Perception最新文献

A novel motion stimulus is perceived to last longer than the subsequent motion stimulus moving in the opposite direction. A previous study suggested that the discrepancy in the processing latency for different onset types, as measured by reaction time, may play a role in this duration expansion. The present study examined whether the speed of motion stimuli influences this duration expansion. Experiment 1 demonstrated that the duration expansion ceased to occur when the stimulus speed increased. Experiment 2 showed that the increase in the speed reduced the reaction time for various onset types. However, the size of the changes in the reaction time did not match the reduction in the magnitude of the duration expansion observed in Experiment 1. These results suggest that the increase in speed eliminates the duration expansion of the novel motion stimulus, but the difference in the processing latency alone may not be the sole mechanism.

This study aimed to investigate the perception of loudness in response to changes in fundamental frequency (F0) in spoken sounds, as well as the influence of linguistic background on this perceptual process. The results revealed that participants perceived changes in F0 to have accompanying changes in loudness, with a trend of lower F0 sounds being perceived as louder than higher F0 sounds. This finding contrasts with previous studies on pure tones, where increases in frequency typically led to increases in loudness. Furthermore, the study examined differences between two distinct groups of participants: Chinese-speaking and English-speaking individuals. It was observed that English-speaking participants exhibited a greater sensitivity to minor intensity changes compared to Chinese-speaking participants. This discrepancy in sensitivity suggests that linguistic background may play a significant role in shaping the perception of loudness in spoken sound. The study's findings contribute to our understanding of how F0 variations are perceived in terms of loudness, and highlight the potential impact of language experience on this perceptual process.

Knowing where the body is in space requires reference to a stored model of the size and shape of body parts, termed the body model. This study sought to investigate the characteristics of the implicit body model of the trunk by assessing the position sense of midline and lateral body landmarks. Sixty-nine healthy participants localised midline and lateral body landmarks on their thorax, waist and hips, with perceived positions of these landmarks compared to actual positions. This study demonstrates evidence of a significant distortion of the implicit body model of the trunk, presenting as a squatter trunk, wider at the waist and hips. A significant difference was found between perceived and actual location in the horizontal (x) and vertical (y) directions for the majority of trunk landmarks. Evidence of a rightward bias was noted in the perception of six of the nine body landmarks in the horizontal (x) direction, including all midline levels. In the vertical (y) direction, a substantial inferior bias was evident at the thorax and waist. The implicit body model of the trunk is shown to be distorted, with the lumbar spine (waist-to-hip region) held to be shorter and wider than reality.

Viewing multiple images of a newly encountered face improves recognition of that identity in new instances. Studies examining face learning have presented high-variability (HV) images that incorporate changes that occur from moment-to-moment (e.g., head orientation and expression) and over time (e.g., lighting, hairstyle, and health). We examined whether low-variability (LV) images (i.e., images that incorporate only moment-to-moment changes) also promote generalisation of learning such that novel instances are recognised. Participants viewed a single image, six LV images, or six HV images of a target identity before being asked to recognise novel images of that identity in a face matching task (training stimuli remained visible) or a memory task (training stimuli were removed). In Experiment 1 (n = 71), participants indicated which image(s) in 8-image arrays belonged to the target identity. In Experiment 2 (n = 73), participants indicated whether sequentially presented images belonged to the target identity. Relative to the single-image condition, sensitivity to identity improved and response biases were less conservative in the HV condition; we found no evidence of generalisation of learning in the LV condition regardless of testing protocol. Our findings suggest that day-to-day variability in appearance plays an essential role in acquiring expertise with a novel face.

Our percept of the world is not solely determined by what we perceive and process at a given moment in time, but also depends on what we processed recently. In the present study, we investigate whether the perceived emotion of a spoken sentence is contingent upon the emotion of an auditory stimulus on the preceding trial (i.e., serial dependence). Thereto, participants were exposed to spoken sentences that varied in emotional affect by changing the prosody that ranged from 'happy' to 'fearful'. Participants were instructed to rate the emotion. We found a positive serial dependence for emotion processing whereby the perceived emotion was biased towards the emotion on the preceding trial. When we introduced 'no-go' trials (i.e., no rating was required), we found a negative serial dependence when participants knew in advance to withhold their response on a given trial (Experiment 2) and a positive serial dependence when participants received the information to withhold their response after the stimulus presentation (Experiment 3). We therefore established a robust serial dependence for emotion processing in speech and introduce a methodology to disentangle perceptual from post-perceptual processes. This approach can be applied to the vast majority of studies investigating sequential dependencies to separate positive from negative serial dependence.

A form of repetition blindness in visually unimpaired individuals was found for objects presented during saccades. Observers were asked to draw their percepts after making saccades across an LED strip that "painted" an image on their retinas by presenting sequential columns of a bitmap at a speed to match a 30-degree saccade. During experimental trials, repetitions of a single letter (either "A," "X," "H," or "V") were presented across saccades. Although an average of six letters were presented across each saccade, observers typically indicated perceiving only a single instance of the letter in their drawings. This inability to perceive multiple instances of a letter was not due to a limited region of attentional processing, as it only attained for multiple instances along the axis of the saccade-horizontal saccades did not affect perception of multiple letters along the vertical axis. This effect is likely due to selective suppression of visual areas during saccades.

To read this article, you have to constantly direct your gaze at the words on the page. If you go for a run instead, your gaze will be less constrained, so many factors could influence where you look. We show that you are likely to spend less time looking at the path just in front of you when running alone than when running with someone else, presumably because the presence of the other runner makes foot placement more critical.

During the global COVID-19 pandemic, the wearing of face masks became a common practice, raising questions about how masks affect perceptions of and behaviour towards others. Numerous studies have explored the impact of face masks on perceptions of trustworthiness, but results have been mixed and it remains unclear whether masks influence perceptions via their social meaning or their effects on facial appearance. In this study, Australian participants (N = 363) rated a series of faces which were either masked, unmasked, or occluded by a non-mask object (computer) in terms of perceived trustworthiness in 2020, 2022, or 2023. The apparent trustworthiness of unmasked faces remained stable across years, but masked faces were rated significantly more trustworthy in 2020 compared to 2022 and 2023. Furthermore, ratings of masked faces, but not unmasked faces, were correlated with participants' attitudes towards wearing masks. Faces occluded by a non-mask object were perceived to be less trustworthy than masked faces. Together, results strongly suggest the increase in perceived trustworthiness of masked faces reported in numerous studies conducted during COVID-19 were driven by positive social meanings around mask wearing rather than by their effect on facial appearance.