Since Darwin, the idea of psychological continuity between humans and other animals has dominated theory and research in investigating the minds of other species. Indeed, the field of comparative psychology was founded on two assumptions. First, it was assumed that introspection could provide humans with reliable knowledge about the causal connection between specific mental states and specific behaviors. Second, it was assumed that in those cases in which other species exhibited behaviors similar to our own, similar psychological causes were at (...) work. In this paper. we show how this argument by analogy is flowed with respect to the case of second-order mental states. As a test case, we focus on the question of how other species conceive of visual attention, and in particular whether chimpanzees interpret seeing as a mentalistic event involving internal states of perception, attention, and belief. We conclude that chimpanzees do not reason about seeing in this manner, and indeed, there is considerable reason to suppose that they do not harbor representations of mental states in general. We propose a reinterpretation model in which the majority of the rich social behaviors that humans and other primates share in common emerged long before the human lineage evolved the psychological means of interpreting those behaviors in mentalistic terms. Although humans, chimpanzees, and most other species may be said to possess mental states, humans alone may have evolved a cognitive specialization for reasoning about such states. (shrink)

This comprehensively updated and expanded revision of the successful second edition continues to provide detailed coverage of the ever-growing range of research topics in vision. In Part I, the treatment of visual physiology has been extensively revised with an updated account of retinal processing, a new section explaining the principles of spatial and temporal filtering which underlie discussions in later chapters, and an up-to-date account of the primate visual pathway. Part II contains four largely new chapters which cover (...) recent psychophysical evidence and computational model of early vision: edge detection, perceptual grouping, depth perception, and motion perception. The models discussed are extensively integrated with physiological evidence. All other chapters in Parts II, III, and IV have also been thoroughly updated. (shrink)

We present an investigation into the relation between design principles in Japanese gardens, and their associated perceptual effects. This leads to the realization that a set of design principles described in a Japanese gardening text by Shingen (1466), shows many parallels to the visual effects of perceptual grouping, studied by the Gestalt school of psychology. Guidelines for composition of rock clusters closely relate to perception of visual figure. Garden design elements are arranged into patterns that simplify figure-ground segmentation, (...) while seemingly balancing the visual salience of subparts and the global arrangement. Visual ‘ground’ is analyzed via medial axis transformation (MAT), often associated with shape perception in humans. MAT analysis reveals implicit structure in the visual ground of a quintessential rock garden design. The MAT structure enables formal comparison of structure of figure and ground. They share some aesthetic qualities, with interesting differences. Both contain naturalistic asymmetric, self-similar, branching structures. While the branching pattern of the ground converges towards the viewer, that of the figure converges in the opposite direction. (shrink)

We present an investigation into the relation between design princi- ples in Japanese gardens, and their associated perceptual effects. This leads to the realization that a set of design principles described in a Japanese gardening text by Shingen (1466), shows many parallels to the visual effects of perceptual grouping, studied by the Gestalt school of psychology. Guidelines for composition of rock clusters closely relate to perception of visual figure. Garden design elements are arranged into patterns that simplify figure-ground (...) segmentation, while seemingly balancing the visual salience of subparts and the global arrangement. Visual ‘ground’ is analyzed via medial axis transformation (MAT), often associated with shape perception in humans. MAT analysis reveals implicit structure in the visual ground of a quintessential rock garden design. The MAT structure enables formal com- parison of structure of figure and ground. They share some aesthetic qualities, with interesting differences. Both contain naturalistic asymmetric, self-similar, branching structures. While the branching pattern of the ground converges towards the viewer, that of the figure converges in the opposite direction. (shrink)

Despite the various perceptual-motor deficits documented in strabismus, there is a paucity of studies evaluating visual illusions in patients with strabismus. The aim of this study was to examine how the illusionary perception occurs in children/adolescents with strabismus with referral for surgery to correct ocular deviations. A controlled cross-sectional study was carried out in which 45 participants with strabismus and 62 healthy volunteers aged 10–15 years were evaluated. The behavioral response to three geometric illusions [Vertical-Horizontal illusion, Müller-Lyer illusion and (...) Ponzo illusion] and respective neutral stimuli regarding the estimation of image size and response time were measured using the Method of Adjustment. To analyze the influence of secondary factors: type of ocular deviation ; amount of eye deviation; presence of amblyopia and stereopsis, a one-way ANOVA was performed. Among the tested illusions, children with strabismus showed greater susceptibility and response time to Ponzo’s illusory images. Children with strabismus and preserved stereopsis, on the other hand, showed similar susceptibility and response time to control group patients to the Ponzo illusion. Patients with amblyopia showed overcorrection in the estimate of non-illusory Ponzo images. Children with horizontal ocular deviation associated with vertical deviation showed higher susceptibility to vertical adjustment images for the Müller-Lyer illusion. Individuals with strabismus tended to overcorrect the length of the straight-line segment adjusted for non-illusory images when testing non-illusory images in the Müller-Lyer test, as well as for the neutral images in the Vertical-Horizontal test. The findings indicated impairment in the perception of geometric illusions and neutral figures, especially for the Ponzo illusion test by children with strabismus. As the behavioral response to illusory images may indirectly reflect the visual and morphofunctional alterations present in these individuals, we suggest that the investigation of visual illusory perception can be used as a new research strategy in the field of investigating the visual function in strabismus. (shrink)

Audiovisual interaction in speech perception is well defined in adults. Despite the large body of evidence suggesting that children are also sensitive to visual input, very few empirical studies have been conducted. To further investigate whether visual inputs influence auditory perception of phonemes in preschoolers in the same way as in adults, we conducted an audiovisual identification test. The auditory stimuli were presented either in an auditory condition only or simultaneously with a visual presentation of the articulation (...) of the vowel /e/ or /ø/. The results suggest that, although all participants experienced visual influence on auditory perception, substantial individual differences exist in the 5- to 6-year-old group. While additional work is required to confirm this hypothesis, we suggest that auditory and visual systems are developing at that age and that multisensory phonological categorization of the rounding contrast took place only in children whose sensory systems and sensorimotor representations were mature. (shrink)

Eye movements during mental imagery are not epiphenomenal but assist the process of image generation. Commands to the eyes for each fixation are stored along with the visual representation and are used as spatial index in a motor‐based coordinate system for the proper arrangement of parts of an image. In two experiments, subjects viewed an irregular checkerboard or color pictures of fish and were subsequently asked to form mental images of these stimuli while keeping their eyes open. During the (...) perceptual phase, a group of subjects was requested to maintain fixation onto the screen's center, whereas another group was free to inspect the stimuli. During the imagery phase, all of these subjects were free to move their eyes. A third group of subjects (in Experiment 2) was free to explore the pattern but was requested to maintain central fixation during imagery. For subjects free to explore the pattern, the percentage of time spent fixating a specific location during perception was highly correlated with the time spent on the same (empty) locations during imagery. The order of scanning of these locations during imagery was correlated to the original order during perception. The strength of relatedness of these scanpaths and the vividness of each image predicted performance accuracy. Subjects who fixed their gaze centrally during perception did the same spontaneously during imagery. Subjects free to explore during perception, but maintaining central fixation during imagery, showed decreased ability to recall the pattern. We conclude that the eye scanpaths during visual imagery reenact those of perception of the same visual scene and that they play a functional role. (shrink)

Understanding how activity in the brain leads to a subjective percept is of great interest to philosophers and neuroscientists alike. In the last years, neurophysiological experiments have approached this problem directly by measuring neural signals in animals as they experience well-defined visual percepts. Stimuli in these studies are often inherently ambiguous, and thus rely upon the subjective report, generally from trained monkeys, to provide a measure of perception. By correlating activity levels in the brain to this report, one can (...) speculate on the role of individual neurons and groups of neurons in the formation and maintenance of a particular percept. However, in order to draw valid conclusions from such experiments, it is critical that the responses accurately and reliably reflect what is perceived. For this reason, a number of behavioural paradigms have been developed to control and evaluate the truthfulness of responses from behaving animals. Here we describe several approaches to optimizing the reliability of a monkey's perceptual report, and argue that their combination provides an invaluable approach in the study of subjective visual perception. (shrink)

Perception is not an independent, in‐the‐moment event. Instead, perceiving involves integrating prior expectations with current observations. How does this ability develop from infancy through adulthood? We examined how prior visual experience shapes visual perception in infants, children, and adults. Using an identical task across age groups, we exposed participants to pairs of colorful stimuli and implicitly measured their ability to discriminate relative saturation levels. Results showed that adult participants were biased by previously experienced exemplars, and exhibited weakened in‐the‐moment (...) discrimination between different levels of saturation. In contrast, infants and children showed less influence of memory in their perception, and they actually outperformed adults in discriminating between current levels of saturation. Our findings suggest that as humans develop, their perception relies more on prior experience and less on current observation. (shrink)

Studies have shown that performance‐dependent monetary rewards facilitate visual perception. However, no study has examined whether such a positive effect is limited to the rewarded task or may be generalized to other tasks. In the current study, two groups of people were asked to perform two visual perception tasks, one being a reward‐relevant task and the other being a reward‐irrelevant task. For the reward‐relevant task, the experimental group received performance‐dependent monetary rewards, whereas the control group did not. For (...) the reward‐irrelevant task, both groups were not rewarded. The two tasks were randomly intermixed trial by trial (Experiment 1) or presented block by block (Experiment 2) or session by session (Experiments 3a, 3b, and 3c). Results showed that performance‐dependent monetary rewards improved participants' performance on the relevant task in all experiments and impaired their performance on the irrelevant task in Experiments 2, 3a, 3b, and 3c. These results suggested that monetary rewards might incur a cost on reward‐irrelevant tasks. Finally, the benefit of monetary rewards disappeared when they were no longer provided during the final session. This is the first study that reveals both the bright and dark sides of the performance‐dependent monetary rewards in visual perception. (shrink)

This study investigated the effect of obstructive sleep apnea on the neural mechanism of visual perception. A preliminary case-control study was conducted. Seventeen patients with moderate to severe OSA in the sleep center of Civil Aviation General Hospital and 20 healthy controls matched for age, sex, and education were recruited. The participants accepted the perceptual contour integration task, compared the differences in behavioral indicators between the two groups, and compared the differences in electroencephalography data between the two groups through (...) event-related potential technology. The groups did not differ significantly in age and gender, but they differed significantly in body mass index. The groups were not statistically different in terms of sleep structure and total sleep time. AHI, sleep efficiency, and minimal SaO2 value in the OSA group were significantly different from those of the control group. The results showed that the average reaction time of the OSA group was significantly longer than that of the healthy control group in the contour integration task. There was no significant difference in the accuracy rate. The results of EEG showed that the amplitudes of N100 of the OSA group were significantly higher than those of the control group at O1, Oz, and O2 electrodes. There was no significant difference in latency between the two groups. At the FCz electrode, the amplitudes of N200 of the OSA group were significantly higher than those of the control group. Therefore, we concluded that in the early stage of the perceptual integration task, although the neural response activity of patients with moderate and severe OSA was not accelerated, they need to call on more psychological resources, activate more neurons in the contour global recognition processing stage, and the compensatory effect of frontal lobe appeared in the stage of visual perception. (shrink)

PurposeThis study investigated the impact of age and myopia on visual form perception among Chinese school-age children.MethodsThis cross-sectional study included 1,074 students with a mean age of 12.1 ± 4.7 years. The mean spherical equivalence refraction of the participants was −1.45 ± 2.07 D. All participants underwent distance visual acuity, refraction measurement and local and global visual form perception test including orientation, parallelism, collinearity, holes and color discrimination tasks.ResultsThe reaction times of emmetropes were slower than those of (...) myopic and high myopic groups on both local and global discrimination tasks. A reduction in reaction times was found with increasing age on both local and global discrimination tasks. Age was significantly associated with both local and global visual perception performance after adjusting for gender, visual acuity and SER.ConclusionsThis study revealed that both local and global visual perception improve with age among Chinese children and that myopes seem to have better visual perception than emmetropes. (shrink)

Biology is seen not merely as a privileged oppressor of women but as a co-victim of masculinist social assumptions. We see feminist critique as one of the normative controls that any scientist must perform whenever analyzing data, and we seek to demonstrate what has happened when this control has not been utilized. Narratives of fertilization and sex determination traditionally have been modeled on the cultural patterns of male/female interaction, leading to gender associations being placed on cells and their components. We (...) also find that when gender biases are controlled, new perceptions of these intracellular and extracellular relationships emerge. (shrink)

Governments are investing in precision medicine with the aim of improving healthcare through the use of genomic analyses and data analytics to develop tailored treatment approaches for individual patients. The success of PM is contingent upon clear public communications that engender trust and secure the social licence to collect and share large population-wide data sets because specific consent for each data re-use is impractical. Variation in the terminology used by different programmes used to describe PM may hinder clear communication and (...) threaten trust. Language is used to create common understanding and expectations regarding precision medicine between researchers, clinicians and the volunteers. There is a need to better understand public interpretations of PM-related terminology. This paper reports on a qualitative study involving 24 focus group participants in the multi-lingual context of Singapore. The study explored how Singaporeans interpret and understand the terms ‘precision medicine’ and ‘personalised medicine’, and which term they felt more aptly communicates the concept and goals of PM. Results suggest that participants were unable to readily link the terms with this area of medicine and initially displayed preferences for the more familiar term of ‘personalised’. The use of visual aids to convey key concepts resonated with participants, some of whom then indicated preferences for the term ‘precision’ as being a more accurate description of PM research. These aids helped to facilitate dialogue around the ethical and social value, as well as the risks, of PM. Implications for programme developers and policy makers are discussed. (shrink)

We addressed the questions whether stimuli presented below the threshold of verbal awareness are nevertheless perceived and whether there are perceptual differences between the two cerebral hemispheres. Pictures of line drawn objects and animals were subliminally presented to each visual half-field for subsequent identification in a form as fragmented as possible. The performance of 40 healthy subjects was compared to that of 63 controls. Whereas identification performance after blank presentation in the experimental group did not differ from that of (...) controls, identification in a significantly more fragmented form was achieved after the presentation of the complete picture. This effect, however, occurred only after subliminal stimulation in the left visual field, i.e., of the right hemisphere. Our results show that pictures presented below the threshold of verbal awareness can be perceived, and that only the right hemisphere can perceive them and make use of the perception. It remains an open question whether this kind of hemispheric specialization represents a right hemisphere dominance for subliminal perception or reflects an inability of the left hemisphere to access and behaviorally use unaware percepts via fragmented picture identification, for which a right hemisphere advantage is known. (shrink)

What are the factors that contribute to (or inhibit) diachronic sound change? While acoustically motivated sound changes are well documented, research on the articulatory and audiovisual-perceptual aspects of sound change is limited. This paper investigates the interaction of articulatory variation and audiovisual speech perception in the Northern Cities Vowel Shift (NCVS), a pattern of sound change observed in the Great Lakes region of the United States. We focus specifically on the maintenance of the contrast between the vowels /ɑ/ and /ɔ/, (...) both of which are fronted as a result of the NCVS. We present results from two experiments designed to test how the NCVS is produced and perceived. In the first experiment, we present data from an articulatory and acoustic analysis of the production of fronted /ɑ/ and /ɔ/. We find that some speakers distinguish /ɔ/ from /ɑ/ with a combination of both tongue position and lip rounding, while others do so using either tongue position or lip rounding alone. For speakers who distinguish /ɔ/ from /ɑ/ along only one articulatory dimension, /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ are acoustically more similar than for speakers who produce multiple articulatory distinctions. While all three groups of speakers maintain some degree of acoustic contrast between the vowels, the question is raised as to whether these articulatory strategies differ in their perceptibility. In the perception experiment, we test the hypothesis that visual speech cues play a role in maintaining contrast between the two sounds. The results of this experiment suggest that articulatory configurations in which /ɔ/ is produced with unround lips are perceptually weaker than those in which /ɔ/ is produced with rounding, even though these configurations result in acoustically similar output. We argue that these findings have implications for theories of sound change and variation in at least two respects: 1) visual cues can shape phonological systems through misperception-based sound change, and 2) phonological systems may be optimized not only for auditory but also for visual perceptibility. (shrink)

East Asians and Westerners differ in various aspects of perception and cognition. For example, visual memory for East Asians is believed to be more influenced by the contextual aspects of a scene than is the case for Westerners (Masuda & Nisbett, 2001). There are also differences in visual search: for Westerners, search for a long line among short is faster than for short among long, whereas this difference does not appear to hold for East Asians (Ueda et al., (...) submitted). However, it is unclear how these group-level differences originate. To investigate the extent to which they depend upon environment, we tested visual search and visual memory in East Asian immigrants who had lived in Canada for different amounts of time. Recent immigrants were found to exhibit no search asymmetry, unlike Westerners who had spent their lives in Canada. However, immigrants who had lived in Canada for more than two years showed performance comparable to that of Westerners. These differences could not be explained by the general analytic/holistic processing distinction believed to differentiate Westerners and East Asians, since all observers showed a strong holistic tendency for visual recognition. Results instead support the suggestion that exposure to a new environment can significantly affect the particular processes used to perceive a given stimulus. (shrink)

Everyday media consumption leaves no doubt that the perception of moving images from various media is characterized by experience and understanding. Corresponding research in this field has shown that the stimulus patterns flooding in on us are not only processed mentally, but also bodily. Building on this, the following study argues that incoming stimuli are processed not only visually, but multimodally, with all senses, and moreover affectively. The classical binding of a sensory organ to a medium, on whose delimitation the (...) common understanding of multimodality is based, is thus abolished. Can arguments for this assumption be found? Building on the research of cultural anthropologist Ernst Cassirer and his successors, the two American philosophers Susanne K. Langer and John M. Krois, and supported by research from the life sciences in which, in parallel, the arts also play an important role in understanding image formation, as in the work of Heinz Werner and, following on from this, in the more recent research of the child psychologist Daniel N. Stern in collaboration with mirror neuron research by the group of neuroscientists around Giacomo Rizzolatti in Parma, justifications for this will be provided. What the multimodal processing of film images is concretely based on will finally be made clear by means of an exemplary analysis of a video film by the Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist. It aims to prove, that the prerequisites for the thesis can only lie in the fact, that both the modes of perception (visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory, gustatory) as well as the medially conditioned modes of image formation are based on non-discursive, formal-abstract structures that are also processed affectively. At the same time, the analysis thus shows how the selection and composition of the vital experienced forms can provide information about the socio-culturally shaped self-image of the producer and the viewer. (shrink)

Disability has been perceived as a social conditioning phenomenon and a sign system marking the body and mind. Accordingly, photographs of disability could shape our cultural perceptions about disability and disabled persons. In response to this position, we engage in a critical semiotic inquiry into press photographs of disability from The Star, a Malaysian mainstream English newspaper. We adapted Van Leeuwen’s social and visual actor networks to understand the visual techniques employed in depicting disabled actors in these (...) images. The depiction is examined in relation to their absence and/or presence in these published photographs. If absent, the inclusion of non-disabled is analyzed. When present, the social categorizations of roles, grouping and specific/generic depictions are investigated. Findings reveal disabled persons have been symbolically excluded and thus, socially othered. These exclusionary strategies imply disabling journalistic practices which should be cautioned as they could could potentially undermine the advocacy for an inclusive society. (shrink)

Experiments are presented showing that visual search for Mueller-Lyer (ML) stimuli is based on complete configurations, rather than component segments. Segments easily detected in isolation were difficult to detect when embedded in a configuration, indicating preemption by low-level groups. This preemption—which caused stimulus components to become inaccessible to rapid search—was an all-or-nothing effect, and so could serve as a powerful test of grouping. It is shown that these effects are unlikely to be due to blurring by simple spatial filters (...) at early visual levels. It is proposed instead that they are due to more sophisticated processes that rapidly bind contour fragments into spatially-extended assemblies. These results support the view that rapid visual search cannot access the primitives formed at the earliest stages of visual processing; rather, it can access only higher-level, more ecologically-relevant structures. (shrink)

A fundamental characteristic of human visual perception is the ability to group together disparate elements in a scene and treat them as a single unit. The mechanisms by which humans create such groupings remain unknown, but grouping seems to play an important role in a wide variety of visual phenomena. I propose a neural model of grouping; through top-down control of its circuits, the model implements a grouping strategy that involves both a connection strategy (which elements to (...) connect) and a selection strategy (spatiotemporal properties of a selection signal that segments target elements to facilitate identification). With computer simulations I explain how the circuits work and show how they can account for a wide variety of Gestalt principles of perceptual grouping. Additionally, I extend the model so that it can simulate visual search tasks. I show that when the model uses particular grouping strategies, simulated results closely match empirical results from replication experiments of three visual search tasks. In these experiments, perceptual grouping was induced by proximity and shape similarity (Palmer & Beck, 2007), by the spacing of irrelevant distractors and size similarity (Vickery, 2008), or by the proximity of dots and the proximity and shape similarity of line figures (Trick & Enns, 1997). Thus, I show that the model accounts for a variety of grouping effects and indicates which grouping strategies were likely used to promote performance in three visual search tasks. (shrink)

The behavioral immune system (BIS) includes perceptual mechanisms for detecting cues of contamination. Former studies have indicated that moisture has a disgusting property. Therefore, moisture could be a target for detecting contamination cues by the BIS. We conducted two experiments to examine the psychophysical basis of moisture perception and clarify the relationship between the perception of moisture and the BIS. We assumed that the number of high luminance areas in a visual image provided optical information that would enable the (...) visual perception of moisture. In two experiments, we presented eight images of dough that contained different amounts of moisture as experimental stimuli. The amount of moisture shown in the images was increased in eight steps, from 28.6% to 42.9% of the total weight of the dough. In Experiment 1, the images were randomly presented on a computer display, and the participants (n = 22) were asked to rank the images in the order of the visually perceived moisture content. In Experiment 2, the participants (n = 15) completed pairwise comparisons based on the perceived moistness of the images. Furthermore, to examine the BIS responses, the participants rated the strength of disgust evoked by the stimuli, their motivation to avoid touching the stimuli, and the estimated magnitude of the risk of contamination by physical contact with the stimuli. The results indicated that the moisture content and the numbers of high luminance areas in the images accurately predicted the perception of moisture, suggesting that the detection of visual moisture was highly accurate, and the optical information served as an essential perceptual cue for detecting moisture. On the other hand, the BIS responses peaked in response to stimuli having approximately 33% to 39% moisture content. These results show that objects containing a moderate amount of moisture could be the target of visually detecting pathogens by the BIS. (shrink)

BackgroundIn Sweden, individuals with visual field loss have their driving license withdrawn. The literature clearly indicates that individuals with VFL are unsafe drivers on a group level. However, many drivers with VFL can be safe on an individual level. The literature also suggests that self-perception, beliefs, and insights of one’s own capabilities are related to driving performance. This study had three aims: To investigate self-perceived driving capability ratings for individuals with VFL; to compare these ratings between groups with different (...) medical conditions associated with VFL ; and to relate the self-perception ratings to actual driving performance in an advanced driving simulator.MethodsParticipants comprised 723 individuals whose driver’s license had been withdrawn because of VFL and 92 normally sighted elderly individuals. All participants completed a background survey, rated difficulties with different traffic situations, rated their strengths and weaknesses as drivers, and rated aspects that were important for causing traffic accidents. Of the VFL group participants, 264 also completed a simulator-based driving test that they knew could lead to renewal of their driving license. VFL participants and normally sighted was at the same age when they completed the simulator driving test.ResultsOverall, individuals with VFL rated their capabilities as high on all instruments and scales used, even higher than the elderly normally sighted control group. The only VFL etiology group that rated lower than other groups was the diabetes group. Safety orientation and internal control orientation values were best at discriminating between VFL participants in terms of self-perception of driving performance. Participants categorized as “high” in terms of safety skills and internal control were more modest in their ratings. Finally, participants who passed the simulated driving test did not differ from those who failed, in any of the self-perception measures.ConclusionSelf-perception ratings among individuals with VFL were higher than those of normally sighted elderly individuals. Self-assessed skills did not predict driving performance. Groups with different VFL etiologies rated similarly. Self-ratings of driving abilities cannot be used to assess actual driving performance. Actual driving tests are necessary to discriminate between safe and unsafe drivers with VFL. (shrink)

The present research was guided by the important need for a diversion from an economistic to a humanistic management perspective of sustainability. It concentrates on the current importance of digital strategic communication, particularly regarding the concept of corporate sustainability in the context of the conflict arena of the oil industry. The focus is on the comparison of the persuasive effectiveness of the framings of corporate versus activist NGO website communications and their impacts on the perception of the triple pillars of (...) sustainability and, corporate greenwashing with respect to a proposed bituminous oil pipeline in Canada. The results of these pro and con messages were analyzed within the Elaboration Likelihood Model demonstrating a “non expert” peripheral route to a positive persuasion from exposure to the corporate communication versus an “expert” central route to a negative persuasion from the activist NGO communication. Subsequent exposure to the opposite website communication further emphasized the predominance of a negative persuasion based on both groups now being motivated as “expert” viewers of these strategic communications, leading to an important perception of greenwashing by participants resulting from vague claims, visual and linguistic contents of the corporate communication versus the mainly verifiable factual ones in that of the activist NGO. (shrink)

In this paper we claim, first, that there are high-level visual experiences of grouping properties, i.e., properties that an array of elements we see can have to be organised in a certain way. Second, we argue that there are auditory experiences of groupings that share certain important properties with visual experiences of groupings, thereby being perceptual and high-level as well. Third, these results enable us to understand the nature and structure of our meaning experiences. We claim (...) that, although meaning experiences depend on the auditory experiences we discuss, they are not perceptual, for they lack one of the features that make those auditory experiences perceptual; namely, being holistically attended to. (shrink)

The present research was guided by the important need for a diversion from an economistic to a humanistic management perspective of sustainability. It concentrates on the current importance of digital strategic communication, particularly regarding the concept of corporate sustainability in the context of the conflict arena of the oil industry. The focus is on the comparison of the persuasive effectiveness of the framings of corporate versus activist NGO website communications and their impacts on the perception of the triple pillars of (...) sustainability and, corporate greenwashing with respect to a proposed bituminous oil pipeline in Canada. The results of these pro and con messages were analyzed within the Elaboration Likelihood Model demonstrating a “non expert” peripheral route to a positive persuasion from exposure to the corporate communication versus an “expert” central route to a negative persuasion from the activist NGO communication. Subsequent exposure to the opposite website communication further emphasized the predominance of a negative persuasion based on both groups now being motivated as “expert” viewers of these strategic communications, leading to an important perception of greenwashing by participants resulting from vague claims, visual and linguistic contents of the corporate communication versus the mainly verifiable factual ones in that of the activist NGO. (shrink)

Previous research with speech and non-speech stimuli suggested that in audiovisual perception, visual information starting prior to the onset of corresponding sound can provide visual cues, and form a prediction about the upcoming auditory sound. This prediction leads to audiovisual interaction. Auditory and visual perception interact and induce suppression and speeding up of the early auditory event-related potentials such as N1 and P2. To investigate AV interaction, previous research examined N1 and P2 amplitudes and latencies in response (...) to audio only, video only, audiovisual, and control stimuli, and compared AV with auditory perception based on four AV interaction models. The current study addresses how different models of AV interaction express N1 and P2 suppression in music perception. Furthermore, the current study took one step further and examined whether previous musical experience, which can potentially lead to higher N1 and P2 amplitudes in auditory perception, influenced AV interaction in different models. Musicians and non-musicians were presented the recordings of a keyboard /C4/ key being played, as well as CO stimuli. Results showed that AV interaction models differ in their expression of N1 and P2 amplitude and latency suppression. The calculation of model and has consequences for the resulting N1 and P2 difference waves. Furthermore, while musicians, compared to non-musicians, showed higher N1 amplitude in auditory perception, suppression of amplitudes and latencies for N1 and P2 was similar for the two groups across the AV models. Collectively, these results suggest that when visual cues from finger and hand movements predict the upcoming sound in AV music perception, suppression of early ERPs is similar for musicians and non-musicians. Notably, the calculation differences across models do not lead to the same pattern of results for N1 and P2, demonstrating that the four models are not interchangeable and are not directly comparable. (shrink)

The experiments reported herein probe the visual cortical mechanisms that control near–far percepts in response to two-dimensional stimuli. Figural contrast is found to be a principal factor for the emergence of percepts of near versus far in pictorial stimuli, especially when stimulus duration is brief. Pictorial factors such as interposition (Experiment 1) and partial occlusion Experiments 2 and 3) may cooperate, as generally predicted by cue combination models, or compete with contrast factors in the manner predicted by the FACADE (...) model. In particular, if the geometrical conŽ guration of an image favors activation of cortical bipole grouping cells, as at the top of a T-junction, then this advantage can cooperate with the contrast of the conŽ guration to facilitate a near–far percept at a lower contrast than at an X-junction. Varying the exposure duration of the stimuli shows that the more balanced bipole competition in the X-junction case takes longer exposure times to resolve than the bipole competition in the T-junction case (Experiment 3). (shrink)

With the help of the current experiment, we wanted to learn more about the impact of visually demanding vs. cognitively demanding secondary tasks on the attention allocation of older pedestrians during the phase of traffic perception within the process of road crossing. For this purpose, we used two different road crossing tasks as well as two different secondary tasks. The road crossing “stop task” was a signal detection task, where an approaching car had to be detected. The road crossing “go (...) task” was a dynamic visual search task, where the resolution of a busy road situation had to be identified. The visual secondary task was a static visual search task and the cognitive secondary task was a 1-back task. One younger group and one older group of participants completed the tasks as single vs. dual-tasks in all possible combinations. Performance was measured through errors and response time; in addition, the subjective workload was assessed via NASA-TLX. Analyses show that the visual secondary task reduces performance in the road crossing more strongly than the cognitive task, while the visual task itself is less impaired by the road crossing tasks than is the cognitive task. Overall, performance diminishes from single to dual-task completion. Results further indicate age effects in terms of increased errors and response time for older compared to younger participants. In addition to these age effects, age-specific dual-task effects emerge for response time in the go task along with the visual task as well as for response time in the cognitive task along with the go task. Subjective workload is higher in the dual-task conditions than in the single tasks. Findings are discussed with regard to theoretical and practical implications. (shrink)

On dit depuis longtemps que l'image visuelle est un langage. Mais ne s'agit-il là que d'un slogan? Ce langage a-t-il des mots? A-t-il une syntaxe? S'écrit-il? Se subdivise-t-il en langues? Permet-il ce jeu sur les formes et le sens qu'on appelle rhétorique? C'est ce qu'on ne savait guère jusqu'ici.

BackgroundMany journals prohibit the use of declarative titles that state study findings, yet a few journals encourage or even require them. We compared the effects of a declarative versus a descriptive title on readers’ perceptions about the strength of evidence in a research abstract describing a randomized trial.MethodsStudy participants (medical or dental students or doctors attending lectures) read two abstracts describing studies of a fictitious treatment (Anticox) for a fictitious condition (Green’s syndrome). The first abstract (A1) described an uncontrolled, (...) 10-patient, case series, and the second (A2) described a randomized, placebo-controlled trial involving 48 patients. All participants rated identical A1 abstracts (with a descriptive title) to provide baseline ratings and thus reduce the effects of inter-individual variability. Participants were randomized so that half rated a version of A2 with a descriptive title and half with a declarative title. For each abstract, participants indicated their agreement with the statement “Anticox is an effective treatment for pain in Green’s syndrome” using 100 mm visual analogue scales (VAS) ranging from “disagree completely” to “agree completely.” VAS scores were measured by an investigator who was unaware of group allocation.ResultsOne hundred forty-four participants from four centres completed the study. There was no significant difference between the declarative and the descriptive title groups’ confidence in the study conclusions as expressed on VAS scales—in fact, the mean difference between A1 and A2 was smaller for the declarative title group than that for the descriptive title group (32.6 mm, SD 27.4 vs. 39.8 mm, SD 22.6, respectively, p = 0.09).ConclusionsWe found no evidence that the use of a declarative title affected readers’ perceptions about study conclusions. This suggests that editors’ fears that declarative titles might unduly influence readers’ judgements about study conclusions may be unfounded, at least in relation to reports of randomized trials. However, our study design had several limitations, and our findings may not be generalizable to other situations. (shrink)