Perception最新文献

Much of our visual experience of faces, including our own, is mediated by technology, for example when a digital photo depicts a mirror reversal of reality. How does this difference in visual experience affect judgments about appearance? Here, we asked participants to view their likeness in photographs that were reversed (as when viewed in a mirror) or not reversed (as when viewed directly). Observers also perceptually adapted (or not) to the reversed or non-reversed images in a 2 × 2 design. Observers then rated how much each photograph resembled them and how much they liked their appearance in the photograph, later repeating the procedure for images of close friends. We found that non-reversed images are perceived as more "unlike" one's self and less pleasant than reversed images; the pattern disappears when evaluating close friends, where the non-reversed image is the more familiar, with adaptation having asymmetric effects. Experiment 1A was fully replicated seven years later. These results are likely driven by a strong, albeit malleable, visual representation of self, born of technology mediated experience and activated when an unfamiliar perspective exposes facial asymmetries. We conclude by considering the downstream effects of these preferences on consumer and social behavior.

We showed to the same observers both dynamic and static 2D patterns that can both evoke distinctive perceptions of motion or optic flow, as if moving in a tunnel or into a dark hole. At all times pupil diameters were monitored with an infrared eye tracker. We found a converging set of results indicating stronger pupil dilations to expansive growth of shapes or optic flows evoking a forward motion into a dark tunnel. Multiple regression analyses showed that the pupil responses to the illusory expanding black holes of static patterns were predicted by the individuals' pupil response to optic flows showing spiraling motion or "free fall" into a black hole. Also, individuals' pupil responses to spiraling motion into dark tunnels predicted the individuals' sense of illusory expansion with the static, illusory expanding, dark holes. This correspondence across individuals between their pupil responses to both dynamic and static, illusory expanding, holes suggests that these percepts reflect a common perceptual mechanism, deriving motion from 2D scenes, and that the observers' pupil adjustments reflect the direction and strength of motion they perceive and the expected outcome of an increase in darkness.

Both visual and haptic softness perception have recently been shown to have multiple dimensions, such as deformability, granularity, fluidity, surface softness, and roughness. During haptic exploration, people adjust their hand motions (exploratory procedures, EPs) based on the material qualities of the object and the particular information they intend to acquire. Some of these EPs are also shown to be associated with perceived softness dimensions, for example, stroking a silk blouse or applying pressure to a pillow. Here, we aimed to investigate whether we can manipulate observers' judgments about softness attributes through exposure to videos of others performing various EPs on everyday soft materials. In two experiments, participants watched two videos of the same material: one with a corresponding EP and the other without correspondence; then, they judged these materials based on 12 softness-related adjectives (semantic differentiation method). The results of the second experiment suggested that when the EP is congruent with the dimension from which the material is chosen, the ratings for the adjectives from the same dimension are higher than the incongruent EP. This study provides evidence that participants can assess material properties from optic and mechanical cues without needing haptic signals. Additionally, our findings indicate that manipulating the hand motion can selectively facilitate material-related judgments.

Research on media's effects on body perception has mainly focused on the role of vision of extreme body types. However, haptics is a major part of the way children experience bodies. Playing with unrealistically thin dolls has been linked to the emergence of body image concerns, but the perceptual mechanisms remain unknown. We explore the effects of haptic experience of extreme body types on body perception, using adaptation aftereffects. Blindfolded participants judged whether the doll-like stimuli explored haptically were thinner or fatter than the average body before and after adaptation to an underweight or overweight doll. In a second experiment, participants underwent a traditional visual adaptation paradigm to extreme bodies, using stimuli matched to those in Experiment 1. For both modalities, after adaptation to an underweight body test bodies were judged as fatter. Adaptation to an overweight body produced opposite results. For the first time, we show adiposity aftereffects in haptic modality, analogous to those established in vision, using matched stimuli across visual and haptic paradigms.

Body image is a conscious representation of the body, encompassing how our body feels to us. Body image can be measured in a variety of ways, including metric and depictive measures. This study sought to assess body image at the trunk by investigating, and comparing, a metric and depictive measure. Sixty-nine healthy participants estimated their thorax, waist, and hip width by externally referencing mechanical calipers. Participants were also asked to select the true image of their trunk from a random display of nine images containing the true image and incrementally shrunken or enlarged images. Participants demonstrated evidence of thorax and waist width overestimation in the width perception task, with no evidence for hip misestimation. For the picture mapping task, the majority of participants were inaccurate. In participants who were inaccurate, approximately equal proportions underestimated and overestimated their trunk width. The two tasks were found to be independent of each other. Distortions, or inaccuracies, were apparent in a metric measure, and inaccuracies also present in a depictive measure, of body image at the trunk for healthy participants. An overestimation bias was apparent in the metric, but not depictive, task. No relationship was found between tasks..

Previous research has shown a strong link between our sense of smell and emotion. More recently, the importance we attach to olfaction has been found to relate to our susceptibility to 'catch' the emotions of others. We explore this further by examining the relation between a newly developed measure of olfaction (social odour scale, SOS), which measures awareness of social odours, and emotional contagion susceptibility in female participants. The study therefore aimed to test the strength of this relationship and also help validate the English language version of the SOS. Female (n = 148) participants completed an online study that measured odour awareness [SOS; important of odour questionnaire, IOQ] and emotional contagion (EC). We found that the English version of the SOS yielded high reliability and supported the previous factor structure of the scale; additionally, we demonstrated a strong association between the SOS and IOQ which provides criterion validity for its usage. The study also revealed that whilst both the SOS and IOQ were positively associated with EC, the SOS was the more accurate predictor. These findings provide further validation for the use of the SOS and suggest that our subjective awareness of olfaction, especially concerning 'social odours' is an accurate predictor of emotional contagion.

A variety of evidence shows that social categorization of people based on their race can lead to stereotypical judgements and prejudicial behaviour. Here, we explore the extent to which trait judgements of faces are influenced by race. To address this issue, we measured the reliability of first impressions for own-race and other-race faces in Asian and White participants. Participants viewed pairs of faces and were asked to indicate which of the two faces was more dominant or which of the two faces was more trustworthy. We measured the consistency (or reliability) of these judgements across participants for own-race and other-races faces. We found that judgements of dominance or trustworthiness showed similar levels of reliability for own-race and other-race faces. Moreover, an item analysis showed that the judgements on individual trials were very similar across participants from different races. Next, participants made overall ratings of dominance and trustworthiness from own-race and other-race faces. Again, we found that there was no evidence for an ORE. Together, these results provide a new approach to measuring trait judgements of faces and show that in these conditions there is no ORE for the perception of dominance and trustworthiness.