When Physical and Social Distances Produce An Analogical Perceptual Bias in the Ebbinghaus Illusion

Juliette Gasquet,Kévin Moinier,Vincent Murday

doi:10.26417/ejis.v4i2a.p52-58

Abstract

Highlights

Grounded theory argues that perceptual and conceptual processes share common sensorimotor properties and they influence each other, in such manner that memory can bias perceptual processing and perception can bias memory processing (Barsalou, 2008; Goldstone, de Leeuw, & Landy, 2015; van Dantzig, Pecher, Zeelenberg, & Barsalou, 2008)
A grounded perspective assumes that situations in which these cognitive activities are involved are not independent of the emergent sensorimotor state, insofar as a given situation, lived or represented, is an integral part of these cognitive activities (Barsalou, 2008; Niedenthal, Barsalou, Winkielman, Krauth-Gruber, & Ric, 2005; Semin & Smith, 2013). When these principles are applied to the social cognition, it is not surprising to observe that to experiment or represent a social situation, such as ostracism (Zhong & Leonardelli, 2008) or feeling of social power (Yap, Mason, & Ames, 2013), leads to a similar perceptual bias of physical features of the environment or others
The present study aims to examine this analogical influence on the judgements of an object’s size by using an Ebbinghaus illusion basedparadigm, which has been shown as an useful tool to investigate the reciprocity of perceptual and memory processing

Summary

Introduction

Grounded theory argues that perceptual and conceptual processes share common sensorimotor properties and they influence each other, in such manner that memory can bias perceptual processing and perception can bias memory processing (Barsalou, 2008; Goldstone, de Leeuw, & Landy, 2015; van Dantzig, Pecher, Zeelenberg, & Barsalou, 2008). The inducers disks were displayed in a physically identical size, but in different colours such as previously presented (i.e., red or blue) Their results indicated that the learned colorsize associations have biased the perceptual judgements of size, in such way that the inducers’ size has been influenced by the reactivated memory size (for similar results, see Rey, Vallet, Riou, Lesourd, & Versace, 2015). Distance-physical cues appear to be deeply linked to social concepts (Knowles et al, 2014; Robinson et al, 2008; Schubert, 2005; Williams & Bargh, 2008); if so, the distance between components of the Ebbinghaus illusion figure, whether it is perceptually or conceptually based, should leading to an analogical perceptual bias To test this assumption, we used an Ebbinghaus illusion based-paradigm, in which the size-contrast perceptual bias was induced either by a perceptual physical distance (Experiment 1) or conceptual social distance (Experiment 2) between the central and inducers disks.

Participants

Procedure

Results and Discussion

Results & Discussion