Psychology Commons^™

Stimulus–Response Congruency Effects Depend On Quality Of Perceptual Evidence: A Diffusion Model Account, Blaine Tomkins

Psychology Faculty Publications

Individuals often need to make quick decisions based on incomplete or “noisy” information. This requires the coordination of attentional, perceptual, cognitive, and behavioral mechanisms. This poses a challenge for isolating the unique effects of each subprocess from behavioral data, which reflect the summation of all subprocesses combined. Sequential sampling models offer a more detailed examination of behavioral data, enabling us to separate decisional and non-decisional processes at play in a task. Participants were required to identify briefly presented shapes while perceptual (duration, size, location) and response features (location-congruent/-incongruent/-neutral) of the task were manipulated. The diffusion model (Ratcliff, 1978) was used …

Crossmodal Perception Of Object Shape: A Study On The Effect Of Modal Order On Successful Shape Recognition, Ashlyn Vale

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Visual and haptic (tactile) modes of perception, while occasionally exercised independently, most often occur concurrently. The degree to which the ordering of the two modes of perception affects successful recognition of three-dimensional shapes varies. Some have found that the cross-modal orders (vision followed by haptics or vice versa) produce equal performance (Caviness, 1964; Lacey, Peters, & Sathian, 2007; Norman et al., 2006), while other researchers found visual-haptic (VH) performance to be superior to haptic-visual (HV) performance (Davidson, Abbott, & Gershenfeld, 1974; Norman, Clayton, Norman, & Crabtree, 2008). The current experiment used an old-new recognition task (with cookie cutter stimuli). In …

Driving Habits, Cognition, And Health-Related Quality Of Life In Middle-Aged And Older Adults With Hiv, Josiah J. Robinson, Tess Walker, Cierra Hopkins, Brittany Bradley, Peggy Mckie, Jennifer S. Frank, Caitlin N. Pope, Pariya L. Fazeli, David E. Vance

Graduate Center for Gerontology Faculty Publications

Cognitive impairment is known to increase with aging in people living with HIV (PLWH). Impairment in cognitive domains required for safe driving may put PLWH at risk for poor driving outcomes, decreased mobility, and health-related quality of life (HRQoL). This study described the driving behaviors of middle-aged and older PLWH and examined correlations between driving behaviors and cognitive functioning (Aim 1), and driving behaviors and HRQoL domains (Aim 2). A sample of 260 PLWH ages 40 and older completed a comprehensive assessment including a battery of cognitive tests, an HRQoL measure, and a measure of self-reported driving habits. Associations between …

Investigating How The Modularity Of Visuospatial Attention Shapes Conscious Perception Using Type I And Type Ii Signal Detection Theory, Mathieu Landry, Jason Da Silva Castanheira, Jérôme Sackur, Amir Raz

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Attention abilities rest on the coordinated interplay of multiple components. One consequence to this multifaceted account is that selection processes likely intersect with perception at various junctures. Drawing from this overarching view, the current research examines how different forms of visuospatial attention influence various aspects of conscious perception, including signal detection, signal discrimination, visual awareness, and metacognition. In this effort, we combined a double spatial cueing approach, where stimulus- and goal-driven orienting were concurrently engaged via separate cues, with Type I and Type II signal detection theoretic frameworks through five experiments. Consistent with the modular view of visuospatial attention, our …

Difficult Turned Easy: Suggestion Renders A Challenging Visual Task Simple, Mathieu Landry, Jason Da Silva Castanheira, Jérôme Sackur, Amir Raz

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Suggestions can cause some individuals to miss or disregard existing visual stimuli, but can they infuse sensory input with nonexistent information? Although several prominent theories of hypnotic suggestion propose that mental imagery can change our perceptual experience, data to support this stance remain sparse. The present study addressed this lacuna, showing how suggesting the presence of physically absent, yet critical, visual information transforms an otherwise difficult task into an easy one. Here, we show how adult participants who are highly susceptible to hypnotic suggestion successfully hallucinated visual occluders on top of moving objects. Our findings support the idea that, at …

Cosmetics Increase Skin Evenness: Evidence From Perceptual And Physical Measures, Carlota Batres, Aurélie Porcheron, Julie Latreille, Magalie Roche, Frédérique Morizot, Richard Russell

Psychology Faculty Publications

Background

Cosmetics are commonly attributed with increasing skin evenness, yet little published data characterizes the effect, either perceptually or physically. We therefore investigated whether makeup increases skin evenness using a perceptual measurement and two physical measurements of color and luminance homogeneity.

Materials and Methods

Twenty‐two French women (aged 29‐45 years) were photographed without cosmetics, with self‐applied cosmetics, and with professionally‐applied cosmetics. In Study 1, 143 participants rated skin evenness. In Study 2, each face was delineated to create regions of interest (ROI) in the cheek and forehead areas. Both ROIs were then analyzed for luminance homogeneity using an established measure …

Aging And Visual Spatial Integration, Alexia J. Higginbotham

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The current study evaluated the ability of 20 younger and 20 older adults to discriminate shapes depicted by Glass patterns. On any given trial, observers identified a particular pattern as either possessing a radial or concentric organization. Detecting a shape defined by a Glass pattern requires the successful detection of the orientations of its constituent local dipoles. In addition, long-range processes are needed to integrate the spatially separated dipoles into perceivable contours that have a particular (e.g., radial or concentric) organization. In the current experiment, the shapes were defined by either 40 or 200 oriented dipoles spread over an area …

Unimanual And Bimanual Haptic Shape Discrimination, Catherine Jane Dowell

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In the current study 24 younger adults and 24 older adults haptically discriminated natural 3-D shapes (bell peppers, Capsicum annuum) using unimanual (one hand used to explore two objects) and bimanual (both hands used, but each hand explored separate objects) successive exploration. Haptic exploration using just one hand requires somatosensory processing in only one cerebral hemisphere (the hemisphere contralateral to the hand being used), while bimanual haptic exploration requires somatosensory processing in both hemispheres. Previous studies related to curvature/shape perception have found either an advantage for unimanual exploration over bimanual exploration or no difference between the two conditions. In contrast …

Emotion Discrimination In Peripheral Vision, Hayley M. Lambert

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The recognition accuracy of emotion in faces varies depending on the discrete emotion being expressed and the location of the stimulus. More specifically, emotion detection performance declines as facial stimuli are presented further out in the periphery. Interestingly, this is not always true for faces depicting happy emotional expressions, which can be associated with maintained levels of detection. The current study examined neurophysiological responses to emotional face discrimination in the periphery. Two event-related potentials (ERPs) that can be sensitive to the perception of emotion in faces, P1 and N170, were examined using EEG data recorded from electrodes at occipitotemporal sites …

Do Clothing Style And Color Affect Our Perceptions Of Others?, Ariel M. Kershner

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

Prior research has shown that women who wear red clothing or suggestive clothing are perceived as more attractive, having greater sexual intent, and having more negative qualities than women dressed in different colors or less suggestive clothing. This bias towards perceiving sexual intent may be evolutionary or may be due to people projecting their emotions onto others. The current study builds from this research by performing a 2 (color: white or red) x 2 (clothing type: suggestive or non-suggestive) between-subjects experiment. We hypothesized that women would be perceived as more attractive and as having greater sexual intent while wearing red …

The Role Of Sleep Deprivation And Fatigue In The Perception Of Task Difficulty And Use Of Heuristics, Mindy Engle-Friedman, Gina Marie Mathew, Anastasia Martinova, Forrest Armstrong, Viktoriya Konstantinov

Publications and Research

Objectives: This study investigated the effects of sleep deprivation on perception of task difficulty and use of heuristics (mental shortcuts) compared to naturally-experienced sleep at home. Methods: Undergraduate students were screened and assigned through block-random assignment to Naturally-Experienced Sleep (NES; n=19) or Total Sleep Deprivation (TSD; n=20). The next morning, reported fatigue, perception of task difficulty, and use of “what-is-beautiful-is-good,” “greedy algorithm,” and “speed-accuracy trade-off ” heuristics were assessed. Results: NES slept for an average of 354.74 minutes (SD=72.84), or 5.91 hours. TSD rated a reading task as significantly more difficult and requiring more time than NES. TSD was …

Solving The Aperture Problem: Perception Of Coherent Motion, Lindsey Shain

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The aperture problem describes an effect by which a contoured stimulus, moving behind an aperture with both ends occluded, appears to move in a direction perpendicular to its own orientation. Mechanisms within the human visual system allow us to overcome this problem and integrate many of these locally ambiguous signals into the perception of globally coherent motion. In the current experiment, observers viewed displays composed of many straight contours, arranged in varying orientations and moving behind apertures. The total pattern of movement was consistent with a globally coherent trajectory. Observers were asked to estimate direction of global motion over a …

Global/Local Processing In Incidental Perception Of Hierarchical Structure, Mark S. Mills

Department of Psychology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The goal of the current thesis is to provide a framework for investigating and understanding visual processing of hierarchical structure (i.e., local parts nested in global wholes, such as trees nested in forests) under incidental processing conditions—that is, where processing of information at global and local levels is both uninformative (cannot aid task performance) and task-irrelevant (need not be processed to perform the task). To do so, a novel method combining two widely-used paradigms (spatial cueing and compound stimulus paradigms) is used for implicitly probing observers’ perceptual representations over the course of processing. This compound arrow cueing paradigm was used …

Parents And Teachers’ Perceptions And Clinical Diagnosis Of Autism Among White And Non-White Groups, Margaret Gopaul

School of Psychology Publications

The pervasiveness of autism has significantly increased over the past 2 decades with the 2014 Center for Disease Control and Prevention report indicating 1 in 68 children are diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Early intervention is recommended as the most effective treatment approach. Nevertheless, previous research has indicated that White children are diagnosed with ASD about 1.5 years earlier than are Non-White children. A current gap remains in literature regarding ASD and different racial groups, and evidence has been inconclusive regarding disparities in identifying and diagnosing ASD. To fill this gap, this study investigated the relationship between child race, …

Age-Related Differences In Vehicle Control And Eye Movement Patterns At Intersections: Older And Middle-Aged Drivers, Yusuke Yamani, William J. Horrey, Yulan Liang, Donald L. Fisher

Psychology Faculty Publications

Older drivers are at increased risk of intersection crashes. Previous work found that older drivers execute less frequent glances for detecting potential threats at intersections than middle-aged drivers. Yet, earlier work has also shown that an active training program doubled the frequency of these glances among older drivers, suggesting that these effects are not necessarily due to age-related functional declines. In light of findings, the current study sought to explore the ability of older drivers to coordinate their head and eye movements while simultaneously steering the vehicle as well as their glance behavior at intersections. In a driving simulator, older …

Parents And Teachers’ Perceptions And Clinical Diagnosis Of Autism Among White And Non-White Groups, Margaret Gopaul

Walden Faculty and Staff Publications

The pervasiveness of autism has significantly increased over the past 2 decades with the 2014 Center for Disease Control and Prevention report indicating 1 in 68 children are diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Early intervention is recommended as the most effective treatment approach. Nevertheless, previous research has indicated that White children are diagnosed with ASD about 1.5 years earlier than are Non-White children. A current gap remains in literature regarding ASD and different racial groups, and evidence has been inconclusive regarding disparities in identifying and diagnosing ASD. To fill this gap, this study investigated the relationship between child race, …

Dynamic Tactile Information Is Sufficient For Precise Curvature Discrimination, Jacob R. Cheeseman

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Our tactile perceptual experiences occur when we interact, actively and passively, with environmental objects and surfaces. Previous research has demonstrated that active manual exploration enhances the tactile perception of object shape. Nevertheless, the factors that contribute to this enhancement are not well understood. The present study evaluated the ability of 14 older adults to discriminate curved surfaces by actively feeling objects with a single index finger and by passively feeling objects that moved relative to a restrained finger. The curvature discrimination thresholds obtained for passive-dynamic touch were significantly lower than those that occurred during active-dynamic touch. This result demonstrates that …

How To Go Beyond The Body: An Introduction, Guy Dove

Faculty Scholarship

Embodied cognition represents one of most important theoretical developments in contemporary cognitive science. Many cognitive processes appear to be influenced by body morphology, emotions, and sensorimotor systems. This perspective is supported by an ever increasing collection of empirical studies that fall into two broad classes: one consisting of experiments that implicate action, emotion, and perception systems in seemingly abstract cognitive tasks and the other consisting of experiments that demonstrate the contribution of bodily interaction with the external environment to the performance of such tasks.

Now that embodied cognition is fairly well established, the time seems right for assessing its further …

The Perception Of Symmetry In Depth: Effect Of Symmetry Plane Orientation, Bart Farell

Biomedical and Chemical Engineering - All Scholarship

The visual system is sensitive to symmetries in the frontoparallel plane, and bilateral symmetry about a vertical axis has a particular salience. However, these symmetries represent only a subset of the symmetries realizable in three-dimensional space. The retinal image symmetries formed when viewing natural objects are typically the projections of three-dimensional objects—animals, for example—that have a symmetry in depth. To characterize human sensitivity to depth symmetry, experiments measured observers’ ability to discriminate stereo displays that were symmetrically distributed in depth and those that were asymmetrically distributed. Disparity values were distributed about one of four planes passing through the z-axis and …

Editorial: Neural Implementation Of Expertise, Merim Bilalic, Robert Langner, Guillermo J. Campitelli, Luca Turella, Wolfgang Grodd

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

How the brain enables humans to reach an outstanding level of performance typical of expertise is of great interest to cognitive neuroscience, as demonstrated by the number and diversity of the articles in this Research Topic (RT). The RT presents a collection of 23 articles written by 80 authors on traditional expertise topics such as sport, board games, and music, but also on the expertise aspects of everyday skills, such as language and the perception of faces and objects. Just as the topics in the RT are diverse, so are the neuroimaging techniques employed and the article formats. Here we …

Short-Term Visual Deprivation, Tactile Acuity, And Haptic Solid Shape Discrimination, Charles E. Crabtree

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The visual cortex of human observers changes its functionality in response to visual deprivation (Boroojerdi et al., 2000). Behavioral studies have recently documented enhanced tactile abilities following a short period of visual deprivation (Facchini & Aglioti, 2003; Weisser, Stilla, Peltier, Hu, & Sathian, 2005). The current study investigated the effects of visual deprivation on two unique tactile tasks. While Facchini and Aglioti observed significant effects of visual deprivation, neither Wong, Hackeman, Hurd, and Goldreich (2011) nor Merabet et al. (2008) observed these effects. Corroborating these more recent results, no difference in grating orientation discrimination performance was observed between the sighted …

Touch-Screen Technology For The Dynamic Display Of 2d Spatial Information Without Vision: Promise And Progress, Roberta L. Klatzky, Nicholas A. Giudice, Christopher R. Bennett, Jack M. Loomis

Spatial Information Science and Engineering Faculty Scholarship

Many developers wish to capitalize on touch-screen technology for developing aids for the blind, particularly by incorporating vibrotactile stimulation to convey patterns on their surfaces, which otherwise are featureless. Our belief is that they will need to take into account basic research on haptic perception in designing these graphics interfaces. We point out constraints and limitations in haptic processing that affect the use of these devices. We also suggest ways to use sound to augment basic information from touch, and we include evaluation data from users of a touch-screen device with vibrotactile and auditory feedback that we have been developing, …

Examining The Relationship Between Familiarity And Reliability Of Automation In The Cockpit, Rian Mehta, Steven Rice, Scott Winter

Publications

This study sought to determine the correlation between familiarity and perceptions of reliability, as associated to specific aviation-related automated devices. Participants’ experience levels ranged from non-pilots to novice pilots to certified flight instructors. It was hypothesized that familiarity has a direct correlation with ratings of reliability for various aviation-related automated devices and that the correlation across devices for each participant would be positive. The researchers expected to find a difference in the familiarity-reliability relationship as a function of experience. Findings showed that there was a significant positive correlation between familiarity and reliability for every single automated device. A positive correlation …

The Influence Of Spatial Distance Priming On Test Anxiety And Judgments, Eric R Raap

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This paper examined the effects of distance priming on test anxiety and judgment. Research suggests that individuals’ perceived distance can impact their affect and judgments, which sheds light on the principle of “distance equals safety” (Williams & Bargh, 2008). Taking an exam invokes both cognitive and emotional anxiety, such as worry, panic, and tension. It is hypothesized that the distance priming may reduce test anxiety—particularly, the emotionality aspect—as well as perceived test difficulty. The results showed that, counter to the hypotheses, there was no significant difference among the three priming groups in their emotional test anxiety or perceived test difficulty. …

Memory And Production Of Standard Frequencies In College-Level Musicians, Sarah E. Weber

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This thesis examines the nature of long-term absolute pitch memory—an ability traditionally assumed to belong only to absolute pitch (AP) possessors—by testing for evidence of this memory for “standard” frequencies in musicians without AP. Standard frequencies, those based on the equally tempered system with A = 440 Hz, are common in the sonic environment of the Western college musical education, and thus could have the opportunity to penetrate listeners’ long-term memories. Through four experimental tasks, this thesis examines musicians’ ability to recognize and produce frequencies from the set of equally tempered frequencies based on A = 440 Hz, without regard …

Evaluating The Convergent Validity Of The Measure Of Emotional Connotations, Daniel N. Erosa

McNair Poster Presentations

The Measure of Emotional Connotations (MEC; Barchard, Kirsch, Anderson, Grob, & Anderson, 2012) is a new test that has been developed to measure the ability to perceive the emotional connotations of written language. To examine its convergent validity, the MEC will be correlated with the two emotion perception tasks on the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT; Mayer, Salovey, Caruso, & Sitarenious, 2003). These MSCEIT tasks are valid tests of emotion perception; thus, strong correlations would provide support for the MEC as a valid test of emotion perception.

Stereoscopic Vision's Impact On Spatial Ability Testing, George Takahashi

Purdue Polytechnic Masters Theses

A look into spatial ability testing tools and the variations that past researchers made to focus on key factors that affect test scores, will demonstrate the need for tuning traditional testing methods to accommodate a wider demographic and provide more accurate results. Due to technological limitations of the time, a large variety of past spatial tests were developed by hand-drawings. Within this research, the addition of stereoscopic vision is analyzed to determine the value of said changes on human perception of spatial entities.

Investigating Intrinsic And Extrinsic Variables During Simulated Internet Search, Molly M. Liechty, Poornima Madhaven

Psychology Faculty Publications

Using an eye tracker we examined decision-making processes during an internet search task. Twenty experienced homebuyers and twenty-five undergraduates from Old Dominion University viewed homes on a simulated real estate website. Several of the homes included physical properties that had the potential to negatively impact individual perceptions. These negative externalities were either easy to change (Level 1) or impossible to change (Level 2). Eye movements were analyzed to examine the relationship between participants' "stated preferences"[verbalized preferences], "revealed preferences" [actual decisions[, and experience. Dwell times, fixation durations/counts, and saccade counts/amplitudes were analyzed. Results revealed that experienced homebuyers demonstrated a more refined …

The Visual Perception Of Elasticity, Elizabeth Y. Wiesemann

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Two experiments were designed to evaluate human sensitivity to elasticity. Elastic objects bend when a force is applied to them. Observers saw two computer-generated bending rods (defined by the motions of 50 dots) on any given trial and were required to judge which rod was more flexible. Elasticity difference thresholds were calculated for each observer for each of three bending conditions. The rods bent in a plane that was either frontoparallel or oriented 42.5 or 85 degrees from frontoparallel. The results showed that observers could precisely discriminate between bending rods of different elasticities, independent of whether the bendings occurred in …