Coherent Perception Research Articles

How customers construct corporate social responsibility images: Testing the moderating role of demographic characteristics

Summary This paper discusses the formation process of CSR images from a customer perspective. It analyses the influence of company-CSR coherence, motivational attribution and corporate credibility in the way customers evaluate CSR images in the banking industry. It also describes the impact of customer gender, age and educational level on the formation of CSR images. Results show that CSR images are based on customer perceptions of the company-CSR coherence, the attribution of altruistic motivations and corporate credibility when developing CSR initiatives. The findings also demonstrate that gender, age and educational level do not allow identifying differences in the way customers construct CSR images. Thus, they are not useful in segmenting customers for the design of better CSR and communication strategies.

How is the McGurk effect modulated by Cued Speech in deaf and hearing adults?

Speech perception for both hearing and deaf people involves an integrative process between auditory and lip-reading information. In order to disambiguate information from lips, manual cues from Cued Speech may be added. Cued Speech (CS) is a system of manual aids developed to help deaf people to clearly and completely understand speech visually (Cornett, 1967). Within this system, both labial and manual information, as lone input sources, remain ambiguous. Perceivers, therefore, have to combine both types of information in order to get one coherent percept. In this study, we examined how audio-visual (AV) integration is affected by the presence of manual cues and on which form of information (auditory, labial or manual) the CS receptors primarily rely. To address this issue, we designed a unique experiment that implemented the use of AV McGurk stimuli (audio /pa/ and lip-reading /ka/) which were produced with or without manual cues. The manual cue was congruent with either auditory information, lip information or the expected fusion. Participants were asked to repeat the perceived syllable aloud. Their responses were then classified into four categories: audio (when the response was /pa/), lip-reading (when the response was /ka/), fusion (when the response was /ta/) and other (when the response was something other than /pa/, /ka/ or /ta/). Data were collected from hearing impaired individuals who were experts in CS (all of which had either cochlear implants or binaural hearing aids; N = 8), hearing-individuals who were experts in CS (N = 14) and hearing-individuals who were completely naïve of CS (N = 15). Results confirmed that, like hearing-people, deaf people can merge auditory and lip-reading information into a single unified percept. Without manual cues, McGurk stimuli induced the same percentage of fusion responses in both groups. Results also suggest that manual cues can modify the AV integration and that their impact differs between hearing and deaf people.

Explaining trends in addictive behaviour policy—The role of policy coherence

This article analyses addictive behaviour policy regimes – focusing on illegal drugs and gambling – in 19 countries over a period of 50 years. It compares how these countries have combined rules on the consumption and possession of cannabis and on the participation in sports betting with sanctions for violations of these rules. While theories of policy convergence can explain dominant trends in the way the combination of these policy instruments have changed, they cannot account for all of the empirical variation observed. Turning to Portugal, a case which deviates in both illegal drug and gambling policy from the expected trend, we show that explanations of policy change improve substantially when taking the concept of policy coherence into account. Specifically, we argue that changes of the policy status quo are facilitated when policy entrepreneurs succeed in shaping a perception of policy incoherence. In turn, when relevant actors are able to maintain a perception of policy coherence, the policy status quo is stabilized.

Hearing Time in Your Movement: Synchrony and Beat Perception of Dynamic Audiovisual Rhythms

How do we perceive multisensory rhythms in a dynamic environment, such as in a ballet, where we experience the rhythm of music accompanied by the rhythm of dancers’ movements? Multisensory perception has often been examined in scenarios where the observed action produces the sounds, e.g., drumming movement paired with impact sounds. However, little is known of how the brain combines coordinated audiovisual information that is not contingent upon each other, as in dancing. Two studies reported here investigated the mechanisms that are used to integrate audiovisual temporal information in such a rhythmic context. The visual stream consisted of a point-light figure (PLF) that moved (bounced) periodically to the beat of the auditory rhythms, resembling the dance scenario.In the first study, participants judged synchrony between a bouncing PLF and a simple auditory rhythm in a synchrony judgment (SJ) task. The trajectory of the PLF was manipulated to follow two possible naturalistic motion profiles, one of human bouncing and the other of ball bouncing. Despite both being rhythmic and following the same path, the two profiles differed as to when the peak velocity occurred. Audiovisual SJ was required with regard to the same spatial position of the movement. It was found that the point of subjective simultaneity (PSS) differed between these two visual conditions, reflecting the difference in the occurrence of peak velocity. The result shows that synchrony perception was implicitly influenced by the spatiotemporal (i.e., velocity) cue in the visual movement. Specifically, peak velocity in the trajectory was taken as visual reference for the task, with which the auditory beat should coincide. This parallels previous findings that velocity cues define the beat of visual biological motion, suggesting that audiovisual synchrony perception involving rhythmic, naturalistic movements relies on the perceived visual beat.The second study investigated beat perception of concurrent auditory and visual rhythms, specifically whether a visual beat as conveyed by the bouncing PLF modulated auditory rhythm perception. A rhythm reproduction task and a rhythm perception task examined the effect of auditory, visual, and audiovisual (bimodal) beat induction on the perception of metrically complex auditory rhythms. While it proved difficult to improve the perception of these rhythms with an explicit beat in either or both modalities, likely due to syncopation, a bimodal beat led to greater on-beat than off-beat sensitivity to a temporal deviant in the rhythm, consistent with the entrainment theory. Moreover, the PLF movement had more influence than the concurrent auditory beat in this process, suggesting that a rhythmic humanlike movement can serve an effective visual beat that modulates auditory rhythm perception.Both studies demonstrate that the perceptual system extracts a visual beat from the observed, rhythmic movements to form a coherent percept with auditory rhythms. The critical feature of a visual beat for inter-sensory interaction may lie in the velocity profile of naturalistic motion. The present findings also suggest the possibility of cross-modal (visual to auditory) rhythm and beat perception, at least when appropriate visual movement stimuli are involved.

Contextual integration of visual objects necessitates attention

Objects that form a contextually coherent percept are grasped more rapidly and efficiently than objects that are contextually inconsistent with each other. The extent to which such clustering processes depend on visual attention is largely unknown. The present research examined the necessity of attention for object-to-object contextual integration processes during a brief visual glimpse. Participants performed an object classification task on associated object pairs that were presented for a short duration (59 ms). Objects were positioned either in expected relative locations (e.g., a desk lamp on a desk) or in unexpected relative locations (e.g., a desk lamp under a desk). When both stimuli were relevant to task requirements, latencies to spatially consistent object pairs were significantly shorter than those to spatially inconsistent pairs (Experiment 1). These contextual effects disappeared, however, when spatial attention was drawn to one of the two object stimuli while its counterpart object appeared outside the main focus of attention, serving as a task-irrelevant distractor (Experiment 2). Attentional modulation of contextual integration processes was shown to be independent of distractor recognition per se (Experiment 3). Finally, the role of goal-directed (endogenous) and spatial (exogenous) attention factors in contextual integration was explored (Experiment 4). Taken together, our findings suggest that contextual associations play an important role in processing multiple-object visual displays. However, regardless of whether objects are associated by active or passive relations, the construction of a coherent contextual representation strongly relies on the availability of attentional capacity. Possible implications for theories of scene and object recognition are discussed.

Perceptual integration and visual object recognition in children with high functioning autism

Background: Although defects in social and communicative functioning are the most obvious features in autistic children, there is evidence suggesting that unusual perceptual processing is at least a concomitant and possible cause of many of the behavioral signs and symptoms of autism spectrum. In the present study, the perceptual integration of autistic children was studied. These processes require perceptual coherence in visual structure in a holistic manner. Methods: 25 high-functioning autistic and 25 neuro-typical boys were assessed in term of visual perceptual processing. Visual stimuli included fragmented (incomplete) and complete object images that were presented in a monitor. The subject’s task was rapid and accurate naming of images that were seen. Responses were compared by independent t-test. Also, the effect of completeness factor and group type on the samples’ visual processing was analyzed by repeated measure analysis of variance. Results: The autistic children had lower function in naming the fragmented picture, however, both groups were equivalent in recognition of the complete image. On the other hand, all subjects in this study performed better in naming the complete images compared with the fragmented images. Also, the interaction effect of image type and group on visual processing was significant. Conclusion: Defect in recognition of fragmented images can be indicative of disturbance of processes related to visual perceptual integration in individuals with autism. Detection of these images in autistic children was significantly different from that of normal children, that indicates weakness of processes related to visual completion and perceptual integration.

Illness Perception, Religiosity and Mental Health of Diabetic Patients in Ghana

This study examines the influence of diabetic patients’ perception of their illness and their levels of religiosity on their mental health problems. A sample of 194 diabetic patients was drawn from two major hospitals (Korle-Bu Teaching and Tema General Hospitals) in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. The cross-sectional survey method was used as the study design. Results from Pearson correlation show that the diabetic patients’ level of religiosity did not significantly correlate with their mental health problems. However, illness perception correlates significantly and positively with their general mental health problem (GSI) and specific ones such as somatization, obsessive-compulsion, depression, anxiety and psychoticism. Multiple regression analyses show that level of general mental health problem (GSI) was significantly predicted by perception of illness Coherence followed by perceptions Symptoms and Concern. Similarly, perception of coherence was the most significant predictor of both depression and anxiety among diabetic patients. The implications of the findings are discussed.

The role of the parietal cortex in multisensory and response integration: evidence from transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS).

The question of how the brain forms unified representations from multisensory data that are processed in distinct cortical regions is known in the literature as 'the binding problem'. In the last decade, several studies have suggested possible neural mechanisms and brain regions that might be involved in integration processes. One of the brain regions that is implicated with multisensory perception is the posterior parietal cortex (PPC). Evidence from patients with parietal lesions suggests the involvement of the PPC in coherent perception. Here, we investigated the role of the PPC in multisensory feature integration through experimental manipulation of non-invasive brain stimulation with healthy participants using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). In different sessions, healthy participants received anodal, cathodal, or sham stimulation (2 mA, 20 min) over the right PPC while performing an audio-visual event-file task. The results underscore two interesting observations. Firstly, there was a significant difference in integration effects between features from different modalities in the anodal stimulation compared to sham, suggesting interference of the multisensory integration processes during the brain stimulation. And secondly, after anodal stimulation, the unattended feature became more likely to be integrated with the response feature compared to the other conditions, presumably through an interference of attentional processes. Hence, these findings emphasize the role of the right PPC in multisensory integration. Furthermore, from a methodological perspective, tDCS can be used as an experimental tool by creating a temporary, reversible disruption in cognitive processes in order to explore the mechanisms underlying cognitive functions.

How music alters a kiss: superior temporal gyrus controls fusiform–amygdalar effective connectivity

While watching movies, the brain integrates the visual information and the musical soundtrack into a coherent percept. Multisensory integration can lead to emotion elicitation on which soundtrack valences may have a modulatory impact. Here, dynamic kissing scenes from romantic comedies were presented to 22 participants (13 females) during functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning. The kissing scenes were either accompanied by happy music, sad music or no music. Evidence from cross-modal studies motivated a predefined three-region network for multisensory integration of emotion, consisting of fusiform gyrus (FG), amygdala (AMY) and anterior superior temporal gyrus (aSTG). The interactions in this network were investigated using dynamic causal models of effective connectivity. This revealed bilinear modulations by happy and sad music with suppression effects on the connectivity from FG and AMY to aSTG. Non-linear dynamic causal modeling showed a suppressive gating effect of aSTG on fusiform-amygdalar connectivity. In conclusion, fusiform to amygdala coupling strength is modulated via feedback through aSTG as region for multisensory integration of emotional material. This mechanism was emotion-specific and more pronounced for sad music. Therefore, soundtrack valences may modulate emotion elicitation in movies by differentially changing preprocessed visual information to the amygdala.

Trying to Move Your Unseen Static Arm Modulates Visually-Evoked Kinesthetic Illusion

Although kinesthesia is known to largely depend on afferent inflow, recent data suggest that central signals originating from volitional control (efferent outflow) could also be involved and interact with the former to build up a coherent percept. Evidence derives from both clinical and experimental observations where vision, which is of primary importance in kinesthesia, was systematically precluded. The purpose of the present experiment was to assess the role of volitional effort in kinesthesia when visual information is available. Participants (n=20) produced isometric contraction (10-20% of maximal voluntary force) of their right arm while their left arm, which image was reflected in a mirror, either was passively moved into flexion/extension by a motorized manipulandum, or remained static. The contraction of the right arm was either congruent with or opposite to the passive displacements of the left arm. Results revealed that in most trials, kinesthetic illusions were visually driven, and their occurrence and intensity were modulated by whether volitional effort was congruent or not with visual signals. These results confirm the impact of volitional effort in kinesthesia and demonstrate for the first time that these signals interact with visual afferents to offer a coherent and unified percept.

Dynamic gamma frequency feedback coupling between higher and lower order visual cortices underlies perceptual completion in humans

To perceive a coherent environment, incomplete or overlapping visual forms must be integrated into meaningful coherent percepts, a process referred to as “Gestalt” formation or perceptual completion. Increasing evidence suggests that this process engages oscillatory neuronal activity in a distributed neuronal assembly. A separate line of evidence suggests that Gestalt formation requires top-down feedback from higher order brain regions to early visual cortex. Here we combine magnetoencephalography (MEG) and effective connectivity analysis in the frequency domain to specifically address the effective coupling between sources of oscillatory brain activity during Gestalt formation. We demonstrate that perceptual completion of two-tone “Mooney” faces induces increased gamma frequency band power (55–71Hz) in human early visual, fusiform and parietal cortices. Within this distributed neuronal assembly fusiform and parietal gamma oscillators are coupled by forward and backward connectivity during Mooney face perception, indicating reciprocal influences of gamma activity between these higher order visual brain regions. Critically, gamma band oscillations in early visual cortex are modulated by top-down feedback connectivity from both fusiform and parietal cortices. Thus, we provide a mechanistic account of Gestalt perception in which gamma oscillations in feature sensitive and spatial attention-relevant brain regions reciprocally drive one another and convey global stimulus aspects to local processing units at low levels of the sensory hierarchy by top-down feedback. Our data therefore support the notion of inverse hierarchical processing within the visual system underlying awareness of coherent percepts.

Visual activity predicts auditory recovery from deafness after adult cochlear implantation

Modern cochlear implantation technologies allow deaf patients to understand auditory speech; however, the implants deliver only a coarse auditory input and patients must use long-term adaptive processes to achieve coherent percepts. In adults with post-lingual deafness, the high progress of speech recovery is observed during the first year after cochlear implantation, but there is a large range of variability in the level of cochlear implant outcomes and the temporal evolution of recovery. It has been proposed that when profoundly deaf subjects receive a cochlear implant, the visual cross-modal reorganization of the brain is deleterious for auditory speech recovery. We tested this hypothesis in post-lingually deaf adults by analysing whether brain activity shortly after implantation correlated with the level of auditory recovery 6 months later. Based on brain activity induced by a speech-processing task, we found strong positive correlations in areas outside the auditory cortex. The highest positive correlations were found in the occipital cortex involved in visual processing, as well as in the posterior-temporal cortex known for audio-visual integration. The other area, which positively correlated with auditory speech recovery, was localized in the left inferior frontal area known for speech processing. Our results demonstrate that the visual modality's functional level is related to the proficiency level of auditory recovery. Based on the positive correlation of visual activity with auditory speech recovery, we suggest that visual modality may facilitate the perception of the word's auditory counterpart in communicative situations. The link demonstrated between visual activity and auditory speech perception indicates that visuoauditory synergy is crucial for cross-modal plasticity and fostering speech-comprehension recovery in adult cochlear-implanted deaf patients.

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) of the Supramarginal Gyrus: A Window to Perception of Upright

Although the pull of gravity, primarily detected by the labyrinth, is the fundamental input for our sense of upright, vision and proprioception must also be integrated with vestibular information into a coherent perception of spatial orientation. Here, we used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to probe the role of the cortex at the temporal parietal junction (TPJ) of the right cerebral hemisphere in the perception of upright. We measured the perceived vertical orientation of a visual line; that is, the subjective visual vertical (SVV), after a short period of continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) with the head upright. cTBS over the posterior aspect of the supramarginal gyrus (SMGp) in 8 right-handed subjects consistently tilted the perception of upright when tested with the head tilted 20° to either shoulder (right: 3.6°, left: 2.7°). The tilt of SVV was always in the direction opposite to the head tilt. On the other hand, there was no significant tilt after sham stimulation or after cTBS of nearby areas. These findings suggest that a small area of cerebral cortex--SMGp--has a role in processing information from different sensory modalities into an accurate perception of upright.

Eye rivalry and object rivalry in the intact and split-brain

Both the eye of origin and the images themselves have been found to rival during binocular rivalry. We presented traditional binocular rivalry stimuli (face to one eye, house to the other) and Diaz-Caneja stimuli (half of each image to each eye) centrally to both a split-brain participant and a control group. With traditional rivalry stimuli both the split-brain participant and age-matched controls perceived more coherent percepts (synchronised across the hemifields) than non-synchrony, but our split-brain participant perceived more non-synchrony than our controls. For rival stimuli in the Diaz-Caneja presentation condition, object rivalry gave way to eye rivalry with all participants reporting more non-synchrony than coherent percepts. We have shown that splitting the stimuli across the hemifields between the eyes leads to greater eye than object rivalry, but that when traditional rival stimuli are split as the result of the severed corpus callosum, traditional rivalry persists but to a lesser extent than in the intact brain. These results suggest that communication between the early visual areas is not essential for synchrony in traditional rivalry stimuli, and that other routes for interhemispheric interactions such as subcortical connections may mediate rivalry in a traditional binocular rivalry condition.

Neighbourhood Perceptions and Sense of Coherence in Adolescence

The neighbourhood has traditionally been neglected in studies about adolescents' sense of coherence (SOC). The current study represents the first attempt to analyse the associations between neighbourhood assets, neighbourhood risks, and SOC during adolescence. The sample consisted of 7,580 Spanish adolescents aged 13-18 who were selected for the 2009/10 edition of the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) survey in Spain. The adolescents completed self-report questionnaires that included the SOC-29 scale and separate HBSC scales measuring neighbourhood risks and assets. The results showed that neighbourhood risks were negatively associated with the adolescents' SOC. In contrast, neighbourhood assets, especially relationships with significant adults, were positively associated with the adolescents' SOC. Assets explained 6.5% of the variability in SOC scores after controlling for risks, suggesting that assets may play a significant role, even in neighbourhoods where risks are present. We discuss implications and future research directions.

Cortical visual processing in patients with congenital achromatopsia: coherent form, motion and biological motion perception

Cortical visual processing in patients with congenital achromatopsia: coherent form, motion and biological motion perception

The detection of counterchange, not motion energy, accounts for coherent motion perception in random-dot cinematograms

The detection of counterchange, not motion energy, accounts for coherent motion perception in random-dot cinematograms

Promoting sense of coherence: Salutogenesis among people with psoriasis undergoing patient education in climate therapy.

BackgroundThere is a need for further investigation of sense of coherence (SOC), the central concept of salutogenesis, and its relationship with long-term illnesses such as psoriasis. The aim of this study is to investigate the development of SOC during patient education in the context of climate therapy and to explore factors that may predict changes in SOC among people with psoriasis.MethodsA prospective design included a baseline assessment and two follow-ups after a 3-week patient education and climate therapy programme (follow-up 1) and again 3 months later (follow-up 2). A total of 254 adults (aged 20–80) with psoriasis participated. SOC was measured by the SOC Questionnaire, illness perception was measured by the Revised Illness Perception Questionnaire, and positive and active engagement in life was measured by the positive and active engagement subscale of the Health Education Impact Questionnaire. Paired-sample t tests were used to evaluate changes in SOC from the baseline to follow-up. Multiple linear regression was used to analyse the ability of socio-demographic and clinical variables, illness perception and positive and active engagement in life to predict the changes in SOC.ResultsThe SOC score changed significantly by 2.65 points, (95% CI = 0.621, 3.685) from the baseline to follow-up 1. SOC score was still improved by 1.15 points (95% CI = 0.073, 0.223) at follow-up 2.Baseline and change in positive and active engagement in life were linked to change in SOC with standardized beta 0.170 (95% CI = 0.024, 0.319) and 0.259 (95% CI = 0.092, 0.428), respectively. In addition illness coherence perception at baseline and change in emotional representations were significantly associated with the change in SOC with standardized beta 0.212 (95% CI = 0.073, 0.361) and –0.270 (95% CI = –0.481, –0,077), respectively.ConclusionsSOC improved significantly from before to after patient education in the context of climate therapy. The results indicate that improving positive and active engagement in life, coping with emotional distress and a coherent understanding of the illness might provide important opportunities to improve SOC among people with psoriasis.

Reduced breath support in a speaker with dysarthria secondary to multiple sclerosis

This case study describes a patient with reduced breath support due to multiple sclerosis. Although deficits to the supralaryngeal structures are more commonly associated with a reduction in intelligibility, atypical breathing patterns can severely impact the perceptual coherence of dysarthric speech. This is most likely to manifest in conversational speech as the demands of correctly signalling syntactic, pragmatic and interactional information all rely on control of the breath support system. The study uses the method of interactional phonetics to consider in combination the role of phonetic, linguistic and interactional design in the speaker’s natural conversation. The analysis was carried out by taking into account the sequential order of turns and representative extracts are presented. The patient’s dysarthria has previously been identified as mild but the findings indicate that issues surrounding breath group length, speech rate and phonatory instability all surface in conversational speech. Of particular interest are the introduction of new person referents and their potential to trigger repair sequences. The findings indicate that a mild dysarthria with reduced breath support as a primary symptom can cause considerable problems of understandability in conversational speech. However, attention to the way in which potentially problematic interactional tasks are carried out and the successful use of repair strategies can minimise these issues.

Hearing Silences: Human Auditory Processing Relies on Preactivation of Sound-Specific Brain Activity Patterns

The remarkable capabilities displayed by humans in making sense of an overwhelming amount of sensory information cannot be explained easily if perception is viewed as a passive process. Current theoretical and computational models assume that to achieve meaningful and coherent perception, the human brain must anticipate upcoming stimulation. But how are upcoming stimuli predicted in the brain? We unmasked the neural representation of a prediction by omitting the predicted sensory input. Electrophysiological brain signals showed that when a clear prediction can be formulated, the brain activates a template of its response to the predicted stimulus before it arrives to our senses.