The roles of altitude and fear in the perception of height.

Previous research on perceiving spatial layout has found that people often exhibit normative biases in their perception of the environment. For instance, slant is typically overestimated and distance is usually underestimated. Surprisingly, however, the perception of height has rarely been studied. The present experiments examined the perception of height when viewed from the top (e.g., looking down) or from the bottom (e.g., looking up). Multiple measures were adapted from previous studies of horizontal extents to assess the perception of height. Across all of the measures, a large, consistent bias was found: Vertical distances were greatly overestimated, especially from the top. Secondary findings suggest that the overestimation of distance and size that occurs when looking down from a high place correlates with reports of trait- and state-level fear of heights, suggesting that height overestimation may be due, in part, to fear. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

基于虚拟现实和动态加权决策融合的恐高情绪识别

目前恐高情绪分类中的生理信号主要涉及脑电、心电、皮电等, 考虑到脑电在采集和处理上的局限性以及多模态信号间的融合问题, 提出一种基于6种外周生理信号的动态加权决策融合算法. 首先, 通过虚拟现实技术诱发被试不同程度的恐高情绪, 同步记录心电、脉搏、肌电、皮电、皮温和呼吸这6种外周生理信号; 其次, 提取信号的统计特征和事件相关特征构建恐高情感数据集; 再次, 根据分类性能、模态和跨模态信息提出一种动态加权决策融合算法, 从而对多模态信号进行有效整合以提高识别精度. 最后, 将实验结果与先前相关研究进行对比, 同时在开源的WESAD情感数据集进行验证. 结论表明, 多模态外周生理信号有助于恐高情绪分类性能的提升, 提出的动态加权决策融合算法显著提升了分类性能和模型鲁棒性.     

A new mode of fear expression: Perceptual bias in height fear.

Emotion and psychopathology researchers have described the fear response as consisting of four main components--subjective affect, physiology, cognition, and behavior. The current study provides evidence for an additional component in the domain of height fear (perception) and shows that it is distinct from measures of cognitive processing. Individuals High (N = 35) and Low (N = 36) in acrophobic symptoms looked over a two-story balcony ledge and estimated its vertical extent using a direct height estimation task (visual matching), and an indirect task (size estimation); the latter task seems to exhibit little influence from cognitive factors. In addition, implicit and explicit measures of cognitive processing were obtained. Results indicated that, as expected, the High Fear group showed greater relative, implicit height fear associations and explicit threat cognitions. Of primary interest, the High (compared to Low) Fear group estimated the vertical extent to be higher, and judged target sizes to be greater, even when controlling for the cognitive bias measures. These results suggest that emotional factors such as fear are related to perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)