Current advancements in both technology and science allow us to manipulate our sensory modalities in new and unexpected ways. In the present study, we explore the potential of expanding what we ...perceive through our natural senses by utilizing a visual-to-auditory sensory substitution device (SSD), the EyeMusic, an algorithm that converts images to sound. The EyeMusic was initially developed to allow blind individuals to create a spatial representation of information arriving from a video feed at a slow sampling rate. In this study, we aimed to use the EyeMusic for the blind areas of sighted individuals. We use it in this initial proof-of-concept study to test the ability of sighted subjects to combine visual information with surrounding auditory sonification representing visual information. Participants in this study were tasked with recognizing and adequately placing the stimuli, using sound to represent the areas outside the standard human visual field. As such, the participants were asked to report shapes' identities as well as their spatial orientation (front/right/back/left), requiring combined visual (90° frontal) and auditory input (the remaining 270°) for the successful performance of the task (content in both vision and audition was presented in a sweeping clockwise motion around the participant). We found that participants were successful at a highly above chance level after a brief 1-h-long session of online training and one on-site training session of an average of 20 min. They could even draw a 2D representation of this image in some cases. Participants could also generalize, recognizing new shapes they were not explicitly trained on. Our findings provide an initial proof of concept indicating that sensory augmentation devices and techniques can potentially be used in combination with natural sensory information in order to expand the natural fields of sensory perception.
Intuitive network topology Yousif, Sami R; Brannon, Elizabeth M
Journal of experimental psychology. General,
2024-May-30, 2024-05-30, 20240530
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Topology is the branch of mathematics that seeks to understand and describe spatial relations. A number of studies have examined the human perception of topology-in particular, whether adults and ...young children perceive and differentiate objects based on features like closure, boundedness, and emptiness. Topology is about more than "wholes and holes," however; it also offers an efficient language for representing network structure. Topological maps, common for subway systems across the world, are an example of how effective this language can be. Inspired by this idea, here we examine "intuitive network topology." We first show that people readily differentiate objects based on several different features of topological networks. We then show that people both remember and match objects in accordance with their topology, over and above substantial variation in their surface features. These results demonstrate that humans possess an intuitive understanding for the basic topological features of networks, and hint at the possibility that topology may serve as a format for representing relations in the mind. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
Reports the retraction of "Guidance of spatial attention by incidental learning and endogenous cuing" by Yuhong V. Jiang, Khena M. Swallow and Gail M. Rosenbaum (
, 2013Feb, Vol 391, 285-297). The ...retraction is at the request of the authors. There was an unintentional error in the MATLAB experimental script used for Experiment 5 that caused one experimental condition to be incorrectly recorded in the data files. The authors confirmed that the MATLAB scripts used for Experiments 1 and 2 did not contain any errors and the findings and conclusions remain valid. However, for Experiments 3 and 4, the programming error led to two issues: (a) one variable was incorrectly written to the data files, and (b) the actual number of trials per condition during the training phase was unbalanced. To ensure that the scientific record is adequately corrected, the authors have uploaded additional information, including the MATLAB scripts for all experiments, the reanalysis of the data from Experiments 3, 4, and 5, and the validation of Experiments 1 and 2, to this OSF repository: https://osf.io/k79j4/?view_only=2220d62d0bb643f9b4ca53 e7a6da872f. The first author of the paper, who programmed the MATLAB scripts, takes full responsibility for the error. The authors sincerely regret this error and apologize for its effects on the editors, reviewers, and the broader scientific community. All authors of the original article joined in the request for the retraction. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2012-09470-001). Our visual system is highly sensitive to regularities in the environment. Locations that were important in one's previous experience are often prioritized during search, even though observers may not be aware of the learning. In this study we characterized the guidance of spatial attention by incidental learning of a target's spatial probability, and examined the interaction between endogenous cuing and probability cuing. Participants searched for a target (T) among distractors (Ls). The target was more often located in one region of the screen than in others. We found that search reaction time (RT) was faster when the target appeared in the high-frequency region rather than the low-frequency regions. This difference increased when there were more items on the display, suggesting that probability cuing guides spatial attention. Additional data indicated that on their own, probability cuing and endogenous cuing (e.g., a central arrow that predicted a target's location) were similarly effective at guiding attention. However, when both cues were presented at once, probability cuing was largely eliminated. Thus, although both incidental learning and endogenous cuing can effectively guide attention, endogenous cuing takes precedence over incidental learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
People spontaneously produce gestures during speaking and thinking. The authors focus here on gestures that depict or indicate information related to the contents of concurrent speech or thought ...(i.e., representational gestures). Previous research indicates that such gestures have not only communicative functions, but also self-oriented cognitive functions. In this article, the authors propose a new theoretical framework, the gesture-for-conceptualization hypothesis, which explains the self-oriented functions of representational gestures. According to this framework, representational gestures affect cognitive processes in 4 main ways: gestures activate, manipulate, package, and explore spatio-motoric information for speaking and thinking. These four functions are shaped by gesture's ability to schematize information, that is, to focus on a small subset of available information that is potentially relevant to the task at hand. The framework is based on the assumption that gestures are generated from the same system that generates practical actions, such as object manipulation; however, gestures are distinct from practical actions in that they represent information. The framework provides a novel, parsimonious, and comprehensive account of the self-oriented functions of gestures. The authors discuss how the framework accounts for gestures that depict abstract or metaphoric content, and they consider implications for the relations between self-oriented and communicative functions of gestures.
The use of immersive virtual reality has been considered a beneficial strategy for architectural design. Many studies on this topic, however, avoid discussing the extent to which this technology ...offers better support to design practices compared to non-immersive virtual reality platforms. Nonetheless, this knowledge is precisely what would justify a wider adoption of immersive systems by the AEC industry. In this context, this study sought to quantitatively verify the ability of a particular immersive system in providing users with a better spatial understanding of the virtual mock-up. The method compares users' spatial perception using a conventional workstation versus an immersive platform. Findings indicate an overall better spatial perception of the virtual model when using the immersive environment. The study concludes that the immersive environment may benefit current design practices by improving professionals' understanding of the spatial arrangement of the virtual model.
•Use of spatial perception as a metric to establish the technology effectiveness.•Comparison of users spatial perception of virtual model using different VR systems.•Immersive VR provided overall better spatial perception over non-immersive VR.•Professional experience and age may affect spatial perception with immersive VR.
Stereo image super-resolution exploits additional features from cross view image pairs for high resolution (HR) image reconstruction. Recently, several new methods have been proposed to investigate ...cross view features along epipolar lines to enhance the visual perception of recovered HR images. Despite the impressive performance of these methods, global contextual features from cross view images are left unexplored. In this paper, we propose a cross view capture network (CVCnet) for stereo image super-resolution by using both global contextual and local features extracted from both views. Specifically, we design a cross view block to capture diverse feature embeddings from the views in stereo vision. In addition, a cascaded spatial perception module is proposed to redistribute each location in feature maps according to the weight it occupies to make the extraction of features more effective. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our proposed CVCnet outperforms the state-of-the-art image super-resolution methods to achieve the best performance for stereo image super-resolution tasks. The source code is available at https://github.com/xyzhu1/CVCnet .
Cognitive control has been theorized operating through two distinct mechanisms, proactive and reactive control, as posited by the dual mechanism of control model. Despite its potential to explain ...cognitive control variability, the supporting evidence for this model remains inconclusive. Prior studies frequently employed the Stroop task to assess this model, manipulating the proportion congruency (PC) at the list-wide and/or item-specific levels to target proactive and reactive control, respectively. However, these manipulations have been questioned as they may invoke low-level associative learning instead of control-driven mechanisms. Although solutions have been proposed to address these concerns, they still have limitations and impracticalities. In pursuit of a clearer understanding of this issue, we manipulated proactive and reactive control simultaneously to more directly investigate their separability. We conducted two experiments using a peripheral and a perifoveal spatial Stroop task version, respectively, and we adopted state-of-the-art methodologies, leveraging trial-level multilevel modeling analytical approaches, to effectively estimate the Stroop effect and its control-related modulations while controlling for confounding factors. Notably, we manipulated both list-wide and item-specific PCs at the trial level, allowing for a fine-grained analysis. Our results provide compelling evidence for the existence of a list-wide, PC-dependent proactive control mechanism, influencing Stroop performance independently of reactive control and confounding factors. Additionally, an item-specific PC-dependent reactive control effect was found to influence Stroop performance only in interaction with proactive control. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the interplay between proactive and reactive control mechanisms, shedding light on the intricate nature of cognitive control.
Public Significance StatementOur study investigated how our brain manages selecting relevant information in face of distracting or conflicting stimuli according to the dual mechanism of control model, which suggests that we use two distinct strategies, proactive and reactive control. We found that proactive control is dominant when handling cognitive conflict. This understanding may help develop strategies for better decision making and focus in daily life.
People use space to conceptualize abstract domains like time and number. This tendency may be a cognitive universal, but the specifics of people's implicit space-time and space-number associations ...vary across cultures. In Western cultures, both time and numbers are arranged in people's minds along an imaginary horizontal line, from left to right, but in other cultures the directions of the mental timeline (MTL) and mental number line (MNL) are reversed. How does culture shape our abstract concepts? Using time and number as a testbed, we propose and test a general principle, which we call the CORrelations in Experience (CORE) principle, according to which different aspects of experience should selectively affect different abstract concepts. Across 3 training experiments, the MTL was shaped by experiences that provide a correlation between space and time, whereas the MNL was shaped by experiences that provide a correlation between space and number. These findings reveal that the MTL and MNL have distinct experiential bases, supporting the CORE principle and challenging the widespread claim that both mappings are determined by a common set of cultural experiences (e.g., reading, writing, visual scanning). The CORE principle provides an account of how domains like time and number, universal fixtures of the natural world, can be conceptualized in culture-specific ways: People spatialize abstract domains in their minds according to the ways those domains are spatialized in their experience.
We examined whether shifting attention to a location necessarily entails extracting the features at that location, a process referred to as attentional engagement. In three spatial-cuing experiments ...(N = 60), we found that an onset cue captured attention both when it shared the target’s color and when it did not. Yet the effects of the match between the response associated with the cued object’s identity and the response associated with the target (compatibility effects), which are diagnostic of attentional engagement, were observed only with relevant-color onset cues. These findings demonstrate that stimulus- and goal-driven capture have qualitatively different consequences: Before attention is reoriented to the target, it is engaged to the location of the critical distractor following goal-driven capture but not stimulus-driven capture. The reported dissociation between attentional shifts and attentional engagement suggests that attention is best described as a camera: One can align its zoom lens without pressing the shutter button.
The study aimed to: Constructing a scale of spatial perception of futsal players.Establishing standard degrees and levels for the spatial perception scale for futsal players. The researchers used ...the descriptive approach with its survey for its convenience to the research nature, While the research community determined of the players of the Iraqi Premier League clubs in futsal for the season (2020-2021), which numbered (220) players , Where the research sample consisted of (160) players representing approximately (73%) of the research community, and the research sample was divided into two samples (construction and application), the construction sample included (80) players, and the application sample included (40) players . The researchers used content analysis, questionnaire, and personal interview as means of data collection, and for the purpose of constructing the spatial perception scale, the researchers followed all the scientific steps in constructing the scales , Which resulted in reaching the construction of the spatial perception scale for futsal players in its final form, which consists of (25) items, The statistical means that were calculated by the statistical program (SPSS) for the purposes of the research were limited to (percentage, arithmetic mean, standard deviation, simple correlation coefficient, skew modulus, and standard score 6 sigma).The researchers reached the following conclusions:The spatial perception scale of the futsal players in the Iraqi Premier League was constructed, and it consisted of 25 items.The grades and standard levels of the spatial perception scale for futsal players in the Iraqi Premier League were established.Variation of spatial perception of futsal players.The researchers recommended a set of recommendations,here are the most important ones: Adopting the spatial awareness scale that was produced by the study in evaluating the spatial awareness level of the advanced futsal players.Adopting the standard tables of the spatial awareness scale in giving the levels to the players.Preparing standard tables for the spatial perception scale produced by the study for young players.Constructing scales of spatial perception for other team activities.Working to raise the level of spatial awareness of futsal players in the Iraqi Premier League.
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