Although perceptual grouping has been widely studied, its mechanisms remain poorly understood. We propose a neural model of grouping that, through top-down control of its circuits, implements a grouping strategy involving both a connection strategy (which elements to connect) and a selection strategy (that defines spatiotemporal properties of a selection signal to segment target elements and facilitate identification). We apply the model to a letter discrimination task that investigated relationships among uniform connectedness and the grouping principles (...) of proximity and shape similarity. Participants reported whether small circles formed a global letter E or H, and these circles could be connected by a line or be embedded in a matrix of squares. In the model, a good grouping strategy for this task consists of a connection strategy that connects circles but not squares for all conditions and a selection strategy that uses a selection signal of varying size, depending on whether squares were present. Consistent with empirical results, which were verified in two replication studies, model performance is worse with distractor squares, and line connectors improve performance only in the condition with squares. Rather than relying on abstract grouping principles, we show how the empirical results can be explained in terms of observers implementing a task-dependent grouping strategy that promotes overall performance. (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)

In the typical single-stimulus perceptual identification task, accuracy is improved by prior study of test words, a repetition priming benefit. There is also a cost, inasmuch as previously studied words are likely to be produced as responses if the test word is orthographically similar but not identical to a studied word. In two-alternative forced-choice perceptual identification, a test word is flashed and followed by two alternatives, one of which is the correct response. When the two alternatives are orthographically (...) similar, test words identical to previously studied items are identified more accurately than new words but tests words orthographically similar to studied words are identified less accurately than new words . Ratcliff and McKoon argue that these are bias effects that arise in the decision stage of word identification. We report five experiments that examined the alternative hypothesis that these bias effects arise from postperceptual guessing strategies. In single-stimulus perceptual identification, repetition priming benefits were equally great for young and older adults who claimed to use deliberate guessing strategies and those who did not . In contrast, only groups of young and older people who claimed to deliberately guess studied words in a two-alternative forced-choice task showed reliable benefits and costs. Costs and benefits were abolished in the two-alternative forced-choice task when a very long study list was used, presumably because the increased retrieval burden made the use of deliberate guessing strategies less attractive . Under conditions similar to those of Experiment 3, repetition priming was observed in single-stimulus perceptual identification . These results are consistent with the view that costs and benefits in the forced-choice perceptual identification task arise from deliberate guessing strategies but that those in the single-stimulus task do not. The possibility that the observed relationship between strategy reports and priming effects reflects erroneous postexperimental assessments of strategies by participants is also considered. (shrink)

Light and Kennison found that bias effects in the forced-choice perceptual identification of words occurred only in a subset of participants, those who claimed on a strategy questionnaire to be deliberately guessing words they had studied previously. McKoon and Ratcliff raised a number of objections to the proposal that bias effects are due to guessing strategies, citing difficulties in our statistical treatment of data, our use of subjective reports to classify participants, and our approach to the general problem (...) of separating implicit from explicit influences on performance. This article responds to these objections. (shrink)

In a series of articles, Jacob Beck proposed that a variety of texture segmentation phenomena occurs due to emergent features that arise from “links” between elements with appropriate local properties, such as alignment, orientation, and proximity. His findings and ideas guided theoretical and computational models, and some of his demonstrations became textbook knowledge about visual perception. We build on this work in two ways. First, we provide a modern replication of a classic texture segmentation study using a much larger sample (...) size. Overall, the replication agrees with Beck’s original findings, although there are some quantitative differences. Second, we show how to apply a quantitative model of visual cortex to Beck’s experiment and demonstrate that the model can explain many aspects of Beck’s findings. Key to the model’s success is cognitive control of connections between individual elements (akin to Beck’s “links” between elements) and a selection mechanism that makes it easy to identify how well elements within a region connect and how well different regions are disconnected. Overall, the model supports Beck’s claim that local properties can facilitate patterns of connections between stimulus elements and that some connection patterns allow an observer to easily distinguish textures. (shrink)

The basis of perception is the processing and categorization of perceptual stimuli from the environment. Much progress has been made in the science of perceptual categorization. Yet there is still no consensus on how the brain generates sensory individuals, from sensory input and perceptual categories in memory. This chapter argues that perceptual categorization is highly variable across perceivers due to their use of different perceptual strategies for solving perceptual problems they encounter, and that the (...) perceptual system structurally adjusts to the strategies that are most successful. Despite this variability, the different sensory individuals that result when different perceivers rely on different strategies nonetheless correspond to actual external world objects/features. This view is called 'perceptual pluralism'. (shrink)

This commentary discusses a strategy by which investigators can examine whether observers perceive properties of the global array independently of properties in individual sensory arrays. Research showing that perception of complex relationships appears to be independent of the perception of individual components is considered. Ashby and Townsend's (1986) methods for identifying perceptual independence are important tools for studying the global array.

This paper addresses the question of what the attitude of hope consists in. We argue that shortcomings in recent theories of hope have methodological roots in that they proceed with little regard for the rich body of literature on the emotions. Taking insights from work in the philosophy of emotions, we argue that hope involves a kind of normative perception. We then develop a strategy for determining the content of this perception, arguing that hope is a perception of practical (...) reasons. Our proposal stands in contrast with familiar views on which hope is fundamentally about the good. We conclude by considering the increasingly popular idea that some hopes are non-intentional and thus, by implication, non-perceptual. We reply by arguing that our perceptual theory plausibly generalizes to these instances of hope. (shrink)

Perceptual constancy, often defined as the perception of stable features under changing conditions, goes hand in hand with variation in how things look. A white wall in the orange afternoon sun still looks white, though its whiteness looks different compared with the same wall in the noon sun. Historically, this variation has often been explained in terms of our experience of “merely sensory” or subjective properties – an approach at odds with the fact that the variation does track objective (...) features of the perceptual situation, such as illumination. One approach, becoming more common, is to account for the variation in terms of further “dimensions” to perceptual experience. Especially in colour perception, this is a natural thought to have but the idea is often left vague. In this paper I argue that the “dimensional” strategy has problems of its own, but is useful in drawing out some interesting complications in the way perceptual experience is structured. Specifically, the structure of “constancy spaces” brings out the different ways in which there is stability and instability in the experience of constancy, without the need for novel or merely subjective features. Instability arises in a contingent structural feature of perceptual experience. (shrink)

Perceptual expertise refers to learning that is specific to a domain, that transfers to new items within the trained domain, and that leads to automatic processing in the sense that expertise effects can be measured across a variety of tasks. It can be argued that most of us possess some degree of perceptual expertise in a least one, if not several domains, thereby giving the study of perceptual expertise broad application. Some object categories may in fact be (...) objects of perceptual expertise to the majority of people: Faces appear to be one such example. Thus, the use of face stimuli, or the comparison of face and object perception, can be a powerful way to ask whether a given process is influenced by perceptual expertise. Here, we emphasize one characteristic way that face processing appears to differ from nonface processing: that is, the degree to which they recruit a “holistic” rather than a “featural” perceptual strategy. This review brings evidence that expertise influences perceptual processing together with recent findings that the capacity of visual short-term memory is greater in perceptual experts and explores the relationship between the two. (shrink)

It seems uncontroversial that perceptual experiences provide us with some “normative support” for beliefs or judgments about our surroundings. Provided that the normative force of perceptual justification is something that manifests itself in consciousness or something we commonly experience, what are its phenomenal features? To put it differently: What is it to experience the normative force of perceptual justification? In the first section I will briefly comment on the demand of a unified theory of perceptual experiences, (...) viz. a theory which is capable of integrating relevant epistemological and phenomenological aspects of perceptual experiences. In section two I will argue for a way of connecting the epistemological problem and the phenomenological problem by appealing to a compare-and-contrast strategy. Eventually, in section three, I will try to draw some lessons for our understanding of the normative force of perceptual justification. (shrink)

It has been argued that some recent experimental findings about the mere exposure effect can be used to argue for aesthetic antirealism: the view that there is no fact of the matter about aesthetic value. The aim of this paper is to assess this argument and point out that this strategy, as it stands, does not work. But we may still be able to use experimental findings about the mere exposure effect in order to engage with the aesthetic realism/antirealism (...) debate. However, this argument would need to proceed very differently and would only support a much more modest version of aesthetic antirealism. (shrink)

This thesis offers a fresh interpretation and defense of epistemological disjunctivism about perceptual knowledge. I adopt a multilevel approach according to which perceptual knowledge on one level can enjoy factive rational support provided by perceptual knowledge of the same proposition on a different level. Here I invoke a distinction Ernest Sosa draws between ‘judgmental’ and ‘merely functional’ belief to articulate what I call the bifurcated conception of perceptual knowledge. The view that results is a form of (...) epistemological disjunctivism about perceptual knowledge specifically at the higher judgmental level, layered over a straightforward externalism about perceptual knowledge at the lower merely functional level. The first chapter orients the reader to epistemological disjunctivism— with particular emphasis on the ‘reflective epistemological disjunctivism’ defended by Duncan Pritchard with inspiration from John McDowell. Here I review the arguments for thinking such a proposal true, as well as highlight some problems and three emerging challenges for the view: what I call the internalist challenge, the new access challenge, and the ‘new evil genius’ challenge. These challenges largely inspire the chapters to follow. In the second chapter I present the positive proposal: a fresh interpretation of epistemological disjunctivism in terms of perceptual knowledge at the specifically judgmental level. I argue that this is a modification that epistemological disjunctivists should adopt since it inoculates their view against the internalist challenge: the challenge of explaining why perception should provide one with knowledge by providing one with motivating reasons for belief. In the third chapter I motivate the view further in connection with the more familiar ‘basis problem’ for epistemological disjunctivism. I argue that this approach supports a unique strategy for solving that problem: one that is consistent both with what is known as ‘the entailment’ thesis and the thought that we can reduce perceptual knowledge to a kind of rationally supported belief. In the fourth chapter I move to playing defense. I defend the proposal against the so-called ‘new evil genius’ challenge. This is the challenge to explain why subjects in pairs of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ cases can seem equally justified for sustaining their perceptual beliefs. I argue that what we are being sensitive to here, rather, is the fact that both subjects can be equally epistemically responsible and/or reasonable for believing what they do. Before concluding this chapter I also offer an error theory. In the fifth chapter I defend the proposal against the new access challenges raised in chapter one. These alleged challenges for epistemological disjunctivism arise specifically for versions of reflective epistemological disjunctivism that hold that one’s rational support for perceptual beliefs is not only factive but reflectively accessible as well. Rather than address the challenges head on, I try to dislodge the thought they depend upon—viz., that one’s factive rational support for perceptual beliefs is reflectively accessible to the subject. Here I argue that the reflective accessibility of one’s factive rational support is actually a wheel turning idly in the debate with the underdetermination-based radical sceptic—so that we can simply drop it without consequence. The result is an epistemological disjunctivism that is immune to access problems. I then offer a final summary and conclude. At the end of this thesis I have attached an appendix, which is an excursion into religious epistemology and an exploration of a form of religious epistemological disjunctivism. Here I apply the epistemological disjunctivist insight to the case of religious perception in order to defend the idea that one can offer independent rational support for theistic belief by appealing to religious beliefs that are justified on the basis of religious experiences. This appendix chapter is in keeping with the general spirit of the thesis insofar as it seeks to developed epistemological disjunctivism in new and fruitful directions. (shrink)

The ability to represent same-different relations is an important condition for abstract thought. However, there is mixed evidence for when this ability develops, both ontogenetically and phylogenetically. Apparent success in relational reasoning may be evidence for genuine conceptual understanding or may be the result of low-level, perceptual strategies. We introduce a method to discriminate these possibilities by pitting two conditions that are perceptually matched but conceptually different: in a "fused" condition, same and different objects are joined, creating single objects (...) that have the same perceptual features as the two object pairs in the "relational" condition. However, the "fused" objects do not provide evidence for the relation 'same.' Using this method with human toddlers in a causal relational reasoning task provides evidence for genuine conceptual understanding. This novel technique offers a simple manipulation that may be applied to a variety of existing match-to-sample procedures used to assess same-different reasoning to include in future research with non-human animals across species, as well as human infants. (shrink)

Object files are mental representations that enable perceptual systems to keep track of objects as numerically the same. How is their reference fixed? A prominent approach, championed by Zenon Pylyshyn and John Campbell, makes room for a non-satisfactional use of properties to fix reference. This maneuver has enabled them to reconcile a singularist view of reference with the intuition that properties must play a role in reference fixing. This paper examines Campbell’s influential defense of this strategy. After criticizing (...) it, a new approach is sketched. The alternative view introduces representational contents to explain perceptual individuation. After arguing that those contents are not satisfactional, it is concluded that there is room for a third view of reference fixing that does not fit into the singularist/descriptivist dichotomy. (shrink)

Algunos defensores del conceptualismo perceptual intentan bloquear el argumento noconceptualista de la riqueza de contenido afirmando que no hay percepción consciente sin atención. Para justificar esta afirmación los conceptualistas normalmente apelan a experimentos psicológicos, tales como la ceguera al cambio y la ceguera inatencional. En este artículo argumentaré que esta estrategia es insuficiente. Además sostendré, en base a recientes consideraciones teóricas y empíricas, que hay buenas razones para pensar que probablemente hay una forma de conciencia fenoménica visual más allá (...) de los límites de la atención que no es accesible cognitivamente y menos aún estructurada conceptualmente. Some supporters of perceptual conceptualism attempt to block the non-conceptualist argument from richness claiming that there is no conscious perception without attention. In order to justify this assertion conceptualists normally appeal to psychological experiments, such as change blindness and inattentional blindness. In this paper I will argue that this strategy is insufficient. In addition, I will point out, on the basis of recent theoretical and empirical considerations, that there are good reasons to think that probably there is a form of perceptual phenomenal consciousness beyond the limits of attention that is not cognitively accessible, not to mention conceptually structured. (shrink)

One of the key debates in contemporary epistemology is that between Crispin Wright and John McDowell on the topic of radical scepticism. Whereas both of them endorse a form of epistemic internalism, the very different internalist conceptions of perceptual knowledge that they offer lead them to draw radically different conclusions when it comes to the sceptical problem. The aim of this paper is to maintain that McDowell's view, at least when suitably supplemented with further argumentation (argumentation that he may (...) or may not agree with), can be shown to be a viable alternative to Wright's anti-sceptical proposal, one that retains the driving motivation behind Wright's proposal while avoiding one of its most fundamental problems. Wright's wholesale rejection of the McDowellian anti-sceptical strategy is thus premature. (shrink)

There is an ongoing debate in philosophy of mind and epistemology about whether perceptual experience only represents those “thin” features of our environment that are apprehended by our senses, or whether, in addition to these, at least some perceptual experiences represent more complex, “thick” properties. My aim in this paper is to articulate an important difference between thin and thick properties, and thus to diagnose a key intuitive resistance many proponents of the thin view feel towards the thick (...) view. My diagnosis then provides us with a novel and compelling argument against the thick view. In what follows, first I consider two unsuccessful versions of an alternative strategy against the thick view found in the literature. Next, I present my own argument. The argument involves proposing two constraints on the phenomenal contents of perceptual experience, which I call the Presentation Principle and the Containment Principle, and then reasoning from these principles to a conclusion that is fatal to the thick view—an outcome that I call the problem of Phenomenal Explosion. I conclude by responding to several objections. (shrink)

This contribution presents a corpus of spatial descriptions and describes the development of a human-driven spatial language robot system for their comprehension. The domain of application is an eldercare setting in which an assistive robot is asked to “fetch” an object for an elderly resident based on a natural language spatial description given by the resident. In Part One, we describe a corpus of naturally occurring descriptions elicited from a group of older adults within a virtual 3D home that simulates (...) the eldercare setting. We contrast descriptions elicited when participants offered descriptions to a human versus robot avatar, and under instructions to tell the addressee how to find the target versus where the target is. We summarize the key features of the spatial descriptions, including their dynamic versus static nature and the perspective adopted by the speaker. In Part Two, we discuss critical cognitive and perceptual processing capabilities necessary for the robot to establish a common ground with the human user and perform the “fetch” task. Based on the collected corpus, we focus here on resolving the perspective ambiguity and recognizing furniture items used as landmarks in the descriptions. Taken together, the work presented here offers the key building blocks of a robust system that takes as input natural spatial language descriptions and produces commands that drive the robot to successfully fetch objects within our eldercare scenario. (shrink)

Epistemological disjunctivism says that one can know that p on the rational basis of one’s seeing that p. The basis problem for disjunctivism says that that can’t be since seeing that p entails knowing that p on account of simply being the way in which one knows that p. In defense of their view disjunctivists have rejected the idea that seeing that p is just a way of knowing that p (the SwK thesis). That manoeuvre is familiar. In this paper (...) I explore the prospects for rejecting instead the thought that if the SwK thesis is true then seeing that p can’t be one’s rational basis for perceptual knowledge. I explore two strategies. The first situates disjunctivism within the context of a ‘knowledge-first’ approach that seeks to reverse the traditional understanding of the relationship between perceptual knowledge and justification (or rational support). But I argue that a more interesting strategy situates disjunctivism within a context that accepts a more nuanced understanding of perceptual beliefs. The proposal that I introduce reimagines disjunctivism in light of a bifurcated conception of perceptual knowledge that would see it cleaved along two dimensions. On the picture that results perceptual knowledge at the judgemental level is rationally supported by perceptual knowledge at the merely functional or ‘animal’ level. This supports a form of disjunctivism that I think is currently off the radar: one that’s consistent both with the SwK thesis and a commitment to a traditional reductive account of perceptual knowledge. (shrink)

This paper concerns the role of the structural properties of representations in determining the nature of their content. I take as a starting point Fodor's (2007) and Heck's (2007) recent arguments making the iconic structure of perceptual representations essential in establishing their content as content of a different (nonconceptual) kind. I argue that the prima facie state–content error this strategy seems to display is nothing but a case of “state–content error error,” i.e., the mistake of considering that the (...) properties that characterize the type of content certain representations have are indeed independent of their structural properties. I also consider another objection to the general strategy, namely that it falls short of showing that the nonconceptual content of perceptual experiences thus established is the kind of content that figures in true explanations of intentional behavior. I concede this point in respect of Fodor's version of the strategy, while denying that it has any bearing on Heck's approach. The success of this objection in Heck's case ultimately depends, I argue, upon an unjustified commitment to a certain empirically suspect model of perception. (shrink)

Perceptual performance, anticipating opponents' strategies, and judging chess positions especially in subliminal processing is related to expertise level and dependent on chunking processes. It becomes obvious that chess expertise is a multidimensional phenomenon related predominantly to experience. Under consideration of chess expertise categorization, we conducted two priming experiments expanding existing designs by gradually increasing the target and task complexity. The main aim was the evaluation of potential visuocognitive limitations. The results reveal experts' perceptual superiority manifested by their faster (...) reaction times in settings with increased stimulus and task complexity. Further, experts' priming effects seem to be affected by the target content and/ or priming duration. For short prime duration, experts show priming effects only for less complex prime-target content. Interestingly, for longer prime duration and more complex prime-target content, all participants reveal priming effects. In summary, we argue that experts' visuocognitive processing is rooted in a more efficient visuocognition due to stored chunks of checking and mating constellations. We suggest that visuocognitive limitations are related also to the prime-target complexity as well as to the task. Further investigations must be conducted in order to elucidate the factors with an increased impact on chess players' performance. (shrink)

To this day, the study of the substratum of thought and its implied mechanisms is rarely directly addressed. Nowadays, systemic approaches based on introspective methodologies are no longer fashionable and are often overlooked or ignored. Most frequently, reductionist approaches are followed for deciphering the neuronal circuits functionally associated with cognitive processes. However, we argue that systemic studies of individual thought may still contribute to a useful and complementary description of the multimodal nature of perception, because they can take into account (...) individual diversity while still identifying the common features of perceptual processes. We propose to address this question by looking at one possible task for recognition of a “signifying sound”, as an example of conceptual grasping of a perceptual response. By adopting a mixed approach combining qualitative analyses of interviews based on introspection with quantitative statistical analyses carried out on the resulting categorization, this study describes a variety of mental strategies used by musicians to identify notes’ pitch. Sixty-seven musicians (music students and professionals) were interviewed, revealing that musicians utilize intermediate steps during note identification by selecting or activating cognitive bricks that help construct and reach the correct decision. We named these elements “mental anchorpoints”. Although the anchorpoints are not universal, and differ between individuals, they can be grouped into categories related to three main sensory modalities – auditory, visual and kinesthetic. Such categorization enabled us to characterize the mental representations that allow musicians to name notes in relationship to eleven basic typologies of anchorpoints. We propose a conceptual framework which summarizes the process of note identification in five steps, starting from sensory detection and ending with the verbalization of the note pitch, passing through the pivotal role of mental anchorpoints and mental representations. We found that musicians use multiple strategies and select individual combinations of mental anchorpoints belonging to these three different sensory modalities both in isolation and in combination. (shrink)

What is it about art that can be so captivating? How is it that we find value in the often odd and abstract objects and events we call artworks? William P. Seeley proposes that artworks are attentional engines. They are artifacts that have been intentionally designed to direct attention to critical stylistic features that reveal their point, purpose, or meaning. In developing this view, Seeley argues that there is a lot we can learn about the value of art from interdisciplinary (...) research focused on our perceptual engagement with artworks. Recent breakthroughs in cognitive science and behavioral science can explain how we recognize artworks and how we differentiate them from more quotidian artifacts. Seeley pushes this line of reasoning, showing how cognitive science can help reveal the way artworks function as a unique source of value. Cognitive systems integrate this information into our experience of art, guiding attention and shaping what we perceive. Our understanding and appreciation of artworks is therefore carried in our perceptual experience of them. -/- Attentional Engines explores the pitfalls and potential of this interdisciplinary strategy for understanding art. It articulates a cognitivist theory of art grounded in perceptual psychology and neuroscience and demonstrates its application to a range of puzzles in the philosophy of the arts. This includes questions about the nature of depiction, the role played by metakinesis in dance appreciation, the nature of musical expression, and the power of movies. The provocative interdisciplinary theories Seeley presents will appeal to scholars and students interested in aesthetics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of art, cognitive science, and anyone with a burning curiosity about how artworks work. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the concept of adaptive rationality. I present a simple model of ecology and the set of decision rules. The basic structure of the process of cognitive adaptation to ecology is described as a structure comprising perceptual space, a function valuating perceived items, a set of available decision rules and the adaptation process - identification and selection of the best strategies in given ecological conditions. The presented model of ecosystem allows a conclusion that completely opposite (...) strategies may be compatible with the assumption of adaptive rationality. (shrink)

Recognitional concepts have the following characteristic property: thinkers are disposed to apply them to objects merely on the basis of undergoing certain perceptual experiences. I argue that a prominent strategy for defending the existence of constitutive connections among concepts, which appeals to thinkers’ semantic-cum-conceptual intuitions, cannot be used to defend the existence of recognitional concepts. I then outline and defend an alternative argument for the existence of recognitional concepts, which appeals to certain psychological laws.

Aging is accompanied by stereotyped changes in functional brain activations, for example a cortical shift in activity patterns from posterior to anterior regions is one hallmark revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of aging cognition. Whether these neuronal effects of aging could potentially contribute to an amelioration of or resistance to the cognitive symptoms associated with psychopathology remains to be explored. We used a visual illusion paradigm to address whether aging affects the cortical control of perceptual beliefs and (...) biases. Our aim was to understand the effective connectivity associated with volitional control of ambiguous visual stimuli and to test whether greater top-down control of early visual networks emerged with advancing age. Using a bias training paradigm for ambiguous images we found that older participants (n = 16) resisted experimenter-induced visual bias compared to a younger cohort (n = 14) and that this resistance was associated with greater activity in prefrontal and temporal cortices. By applying Dynamic Causal Models for fMRI we uncovered a selective recruitment of top-down connections from the middle temporal to Lingual gyrus (LIN) by the older cohort during the perceptual switch decision following bias training. In contrast, our younger cohort did not exhibit any consistent connectivity effects but instead showed a loss of driving inputs to orbitofrontal sources following training. These findings suggest that perceptual beliefs are more readily controlled by top-down strategies in older adults and introduce age-dependent neural mechanisms that may be important for understanding aberrant belief states associated with psychopathology. (shrink)

Two common strategies have dominated attempts to account for the nature of taste. On the one side, we have an affectivist understanding of taste where aesthetic attribution has to do with the expression of a subjective response. On the other side, we find a non-affectivist approach according to which to judge something aesthetically is to epistemically track its main aesthetic properties. Our main argument will show that neither emotion nor perception can explain the nature of aesthetic taste single-handedly. In this (...) paper, our principal aim is to examine the relationship between perceptual discernment and emotional sensibility as we find it in the process of ascribing aesthetic qualities. Is it the nature of the specific aesthetic property in question which determines the way in which perception and emotion are balanced in aesthetic attribution, or is it, rather, something about how our sensory skills operate? One of the notions we would like to explore in greater detail in this context is the idea of attunement, or the way in which aesthetic agents can align themselves to the content of an artwork o in order to better grasp its content and significance. According to our proposed picture, the exercise of taste involves an adjustment of one’s emotional sensibility to the aesthetic character of o. From here, we will posit both emotional and perceptual training as part of an agent’s aesthetic education in her use of aesthetic terms. (shrink)

Colour synaesthesia is the mental experience involving a strong association between specific colours and specific auditory stimuli, such as words, or achromatic visual stimuli, such as numerals or letters. In the contemporary literature on colour synaesthesia, the majority view treats the phenomenon as one arising from some of the same neural events mediating colour perception triggered by genuinely coloured objects; this view that synaesthesia is perceptually based, however, is not universally endorsed. What strategies have been utilized to evaluate the (...) class='Hi'>perceptual reality of colour synaesthesia, and what is the evidence produced by those strategies? This chapter tackles those questions within the context of colour graphemic synaesthesia, the most widely studied form of synaesthesia. We divide the research strategies into those employing behavioral measures to assess whether synaesthetia influences performance on tasks known to be sensitive stimulus colour and those employing indirect measures that use physiological responses as proxies for colour perception. Our chapter concludes that there is sufficient justification for the belief in the perceptual reality of colour grapheme synaesthesia. At the same time, we applaud those who remain disbelievers, for their skepticism has underscored the logical issues surrounding research on this question. (shrink)

A focused review of the literature on reasoning suggests that mechanisms based upon contraries are of fundamental importance in various abilities. At the same time, the importance of contraries in the human perceptual experience of space has been recently demonstrated in experimental studies. Solving geometry problems represents an interesting case as both reasoning abilities and the manipulation of perceptual–figural aspects are involved.In this study we focus on perceptual changes in geometrical problem solving processes in order to understand (...) whether a mental manipulation in terms of opposites might help. Four conditions were studied, two of which concerned the search for contraries as an implicit or explicit strategy.Results demonstrated that contraries, when used explicitly in solution processes, constitute an effective heuristic: The number of correct solutions increased, less time was needed to find a solution and participants were oriented towards the use of perception-based solutions—not only wer.. (shrink)

Generalising what is learned about one stimulus to other but perceptually related stimuli is a basic behavioural phenomenon. We evaluated whether a rule learning mechanism may serve to explain such generalisation. To this end, we assessed whether inference rules communicated through verbal instructions affect generalisation. Expectancy ratings, but not valence ratings, proved sensitive to this manipulation. In addition to revealing a role for inference rules in generalisation, our study has clinical implications as well. More specifically, we argue that targeting inference (...) rules might prove to be an effective strategy to affect the excessive generalisation that is often observed in psychopathology. (shrink)

Despite the importance of effective observational analysis in the technical aspects of climbing performance, limited research informs this aspect of climbing coach education. Thus, the purpose of the present research was to explore cognitive-perceptual mechanisms underpinning visual search strategies of expert and novice climbing coaches through the novel combination of eye-tracking technology and retrospective think-aloud methodology. Analysis of gaze data revealed expert climbing coaches to demonstrate fewer fixations of greater duration, and fixate on distinctly different areas of the visual (...) display, than their novice counterparts. Retrospective think-aloud interviews further demonstrated differences in the cognitive-perceptual mechanisms underpinning these visual search strategies, with expert coaches more cognisant of their visual search strategy. To expand, the gaze behaviour of expert climbing coaches was underpinned by hierarchical and complex knowledge structures relating to principles of climbing movement. This enabled expert coaches to actively focus on the most relevant aspects of a climber’s performance for analysis. Findings demonstrate the utility of combining eye tracking and retrospective think-aloud interviewing as a new, efficient methodology of capturing the cognitive-perceptual processes of climbing coaches to inform coaching education/strategies. (shrink)

In contrast to Constructivist Views, which construe perceptual cognition as an essentially reconstructive process, this article recommends the Deictic View, which grounds perception in perceptual-demonstrative reference and the use of deictic tracking strategies for acquiring and updating knowledge about individuals. The view raises the problem of how sensory-motor tracking connects to epistemic and integrated forms of tracking. To study the strategies used to solve this problem, we report a study of the ability to track distal individuals when only (...) their directions can be perceived and not their locations. We introduce a new experimental paradigm named the 'Modified Traveling Salesman Problem' (MTSP), which requires subjects to visit n invisible targets in a 2D display once each. Surprisingly, subjects are competent at this task for up to 10 targets. We consider two types of tracking strategies that subjects might use: 'location-based' strategies and 'deictic direction-based' strategies. A number of observations suggest that subjects used the latter, at least for larger numbers of targets. We hypothesize that subjects used perceptual-demonstrative reference and deictic strategies (i) to perform the sensory-motor tracking of directional segments, (ii) to bind the segments with their updated status in the task, and (iii) to perform the epistemic tracking of invisible targets by means of perception-based inferences. (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, and a good understanding of these mechanisms might provide guidance for how to improve machine vision algorithms. Here, we build on a proposal that some groupings are the result of connections (...) in cortical area V2 that join disparate elements, thereby allowing them to be selected and segmented together. In previous instantiations of this proposal, connection formation was based on the anatomy (e.g., extent) of receptive fields, which made connection formation obligatory when the stimulus conditions stimulate the corresponding receptive fields. We now propose dynamic circuits that provide greater flexibility in the formation of connections and that allow for top-down control of perceptual grouping. With computer simulations we explain how the circuits work and show how they can account for a wide variety of Gestalt principles of perceptual grouping, texture segmentation tasks, amodal illusory contours, and ratings of perceived groupings. We propose that human observers use such top-down control to implement task-dependent connection strategies that encourage particular groupings of stimulus elements in order to promote performance on various visual tasks. (shrink)

Multiple endogenous and exogenous prenatal influences interact to form a system that induces the development of individual lateralization across a range of perceptual and motor abilities in precocial birds. As these influences are nearly invariant for all species members, they produce a phylogenetic influence that creates high levels of population laterality and social cohesion in the postnatal state.

Minimal counterintuitiveness and its automatic processing has been suggested as the explanation of persistence and transmission of cultural ideas. This purported automatic processing remains relatively unexplored. We manipulated encoding strategy to assess the persistence of memory for different types of expectation violation. Participants viewed concepts including two types of expectation violation or no violation under three different encoding conditions: in the shallow condition participants focused on the perceptual attributes of the concepts, a deep condition probed their semantic meaning, (...) and intentional remembering condition. Participants’ recall was tested immediately as well as 2 weeks later. Our findings showed the greatest memory enhancement for schema-level violations regardless of the encoding condition, while the memory for domain-level violations improved over time. These results suggest two distinct memory patterns for different types of violations, and illustrate the importance of elaborative processes in memory consolidation especially for violations to our expectations. (shrink)

According to the cognitivist strategy, the desire to bring about P provides reasons for intending to bring about P in a way analogous to how perceiving that P provides reasons for believing that P. However, while perceiving P provides reasons for believing P by representing P as true, desiring to bring about P provides reasons for intending to bring about P by representing P as good. This paper offers an argument against this view. My argument proceeds via an appeal (...) to what I call the non-substitutability of perception, the thesis that, given that there is no independent evidence for P, one cannot substitute something that fails to provide reasons with respect to P for the perceptual experience that P, without altering the rational permissibility of believing that P. By contrast, I argue that it is always possible to substitute something that fails to provide reasons for a desire without altering the rational permissibility of an intention based on said desire. I take this to show that a desire does not provide reasons in a way analogous to perceptual experience. (shrink)

Event sequences or scripts are the conceptual representations of activities in memory. Traditional views hold that events are represented in amodal networks and are retrieved by associative strategies. The embodied cognition approach holds that knowledge is grounded in perception and retrieved by mental simulation. We used a script generation task where event sequences of activities had to be produced. Activities varied in their degree of familiarity. In a regressional design we investigated whether amodal or perceptual variables best predicted knowledge (...) retrieval to gain insight into the underlying representation. Retrieval depended on the familiarity of the activity. While novel activities mainly relied on perception‐based simulation and to a lesser extent on associative strategies, moderately familiar activities showed the opposite pattern, and events of familiar activities were retrieved by association alone. We conclude that amodal structures exist in all representations that become stronger with increasing frequency and finally prevail over perceptual structures. (shrink)

We found a direct relationship between variation in informants' grammaticality intuitions about pronoun coreference and variation in the same informants' use of a clause segmentation strategy during sentence perception. It has been proproposed that ‘c‐command’, a structural principle defined in terms of constituent dominance relations, constrains within‐sentence coreference between pronouns and noun antecedents. The relative height of the pronoun and the noun in the phrase structure hierarchy determines whether the c‐command constraint blocks coreference: Coreference is allowed only when the (...) complement structure containing the noun is attached higher than the pronoun. We collected informants' judgments on pronoun‐noun coreference in which the noun antecedent was contained in a complement structure dominated by either the Sentence‐node (S‐node) (higher than the pronoun) or the Verb‐phrase‐node (VP‐node) (not higher than the pronoun). We also assessed each informant's perceptual clause‐closure tendency using an auditory word‐monitor paradigm. Informants who strongly segmented clauses in the perceptual task did not differentiate between an S‐ and VP‐attachment of sentence complements, as revealed in their coreference judgments, but rather appeared to attach all sentence complements to the S‐node. Informants with relatively weak perceptual segmentation differentiated their coreference judgments according to the node attachment of the complement structure. These results indicate that the linguistic universal controlling within‐sentence coreference applies to the perceptually available structure for a sequence, not to its pure linguistic structure. Hence, linguistic intuitions result from the interaction of three independent faculties: language‐specific knowledge, perceptual processes, and linguistic universals. (shrink)

While the recognition of ambiguous emotions is crucial for successful social interactions, previous work has shown that they are perceived differently depending on whether they are viewed on male or female faces. The present paper aims to shed light on this phenomenon by exploring two hypotheses: the confounded signal hypothesis, which posits the existence of perceptual overlaps between emotions and gendered morphotypes, and the social role hypothesis, according to which the observer's responses are biased by stereotypes. Participants were asked (...) to categorise blended faces (i.e. artificial faces made ambiguous by mixing two emotions) in a forced-choice task. Six emotions were used to create each blend (neutral, surprise, sadness, fear, happiness, anger), for a total of 15 expressions. We then applied signal detection theory – considering both the morphotype of the stimuli and the participants’ gender – to distinguish participants’ perceptual processes from their response biases. The results showed a perceptual advantage for anger on male faces and for sadness on female faces. However, different strategies were deployed when labelling emotions on gendered morphotypes. In particular, a response bias towards angry male faces establishes their special status, as they resulted in both excellent detection and a tendency to be over-reported, especially by women. (shrink)

Light and Kennison proposed that bias effects in the forced-choice perceptual identification of words result from a strategy engaged in by subjects to retrieve explicit information about the words. This article enumerates several problems with this proposal and presents new experimental data against it. It is concluded that subjects do not ordinarily employ an explicit retrieval strategy. The data are discussed in the context of the general problem of separating implicit from explicit influences on performance.