I-Perception最新文献

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.

Earlier research has shown that seven-month-old infants prefer to look at real objects over their referents. Which visual cues determine that preference? Motivated by research on adult observers highlighting the significance of motion parallax over other depth cues contributing to a sense of presence and place, we tested the hypothesis that motion parallax alone is sufficient to cause preferential looking to real objects in infants. We presented pairs of displays of toys in different formats: (a) The real three-dimensional toy; (b) a realistic image of that toy presented on screen; (c) the same image, but with added depth-from-motion-parallax. Infants preferred (a) over (b) (57% vs. 43%, p < .01) and (c) over (b) (52% vs. 48%, p < .05), but showed no significant preference between (a) and (c) (51% vs. 49%, n.s.). This supports the hypothesis that motion parallax alone can induce a looking preference comparable to that observed for real objects.

Olfactory function plays a vital role in daily life but tends to decline with age, affecting health and wellbeing. While previous studies suggest a link between physical activities and olfactory function in older adults, the relationship between cognitive activity and olfactory function remains unclear, as do the combined effects of both activities. This cross-sectional study examined associations between physical and cognitive activity and three domains of olfaction (identification, sensitivity, and memory) in 583 community-dwelling older adults. Both types of activity were positively associated with overall olfactory performance. Physical activity exhibited the strongest link with olfaction identification, while cognitive activity was more closely related to olfaction memory. Furthermore, participants engaging in moderate-to-high levels of both activities achieved the best overall olfactory scores. These findings suggest that a combined lifestyle of physical exertion and cognitive engagement may help preserve olfactory function in aging, with implications for autonomy, safety, and quality of life.

The rise of social media has raised concerns about its addictive potential and impairments in mental health and cognitive functions, including distortions in time processing. Emerging evidence suggests social media addicts tend to misestimate the amount of time spent using social media, hinting at possible problems with their cognitive time-processing. This study aimed to investigate the impact of social media addiction on basic time perception using controlled experimental paradigms. Forty participants scoring ≥24 on the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale with ≥5 hr daily usage were recruited, alongside 40 controls. After excluding individuals craving, fear of missing out for social media, or test anxiety during experiment, final samples included 36 addicts and 37 controls. Time reproduction (motor timing) and bisection (perceptual timing) tasks were administered, distinguishing subsecond (<1 s) and suprasecond (>1 s) intervals. Tasks used neutral gray stimuli to avoid social media cues and included pretask rest to control physiological arousal. Social media addicts exhibited significant deficits in suprasecond bisection task, demonstrated by lower subjective equality points (1,430.69 vs. 1,549.32 ms) and higher Weber ratios (0.41 vs. 0.29), indicating both time overestimation and reduced time sensitivity. No significant group differences were observed in reproduction tasks or in subsecond bisection task. These findings establish that social media addiction selectively impairs suprasecond perceptual timing, characterized by overestimation and diminished sensitivity. These findings establish a novel cognitive deficit linked to addictive social media use, with potential clinical implications for intervention strategies targeting distorted time processing.