I-Perception最新文献

Adelson's checker-block illusion is an engaging demonstration of the difference between lightness and brightness. The illusory nature of the stimulus derives from participants' experience of the discrepancy between perceived lightness of two test patches (A, B) despite their physical luminance being identical. The identical nature of the test patches becomes apparent when cues informing the viewer of the scene's illumination and 3D structure are removed. Here we explore which cues drive the transition from 'brightness' pixel-based responses to 'lightness' material-based responses. Participants (n = 123) viewed versions of the stimulus with various components deleted (top, left and right-sides, shadows, outline-edges) under four between-subjects scenarios: with lighting direction varied (from left or right) and with the scene orientation varied (upside-down or correctly oriented). Participants indicated the perceived difference between A and B by responding on a Likert scale. Generalised linear mixed effects models were used to estimate the strength of each cue in driving the change of responses from brightness towards lightness. The lightness responses were strongest for upright images illuminated from the top-left, with panels adjacent to the test patches present. The stimuli, responses and model fits are shared as a dataset that can be tested against existing models of lightness perception.

In recent years, numerous studies demonstrating the crossmodal correspondences between individual olfactory stimuli and both auditory and visual stimuli have been published. However, most commercial perfumes are more complex (both chemically and perceptually) than individual olfactory stimuli, incorporating designated top, middle, and base notes. What is more, it is unlikely that it will be possible to discriminate effectively at a population level between hedonic responses to, and rated intensity of, most commercial perfumes (given that they are deliberately created to be pleasant and to provide an intense and long-lasting scent). Perfumes, unlike other classes of olfactory stimuli, also tend to be strongly gendered (masculine, feminine, or occasionally unisex). As such, the matching of music to fine fragrance faces different challenges than when matching music to the aromas and flavours of food and drink (a much more common application domain for crossmodal correspondences research currently). In this review, we examine the emerging literature on crossmodal correspondences to assess whether empirical findings can provide any actionable insights when it comes to assisting those wishing to design music and soundscapes that, in any meaningful sense, translate a perfume into its auditory equivalent.

We report a novel visual illusion, where a 2 × 2 two-colored checkerboard square rotating against an identical background appears to morph into a circle with a size change. This illusion can be categorized as a subtype of the breathing illusion (BI) based on its phenomenological characteristics. However, it also exhibits intriguing features that may offer new insights into BI's underlying mechanisms, not fully captured by existing displays.

The tritone paradox is a bistable auditory phenomenon where two Shepard tones can be interpreted as either ascending or descending. Previous studies have demonstrated that preceding auditory context can bias the direction of tritone perception. Here, we systematically manipulated both the quantity (anywhere between 1 and 10) and types (higher, lower, same as first target tone, or silent) of context tones before presenting a target tritone pair. We found that the contextual biasing effect can emerge with as few as 1-2 context tones, and plateaus quickly within this small window. Notably, low-frequency context tones produced a more pronounced and immediate bias than high-frequency tones. Together, this study demonstrates a narrow window of the auditory context effect, where minimal contextual cues are sufficient to guide perceptual interpretation of ambiguous auditory stimuli. The findings pave the way for more detailed investigations into the cognitive mechanisms of auditory perception, emphasizing the swift influence of immediate auditory contexts on perceptual outcomes.

Whether the adaptation effect to unidirectional motion in a visuomotor inconsistent environment has directional specificity has not yet been generalized. This study aimed to investigate whether adaptation effects, acquired from learning to move in a specific direction, manifest in subsequent movements within the same or different directions postadaptation to the mismatched environment. Participants were provided visual feedback of their arm movements, which was manipulated to either suppress or enhance their motions. Through training, participants adapted to this inconsistency between visual and motor feedback. Subsequently, they performed a reaching task with visual information blocked. Results showed that the adaptation effect persisted in postadaptation movements within the same direction as the training, even in the virtual environment. Surprisingly, this effect also extended to movements in different directions. These findings elucidate the spatial characteristics of the adaptation effects of simultaneous adaptation to both vision and motion, thereby contributing to future research in this field.

There are various ways to evoke stereopsis without binocular disparities. Closing one eye, or looking through a synopter are well-known methods. Ames (1925) listed nine ways of generating this so-called ''plastic effect," one of which involves a cylindrically curved lens placed in front of one eye. We investigated qualitative perceptual effects of this particular way of viewing artworks. A total of 38 participants viewed three digitally reproduced paintings. Initially, they were asked to spontaneously report the perceptual effect of the lens. While being naive to the purpose of the experiment, 66% of the participants reported increased depth experience. In addition, participants reported increased contrast, color vibrancy, and material expression (e.g., increased shininess). During a second part of the experiment, we asked to report on seven qualities: depth, color, three-dimensional shape, realism, detail, light, and material. All qualities increased significantly except detail, which seemed to show idiosyncratic results: the majority of the observers experienced a decrease of detail, while a minority reported, surprisingly, an increase of detail. The results agree with previous qualitative accounts on monocular aperture viewing, despite relying on entirely different nonpictorial cues: monocular aperture viewing relies on the absence of vergence and binocular disparities, whereas the Ames' Glass relies on distorted binocular disparities while keeping vergence unchanged. Together with the synopter, for which qualitative data is lacking, the Ames Glass and monocular aperture viewing are pictorial spacecrafts fit for art gallery viewing.

This paper introduces the Mainz-Linez Illusion (MLI), a novel dynamic display in which rectilinearly moving targets appear to deviate from their true physical paths and instead give the impression of following the curves of static background elements. We attempt to relate the MLI to previously known effects and discuss possible mechanisms. We particularly focus on the possible role of negative afterimages, and speculate how their emergence and interaction with physical contours might contribute to some of the unique characteristics of the MLI. We also provide an online demo where readers can experience the effect and manipulate relevant parameters for themselves.

Happy and sad moods promote global and local visual processing, respectively. However, it is unclear whether mood also affects the processing level in haptics. Here, we used classical music to induce happy and sad moods in blindfolded participants before they scanned printed, flat 2D embossed configurations with their fingers. We also included a neutral group that did not listen to any music. Global shapes were triangles, circles, or squares (33 mm) composed of smaller local relief shapes (3 mm): either triangles, circles, or squares. Participants explored a probe stimulus with identical local and global shapes, and two comparison stimuli, matching the probe in local or global shape. They reported which comparison stimulus appeared more similar to the probe. In the "sad" group, participants chose the locally matching comparison more frequently than in the "happy" and "neutral" groups, suggesting that unpleasant mood can influence spatial preferences in haptic shape matching. Overall, participants tended to prefer global matches, indicating that under these specific conditions, global-level information may be relatively more prominent in touch.

Stereopsis, the visual experience of palpable depth and solidity, is traditionally thought to depend on the congruence or conflict amongst depth cues. But a more speculative theory is that it depends critically on being able to estimate the absolute depths of objects, and their real-world distances from us. We tested this idea in a perception class, using a picture of some plants, a cardboard box with a monocular viewing hole, and a pair of pinhole glasses. Fourteen of 16 students reported stronger stereopsis with pinhole viewing, contrary to the predictions of the absolute depth theory, but consistent with a traditional account. This classroom exercise offers an empirical challenge for the absolute depth theory, and a vivid teaching tool for the paradoxes of pictorial depth perception.

The human visual system is sensitive to statistical regularities in natural images. This includes general properties like the characteristic 1/f power-spectrum fall-off coefficient observed across diverse natural scenes and category-specific properties like the bias favoring horizontal contrast energy for face recognition. Here, we examined the sensitivity of face pareidolia in adult observers to these image properties using fractal noise images and an unconstrained pareidolic face detection task. We presented participants in separate experiments with (Experiment 1) noise patterns with varying spectral fall-off coefficients and (Experiment 2) noise patterns with bandpass orientation filtering such that either horizontal or vertical contrast energy was limited. In both experiments, we found that face pareidolia rates were sensitive to these manipulations. In Experiment 1, we found that fractal noise patterns with steeper fall-off coefficients (favoring coarser appearance) led to lower rates of pareidolic face detection. In Experiment 2, we found that despite the clear bias favoring horizontal contrast energy in a wide range of face recognition tasks, both horizontal and vertical orientation bandpass filtering reduced rates of face pareidolia relative to isotropic images. We suggest that these results indicate that detecting pareidolic faces depends on the availability of face-like information across many low-level channels rather than a favored scale or orientation that is face-specific.