Chromatic induction is a major contextual effect of color appearance. Patterned backgrounds are known to induce strong chromatic induction effects. However, it has not been clarified whether the spatial extent of the chromatic surrounding induces a chromatic contrast or assimilation effects. In this study, we examined the influence of the width of a center line and its flanking white contour on the color appearance when the line was surrounded by chromatic backgrounds. A strong color shift was observed when the center (...) line was flanked by white contours with the L/M- and S-cone chromatic backgrounds. There was a difference between the optimal widths of the center line and the contour for the shift in color appearance for the L/M-cone chromaticity and the S-cone chromaticity. The optimal width of the center line for the L/M-cone was finer than the resolution-limit width of the chromatic contrast sensitivity and coarser than that of the luminance contrast sensitivity. Thus, the color appearance of the center line could be obtained by integrating broad chromatic information and fine luminance details. Due to blurring and chromatic aberrations, the simulated artifact was large for the darker center line and S-cone background, thus suggesting that the artifact could explain the luminance dependency of the induction along the S-cone chromaticity. Moreover, the findings of this study reveal that the dominant factor of the color shift is neural instead of optical. (shrink)

It is often assumed that the reaction time of a saccade toward visual and/or auditory stimuli reflects the sensitivities of our oculomotor-orienting system to stimulus saliency. Endogenous factors, as well as stimulus-related factors, would also affect the saccadic reaction time. However, it was not clear how these factors interact and to what extent visual and auditory-targeting saccades are accounted for by common mechanisms. The present study examined the effect of, and the interaction between, stimulus saliency and audiovisual (...) spatial congruency on the SRT for visual- and for auditory-target conditions. We also analyzed pre-target pupil size to examine the relationship between saccade preparation and pupil size. Pupil size is considered to reflect arousal states coupling with locus-coeruleus activity during a cognitive task. The main findings were that the pattern of the examined effects on the SRT varied between visual- and auditory-auditory target conditions, the effect of stimulus saliency was significant for the visual-target condition, but not significant for the auditory-target condition, Pupil velocity, not absolute pupil size, was sensitive to task set, and there was a significant correlation between the pre-saccade absolute pupil size and the SRTs for the visual-target condition but not for the auditory-target condition. The discrepancy between target modalities for the effect of pupil velocity and between the absolute pupil size and pupil velocity for the correlation with SRT may imply that the pupil effect for the visual-target condition was caused by a modality-specific link between pupil size modulation and the SC rather than by the LC-NE system. These results support the idea that different threshold mechanisms in the SC may be involved in the initiation of saccades toward visual and auditory targets. (shrink)

Previous research found that application of eyeshadow on the upper eyelids induces overestimation of eye size. The present study examined whether this eyeshadow illusion is dependent on or independent of viewpoint. We created a three-dimensional model of a female face and manipulated the presence/absence of eyeshadow and face orientation around the axis of yaw (Experiment 1) or pitch (Experiment 2) rotation. Using the staircase method, we measured perceived eye size for each face stimulus. Results showed that the (...) eyeshadow illusion occurred regardless of face orientation around axes of both yaw and pitch rotations. Crucially, the illusion’s magnitude did not vary across face orientations; lack of interaction between the illusion’s magnitude and face orientation was confirmed by small values of Bayes factors. These findings ruled out the hypothesis that eyeshadow serves as a depth cue and leads to overestimation of eye size due to size-distance scaling. Alternatively, the present findings suggest that the eyeshadow illusion can be well explained by the assimilation between the eyes and eyeshadow, which also facilitates assimilation between the eyes and eyebrows. Practical implications and the present findings’ generalizability are also discussed. (shrink)

Perceived size is a function of viewing distance, retinal images size, and various contextual cues such as linear perspective and the size and location of neighboring objects. Recently, we demonstrated that illusion magnitudes of classic visual size illusions may be greatly enhanced or reduced by adding dynamic elements. Specifically, a dynamic version of the Ebbinghaus illusion (classically considered a “size contrast” illusion) led to a greatly enhanced illusory effect, whereas a dynamic version of the Corridor (...) illusion (a “size constancy” illusion) led to a greatly diminished illusory effect. Although these differences may arise from the different processes underlying these illusions (size contrast vs. size constancy), the dynamic variants we tested in our previous work also differed in the nature of the dynamic elements; specifically, whereas the Dynamic Ebbinghaus included a moving target and inducers that changed size and position, the Dynamic Corridor only included a moving target on a static background. Here, we explore further dynamic versions of the Ebbinghaus illusion and the Corridor and Ponzo illusions by separately manipulating three types of dynamic elements: target motion, context translation, and dynamic changes in context. Across five experiments examining 21 dynamic illusory configurations, adding target motion or a dynamically changing context separately resulted in little-to-no illusory effect. In contrast, the combination of target motion and a dynamically changing context led to a robust size illusion, consistent with an interactive effect. However, illusory effects that exceeded the matched classic, static illusory configuration were only observed for the dynamic versions of the Ebbinghaus illusion and the Revealed Ponzo illusions, in which the contextual elements changed size. We conclude that the combination of target motion and a dynamically changing context are necessary to produce dynamic size illusions, but that enhancement above and beyond static illusions may be largely specific to size contrast effects. Our results have important implications for the integration of motion signals, a ubiquitous environmental stimulus, in the perception of object size. (shrink)

Size perception of visual objects is highly context dependent. Here we report a novel perceptual size illusion that the self-face, being a unique and distinctive self-referential stimulus, can enlarge its perceived size. By using a size discrimination paradigm, we found that the self-face was perceived as significantly larger than the other-face of the same size. This size overestimation effect was not due to the familiarity of the self-face, since it could be still observed (...) when the self-face was directly compared with a famous face. More crucially, such illusion effect could be extended to a new cartoon face that was transiently associated with one's own face and could also exert further contextual influences on visual size perception of other objects. These findings together highlight the role of self-awareness in visual size perception and point to a special mechanism of size perception tuned to self-referential information. (shrink)

AimsIn this pilot mixed-methods study, we examined the participants experiences of engaging in virtual drawing tasks and the impact of an olfactory stimulus on outcomes of affect, stress, self-efficacy, anxiety, creative agency, and well-being.MethodsThis study used a parallel mixed-methods, simple block randomization design. The study participants included 24 healthy adults aged 18 to 54 years, including 18 women and six men. The participants completed two 1-h immersive virtual art making sessions and were randomly assigned to receive either a fragrance (...) or a non-fragrance condition for the first session. Quantitative and qualitative datasets were collected concurrently and integrated during data analysis.ResultsThe quantitative results indicated that the fragrance condition demonstrated a significant reduction in negative affect, namely, reduced feelings of negativity when compared to the non-fragrance condition. A trend toward improvement in self-efficacy was also seen in the fragrance condition. No significant changes were found for fragrance or non-fragrance conditions for positive affect, anxiety, and creative agency. The qualitative findings included five themes related to art making experiences in virtual reality in both conditions: fun and joy; novelty of virtual media, experimentation, and play; relaxation and calm; learning curve; and physical discomfort and disorientation. Four themes were identified for virtual art content and visual qualities: nature imagery, references to memories and personal symbols, fantasy and play within imagery, and depiction of everyday objects.ConclusionsOverall, the participants reported positive responses to the novel virtual art making experiences which were further heightened by the inclusion of the fragrance stimulus for negative affect. These preliminary findings need to be replicated with larger sample sizes to confirm the outcomes and the trends that were seen in this pilot study. Further research is recommended to examine the differences between experiences of virtual and traditional art media and to examine different olfactory stimuli promoting focus and concentration. (shrink)

Leibovich et al. propose that non-symbolic numerosity abilities develop from the processing of more basic, continuous magnitudes such as size, area, and density. Here I review similar arguments arising in the visual perception field and further propose that the evolvement of discrete representations from continuous stimulus properties may be a fundamental characteristic of cognitive development.

The article discusses the determinants of fiscal policy in the times of COVID-19. Most economists share the opinion that fiscal packages are necessary to mitigate the health and economic costs of a pandemic. However, the scale of fiscal intervention and the types of fiscal policy instruments that should be used raise doubts. The aim of the article is to explore the factors determining the size and structure of fiscal packages which have been implemented globally in response to the crisis (...) caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, attention is drawn to the potential impact of fiscal intervention on public finance sustainability, bearing in mind that most governments have chosen to use fiscal support instruments to enhance consumption and investment following the COVID-19 hit, although the cross-country differences are evident both in the magnitude and composition of fiscal stimulus packages. A descriptive analysis was conducted along with a panel data analysis to examine the determinants of government fiscal support in response to the COVID-19 crisis. The empirical analysis is based on cross-sectional data from the International Monetary Fund, OECD and Eurostat. The sample consists of 40 countries representing advanced and emerging economies. Based on the panel analysis, it was found that the total fiscal stimulus packages depended mainly on the fiscal space. Fiscal intervention in countries with greater tax-collection capacity (such as Germany, United States, United Kingdom and Japan) was greater compared to others. A positive and statistically significant relationship between the average income level and the size of fiscal stimulus was also confirmed. Moreover, it turned out that countries with larger populations and higher fatality rates provided greater fiscal support for the COVID-19 pandemic.The empirical analysis expands the existing knowledge on the determinants of the fiscal policy implemented in response to the COVID-19 crisis under the conditions of low interest rates, when macroeconomic stabilization can only be ensured through fiscal stimulus programs. (shrink)

Objective: Evidence suggests people experience an oral size illusion and commonly perceive oral size inaccurately; however, the nature of the illusion remains unclear. The objectives of the present study were to confirm the presence of an oral size illusion, determine the magnitude (amount) and direction (underestimation or overestimation) of the illusion, and determine whether immediately prior crossmodal perceptual experiences affected the magnitude and direction. Design: Participants (N = 27) orally assessed 9 sizes of stainless steel spheres (1/16 (...) in to 1/2 in) categorized as small, medium, or big, and matched them with digital and visual reference sets. Each participant completed 20 matching tasks in 3 assessments. For control assessments, 6 oral spheres were matched with reference sets of same-sized spheres. For primer-control assessments, similar to control, 6 matching tasks were preceded by cross-modal experiences of the same-sized sphere. For experimental assessments, 8 matching tasks were preceded by a cross-modal experience of a differently sized sphere. Results: For control assessments, small and medium spheres were consistently underestimated, and big spheres were consistently overestimated. For experimental assessments, magnitude and direction of the oral size illusion varied according to the size of the sphere used in the cross-modal experience. Conclusion: Results seemed to confirm an oral size illusion, but direction of the illusion depended on the size of the object. Immediately prior cross-modal experiences influenced magnitude and direction of the illusion, suggesting that aspects of oral perceptual experience are dependent upon factors outside of oral perceptual anatomy and the properties of the oral stimulus. (shrink)

Many studies have reported neural correlates of visual awareness across several brain regions, including the sensory, parietal, and frontal areas. In most of these studies, participants were instructed to explicitly report their perceptual experience through a button press or verbal report. It is conceivable, however, that explicit reporting itself may trigger specific neural responses that can confound the direct examination of the neural correlates of visual awareness. This suggests the need to assess visual awareness without explicit reporting. One way to (...) achieve this is to develop a technique to predict the visual awareness of participants based on their peripheral responses. Here, we used eye movements and pupil sizes to decode trial-by-trial changes in the awareness of a stimulus whose visibility was deteriorated due to adaptation-induced blindness. In the experiment, participants judged whether they perceived a target stimulus and rated the confidence they had in their perceptual judgment, while their eye movements and pupil sizes were recorded. We found that not only perceptual decision but also perceptual confidence can be separately decoded from the eye movement and pupil size. We discuss the potential of this technique with regard to assessing visual awareness in future neuroimaging experiments. (shrink)

A meta-analysis and an experiment show that the degree of compression of the in-depth dimension of visual space relative to the frontal dimension increases quickly as a function of the distance between the stimulus and the observer at first, but the rate of change slows beyond 7 m from the observer, reaching an apparent asymptote of about 50 %. In addition, the compression of visual space is greater for monocular and reduced cue conditions. The pattern of compression of the (...) in-depth dimension as a function of distance is similar to the ratio of in-depth to frontal visual angles of stimuli, but is not as extreme as this ratio would suggest, implying that observers are incapable of fully ignoring size information provided by cues to depth. Size and distance judgments may be described by an Affine transformation of physical space; however, the compression parameter in this model changes as a function of distance from the observer and other experimental conditions. (shrink)

Experiencing a stimulus in one sensory modality is often associated with an experience in another sensory modality. For instance, seeing a lemon might produce a sensation of sourness. This might indicate some kind of cross-modal correspondence between vision and gustation. The aim of the current study was to provide explore whether such cross-modal correspondences influence cross-modal integration during perceptual learning. To that end, we conducted 2 experiments. Using a speeded classification task, Experiment 1 established a cross-modal correspondence between visual (...) lightness and the frequency of an auditory tone. Using a short-term priming procedure, Experiment 2 showed that manipulation of such cross-modal correspondences led to the creation of a crossmodal unit regardless of the nature of the correspondence (i.e., congruent, Experiment 2a or incongruent, Experiment 2b). However, a comparison of priming-effects sizes suggested that cross-modal correspondences modulate cross-modal integration during learning and thus leading to new learned units that have different stability over time. We discuss the implications of our results for the relation between cross-modal correspondence and perceptual learning in the context of a Bayesian explanation of cross-modal correspondences. (shrink)

Providing good home-based care to people with dementia is becoming an important issue as the size of the elderly population increases. One of the main problems in providing such care is that it must be constantly provided without interruption, and this puts a great burden on caregivers, who are often family members. Networked Interaction Therapy is the name we call our methods designed to relieve the stress of people suffering from dementia as well as that of their family members. (...) This therapy aims to provide a system that interacts with people with dementia by utilizing various engaging stimuli. One such stimulus is a reminiscence video created from old photo albums, which is a promising way to hold a dementia sufferer's attention for a long time. In this paper, we present an authoring tool to assist in the production of a reminiscence video by using photo annotations. We conducted interviews with several video creators on how they used photo annotations such as date, title and subject of photos when they produced the reminiscence videos. According to the creators' comments, we have defined an ontology for representing the creators' knowledge of how to add visual effects to a reminiscence video. Subsequently, we developed an authoring tool that automatically produces a reminiscence video from the annotated photos. Subjective evaluation of the quality of reminiscence videos produced with our tool indicates that they give impressions similar to those produced by creators using conventional video editing software. The effectiveness of presenting such a video to people with dementia is also discussed. (shrink)

Miller (1956) summarized evidence that people can remember about seven chunks in short-term memory (STM) tasks. However, that number was meant more as a rough estimate and a rhetorical device than as a real capacity limit. Others have since suggested that there is a more precise capacity limit, but that it is only three to five chunks. The present target article brings together a wide variety of data on capacity limits suggesting that the smaller capacity limit is real. Capacity limits (...) will be useful in analyses of information processing only if the boundary conditions for observing them can be carefully described. Four basic conditions in which chunks can be identified and capacity limits can accordingly be observed are: (1) when information overload limits chunks to individual stimulus items, (2) when other steps are taken specifically to block the recoding of stimulus items into larger chunks, (3) in performance discontinuities caused by the capacity limit, and (4) in various indirect effects of the capacity limit. Under these conditions, rehearsal and long-term memory cannot be used to combine stimulus items into chunks of an unknown size; nor can storage mechanisms that are not capacity-limited, such as sensory memory, allow the capacity-limited storage mechanism to be refilled during recall. A single, central capacity limit averaging about four chunks is implicated along with other, noncapacity-limited sources. The pure STM capacity limit expressed in chunks is distinguished from compound STM limits obtained when the number of separately held chunks is unclear. Reasons why pure capacity estimates fall within a narrow range are discussed and a capacity limit for the focus of attention is proposed. Key Words: attention; enumeration; information chunks; memory capacity; processing capacity; processing channels; serial recall; short-term memory; storage capacity; verbal recall; working memory capacity. (shrink)

This article seeks the origin, in the theories of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), Descartes, and Berkeley, of two-stage theories of spatial perception, which hold that visual perception involves both an immediate representation of the proximal stimulus in a two-dimensional ‘‘sensory core’’ and also a subsequent perception of the three dimensional world. The works of Ibn al-Haytham, Descartes, and Berkeley already frame the major theoretical options that guided visual theory into the twentieth century. The field of visual perception was the first (...) area of what we now call psychology to apply mathematics, through geometrical models as used by Euclid, Ptolemy, Ibn al-Haytham, and Descartes (among others). The article shows that Kepler’s discovery of the retinal image, which revolutionized visual anatomy and entailed fundamental changes in visual physiology, did not alter the basic structure of theories of spatial vision. These changes in visual physiology are advanced especially in Descartes' Dioptrics and his L'Homme. Berkeley develops a radically empirist theory vision, according to which visual perception of depth is learned through associative processes that rely on the sense of touch. But Descartes and Berkeley share the assertion that there is a two-dimensional sensory core that is in principle available to consciousness. They also share the observation that we don't usually perceived this core, but find depth and distance to be phenomenally immediate, a point they struggle to accommodate theoretically. If our interpretation is correct, it was not a change in the theory of the psychology of vision that engendered the idea of a sensory core, but rather the introduction of the theory into a new metaphysical context. (shrink)

A meta-analysis was conducted to compare perceptions of Duchenne smiles, smiles that include activation of the cheek raiser muscle that creates crow's feet around the eyes, with perceptions of non-Duchenne smiles, smiles without cheek raiser activation. In addition to testing the overall effect, moderator analyses were conducted to test how methodological, stimulus-specific and perceiver-specific differences between studies predicted the overall effect size. The meta-analysis found that, overall, Duchenne smiles and people producing Duchenne smiles are rated more positively (i.e., (...) authentic, genuine, real, attractive, trustworthy) than non-Duchenne smiles and people producing non-Duchenne smiles. The difference between Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiles was greater when the stimuli were videos rather than photographs, when smiles were elicited naturally rather than through posing paradigms and when Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiles were not matched for intensity of the lip corner puller in addition to other perceiver and methodological moderators. (shrink)