual from a single glance at their face, including their identity, emotional state, and direction of attention. Neuropsychological and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments reveal a complex network of specialized areas in the human brain supporting these face-reading skills. Here we consider the evolutionary roots of human face perception by exploring the manner in which different animal species view and respond to faces. We focus on behavioral experiments collected from both primates and nonprimates, assessing the types of information that animals are able to extract from the faces of their conspecifics, human experimenters, and natural predators. These experiments reveal that faces are an important category of visual stimuli for animals in all major vertebrate taxa, possibly reflecting the early emergence of neural specialization for faces in vertebrate evolution. At the same time, some aspects of facial perception are only evident in primates and a few other social mammals, and may therefore have evolved to suit the needs of complex social communication. Because the human brain likely utilizes both primitive and recently evolved neural specializations for the processing of faces, comparative studies may hold the key to understanding how these parallel circuits emerged during human evolution. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning and discrimination of audiovisual events in human infants: The hierarchical relation between intersensory temporal synchrony and rhythmic pattern cues.

This study examined 4- to 10-month-old infants' perception of audio-visual (A-V) temporal synchrony cues in the presence or absence of rhythmic pattern cues. Experiment 1 established that infants of all ages could successfully discriminate between two different audiovisual rhythmic events. Experiment 2 showed that only 10-month-old infants detected a desynchronization of the auditory and visual components of a rhythmical event. Experiment 3 showed that 4- to 8-month-old infants could detect A-V desynchronization but only when the audiovisual event was nonrhythmic. These results show that initially in development infants attend to the overall temporal structure of rhythmic audiovisual events but that later in development they become capable of perceiving the embedded intersensory temporal synchrony relations as well. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The perception of temporal order along the mental number line.

R. Sekuler, P. Tynan, and E. Levinson (1973) found that when 2 characters are presented side-by-side with a short onset asynchrony, subjectively they often appear in a “first-left, then-right” order. The authors of this article conducted 6 experiments in which observers judged the temporal order (TOJs) in which 2 digits were presented. They found a consistent TOJ benefit (larger d`) when the numerically smaller digit was presented first, even though this semantic information was irrelevant to the task and unrelated to the correct response. They concluded that digits located to the left of the mental number line are transmitted faster to a central comparison stage, which represents an “internal counterpart” to the Sekuler et al. (1973) finding regarding external locations. A corresponding benefit is found for letters pairs (e.g., A–Z) and also for mixed digit–letter pairs (e.g., 1–Z). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attention and the perception of temporal order.

The effect of directing attention to a particular location in space has been widely examined in the study of human information processing. Current models assume that attention modulates the speed of information flow such that attended signals are transmitted more rapidly through the perceptual system than unattended signals. This assumption that attention modulates the speed of information flow was examined in the present research by having observers judge the temporal order of two visual stimuli while directing their attention towards one of the stimuli or away from both stimuli. In one experiment, attended stimuli were perceived with a shorter latency than unattended stimuli, supporting the assumption that attention influences the speed of information transmission in the visual system. The results of another experiment indicate that attention alters the temporal profile of the visual responses, such that visual responses at the attended location are more sharply tuned than responses at the unattended location. It is concluded that attention has two effects on visual responses: It affects the transmission speed of information in the visual system and it alters the temporal profile of the responses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The core trauma of incest: An object relations view.

Many of the mysteries of the incest experience revolve around the perplexing nature of the attachment between victim and perpetrator. One purpose of this article is to further professional understanding of the internal psychological experience of the incest survivor. Another purpose is to elucidate the meaning of the incest survivors' attachment and/or passivity with the perpetrator in an effort to liberate victims from society's "blame the victim" attitude. It needs to be understood that much of the incest victim's behavior is a desperate effort to remain attached to her caretakers. The psychoanalytic developmental perspective used here draws from the British object relations school, specifically, the work of D. W. Winnicott (1958, 1965); W. R. Fairbairn (1952); H. Guntrip (1969, 1971); and T. Ogden (1989). The position advanced here is that there is a common core to the trauma of incest for all victims. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Advantages and limitations of medical dispatching: the French view

One of the main features of the French emergency medical services (EMS) system as it has been developed during the last 40 years is the participation of a physician in each stage of the EMS organization. Thus, in the 100 French emergency medical dispatch centres, all calls received on 15, the national medical emergency phone number, are medically dispatched. The main advantages are: (i) better security for the caller; (ii) proper adaptation of the response to the emergency; (iii) a quicker and more efficient intervention time; (iv) the hospital is informed of the arrival of an emergency; (v) the respect of medical secrecy; (vi) a good cost-efficiency ratio in the use of intervention means. The main limitations are connected with: (i) the inaccuracy of certain calls and problems of dialogue with the caller; (ii) the poor acceptance of the system's obligations by some of the callers, patients, physicians or any other partners of the EMS organization. In the future the implementation of the multi-purpose European emergency number 112 will probably require the system's adaptation to it.     

Infants' perception of rhythm: Categorization of auditory sequences by temporal structure.

80 infants (aged 7–9 mo) were presented with repetitions of 3- or 4-tone sequences characterized by a particular rhythmic structure (RHS). Ss' detection of changes in RHS was evaluated in the context of randomly presented variations in tempo (rate) and frequency. Ss categorized 3- and 4-tone sequences on the basis of similar temporal structure or rhythm. Data indicate that relational processing of auditory sequences is evident in the temporal domain as it is in the pitch domain (e.g., A. J. Cohen et al; see record 1988-16488-001). (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and perception of visual form from temporal structure.

In this study, the authors examined age-related changes in participants' ability to perceive global spatial structure defined by temporal fine structure among elements undergoing rapid, irregular change. Participants were also tested on a task involving form recognition from luminance contrast and on a task dependent on perception of 3-dimensional shape from motion. Compared with young adults, older individuals were less sensitive to spatial form defined by temporal structure. In contrast, older observers performed as well as young adults on the other two tasks that were not dependent on temporal sensitivity, ruling out nonsensory factors as the cause of the deficits on the temporal structure task. This selective deficit may reveal reduced sensitivity within the temporal impulse response of the aging visual system, a deficit that could be related to reduced effectiveness of neural inhibition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A systems view of job satisfaction.

Analysis of the controversy surrounding the unidimensional vs. 2-factor assertions about employee job satisfaction indicates that extrinsic factors must be viewed as the causes of intrinsic factors. (17 ref.). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)