Judgment Experiment Research Articles

A linked aggregate code for processing faces

A model of face representation, inspired by known biology of the visual system, is compared to experimental data on the perception of facial similarity. The face representation model uses aggregate primary visual cortex (V1) cell responses topographically linked to a grid covering the face, allowing comparison of shape and texture at corresponding points in two facial images. When a set of relatively similar faces was used as stimuli, this “linked aggregate code” (LAC) predicted human performance in similarity judgment experiments. When faces of different categories were used, natural facial dimensions such as sex and race emerged from the LAC model without training. The dimensional structure of the LAC similarity measure for the mixed-category task displayed some psychologically plausible features, but also highlighted shortcomings of the proposed representation. The results suggest that the LAC based similarity measure may be useful as an interesting starting point for further modeling studies of face representation in higher visual areas.

Evaluation of human detection performance of targets embedded in natural and enhanced infrared images using image metrics

The evaluation of human detection performance of targets embedded in natural iR images is uniquely extended to deal with enhanced images. Various image metrics designed to describe global image clutter and local target-to-background contrast are presented. Agreement between experimental results, as obtained for both natural and enhanced iR images and image metrics, is evaluated by correlating the metric values with target detection results obtained from two psychophysical experiments, which were designed to record and measure human target detection performance and image quality judgments. Positive correlation values are generally obtained between the metric values and both the target detection (rate and probability) performance and the image quality scale values. More specifically, the local contrast metric is found to be the most suitable to the data recorded from the quality judgments experiment, while the global clutter metric is found to be the most suitable to the data recorded from the detection performance experiments. Further analysis of the relationship between the image metrics and the experimental results yield empirical classification thresholds that can be used to evaluate and predict human detection performance in similar cases. A method to evaluate the classification efficiency, is introduced and used to reconfirm the metrics appropriateness to describe detection performance and quality judgments of targets embedded in both natural and enhanced images. © 2000 Society ofPhoto-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. [S0091-3286(00)00202-6]

How children's relatives solve a problem for minimalism

Current work in syntax reexamines basic properties of movement. Under the minimalist assumptions of Chomsky (1995), movement is prohibited unless forced by grammatical considerations. From a set of comparable derivations, the one involving the least amount of moved material should therefore block other derivations. Within this framework, any cases of optional movement are problematic. We addressed this issue with experiments on stranding and pied-piping in relative clauses in 115 English learners, aged 3;5 to 11;11, and an adult control group. All subjects participated in an elicited production experiment and a grammaticality judgment experiment. Our findings suggest that pied-piping is possible in young children's grammars only when stranding is ruled out, as predicted by minimalism. We claim the children's responses represent the 'natural' grammar while the adults' responses reflect a prescriptive artifact. We also found a discrepancy in all subject groups between production and judgments of the genitive pied-piping construction. We account for this finding with Kayne's (1994) analysis of relative clauses.

Effects of encoding operations on recognition memory for upright and inverted faces

Using a yes/no task in which distracters were closely matched to targets, three experiments examined the effect of encoding operations on recognition memory for upright and inverted faces. Correct recognition for targets (hits) was lower on inverted than on upright faces. However, the decline was smaller for feature than for trait judgments or for expression judgments (Experiment 1), for feature than for trait judgments (Experiment 2), and for feature than for global judgments (Experiment 3). These findings suggest that faces are primarily encoded in terms of isolated components with feature judgments, and in terms of configural information (spatial information among features) with trait, expression, and global judgments.

NCS, natural color system?From concept to research and applications. Part I

This first part describes the research and development of the NCS, from the introduction of Ewald Hering's theory of “the natural order system of colors” in Sweden, to a system for color notations, and finally to a compilation in a color atlas of color samples illustrating these notation and order principles. Experimental-psychological method problems regarding the assessment of the psychophysical relationship between color percepts and physical measurement data are discussed. Also described are how the color judgment experiments were performed, the results of these assessments, and how NCS became established as a Swedish Standard for descriptive color notations. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

The Breakdown of Functional Categories and the Economy of Derivation

In this paper I argue that in a hierarchical structure of a sentence, the lower the position of the functional head and its projection, the more accessible they are to an agrammatic aphasic. The major empirical basis for this includes spontaneous speech data and an acceptability judgment experiment by Japanese agrammatic patients as well as the available French and Italian data, The previous crosslinguistic agrammatic data from verb second languages are also examined. The unified account for the status of functional categories in agrammatism is presented based on the principles of the Economy of the Minimalist framework (Chomsky 1994). Finally, the empirical consequences of agrammatic data for language acquisition are discussed.

Beyond simple pessimism: effects of sadness and anger on social perception.

In keeping with cognitive appraisal models of emotion, it was hypothesized that sadness and anger would exert different influences on causal judgments. Two experiments provided initial support for this hypothesis. Sad Ss perceived situationally caused events as more likely (Experiment 1) and situational forces more responsible for an ambiguous event (Experiment 2) than angry Ss, who, in contrast, perceived events caused by humans as more likely and other people as more responsible. Experiments 3, 4, and 5 showed that the experience of these emotions, rather than their cognitive constituents, mediates these effects. The nonemotional exposure to situational or human agency information did not influence causal judgments (Experiment 3), whereas the induction of sadness and anger without explicit agency information did (Experiments 4 and 5). Discussion is focused on the influence of emotion on social judgment.

The normal distribution in scaling subjective stimulus differences: Less “normal” than we think?

The Gaussian, or "normal," distribution is routinely used to model distributions of subjective quantities. This practice rests on a trust in the central limit theorem, yet this theorem does not cover the case of a mixture of Gaussian distributions with different standard deviations, which yields a distribution that is heavier tailed than the Gaussian. In psychophysical judgment experiments, this may result, for example, from fluctuating or interindividually varying attention. Two candidates for describing this commonly encountered type of distribution are the logistic distribution and the t distribution with a small number of degrees of freedom. In reanalyses of experimental data on three-category loudness comparisons, as well as in a Monte Carlo simulation, t(4) was found to model the underlying mixed inter- and intraindividual distribution of subjective loudness differences quite satisfactorily.

British Names for American Birds

Eighty-seven English names for British birds are used to denote birds native to central and eastern North America. Analysis reveals that English names for British birds are typically applied to those American birds, among all American birds, that are closest to the British birds in scientific (Linnaean) classification. This naming strategy accords with the finding of a similarity judgment experiment in which 34 subjects match realistic pictures of British and American birds for perceptual resemblance. The results of the experiment indicate that folk observers tend to judge those American birds, among all American birds, to be most similar to British birds that have the same name as the latter. In addition, the experiment suggests that folk perception of biological similarity is a better predictor of the detailed nature of folk biological classification than is scientific taxonomy.

A crosslinguistic study of grammaticality judgments in Broca's aphasia

Crosslinguistic studies of sentence comprehension and production in Broca's aphasia have yielded two complementary findings: (1) grammatical morphology appears to be more impaired than word order principles in every language studied, but (2) the degree to which grammatical morphology is retained by aphasic patients depends upon the “strength” or importance of those morphemes in the patient's premorbid language. In an earlier study comparing violations of word order and agreement, we found that English-speaking Broca's aphasics showed greater sensitivity to errors of ordering than to errors of agreement, providing further evidence for the selective vulnerability of morphology. However, because English is a rigid word order language with a relatively weak inflectional system, it could be argued that word order is resilient to brain damage because it is the strongest source of information in this language. The present study compared the performance of English-speaking Broca's aphasics and normal controls with their Italian counterparts in the same grammaticality judgment experiment. Four predictions relating to our previous work were confirmed. (1) Italian aphasics, like their English-speaking counterparts, showed general preservation of grammatical knowledge and (2) they were able to use this knowledge in an “on-line” fashion. (3) Within each language, Broca's aphasics showed greater impairment in their ability to recognize errors of morphological selection (i.e., agreement) compared with errors made by moving the same words to an incorrect position downstream. Nevertheless (4), crosslinguistic differences observed in previous studies of comprehension and production were also observed in this grammaticality judgment task: a processing advantage for agreement errors in Italian normals and aphasics, and a processing advantage for ordering errors in English normals and aphasics.

A psychological space for place of articulation

A psychological space for place of articulation was explored using synthetic /ba/ and /da/ stimuli factorially varying in F2‐ and F3‐onset frequencies. The data from a goodness judgment experiment were subjected to the multidimensional scaling. Within the derived space of each phoneme category, the stimulus centered (or the closest to the center) was designated as the prototype. The results from a speeded classification task indicated that the response time to each phoneme is an ordinal function of the goodness measure. The heterogeneity of the resulting goodness spaces and response times in classification suggests that classification of place of articulation could be the consequence of the subject evaluating the membership function relative to the prototype. [Work supported by NSF.]

Symbolic Enhancement of Perspective Displays

Two exocentric azimuth judgement experiments with a perspective display were conducted with 16 subjects. Previous work has shown these judgements to exhibit a bias possibly due to misinterpretation of the viewing parameters used to generate the display. Though geometric compensations may be used to correct for the bias, an alternate technique selected in the following 2 experiments was the introduction of symbolic enhancements in the form of compass roses. It is suggested that a compass rose with 30° divisions results in overall optimal azimuth estimation accuracy when accuracy and decision time are both considered. The data also suggest that the added radial lines on the compass roses may interact with normalization processes that influence the judgement errors.

A Changing Focus of Animal Perception - From Abilities and Proclivities

Several methodologies are available to evaluate how animals discriminate and perceive stimuli. These methodologies are described herein, and the kinds of questions that can be addressed with each technique, and its strengths and limitations,are addressed. De ction and discrimination studies are described that measure animal abilities, followed by classification and judgment studies that measure animal proclivities. The choice of methodology is a consideration in experimental design, because the format of the question can direct, and sometimes define the answer. The experiments discussed emphasize that animals have multiple processing modes available to them that they use to classify stimuli. Detection and discrimination experiments may tap into one of those modes, while categorization and judgment experiments may address a different mode. A feature of these experiments is that they reduce the extent to which we view animal perception and cognition as distinct from human perception and cognition. Several methodologies are available to evaluate how animals discriminate and perceive stimuli. These methodologies are described herein, and the kinds of questions that can be addressed with each technique, and its strengths and limitations, are addressed. Detection and discrimination studies are described that measure animal abilities, followed by classification and judgment studies that measure animal proclivities. The choice of methodology is a consideration in experimental design, because the format of the q estion can direct, and sometimes define the answer. The experiments discussed emphasize that animals have multiple processing modes available to them that they use to classify stimuli. Detection and discrimination experiments may tap into one of those modes, while categorization and judgment experiments may address a different mode. A feature of these experiments is that they reduce the extent to which we view animal perception and cognition as distinct from human perception and cognition.

Dissociation of short- and long-range apparent motion in visual search.

The visual search paradigm was used in four experiments to investigate apparent motion perception. The addition of distractor items led to a linear increase in reaction time under long-range (LR) conditions (greater than 35 min of arc displacement), whereas reaction time was independent of displays size under short-range (SR) conditions (less than 18 min of arc). Although clear performance differences were obtained, Ss had difficulty in distinguishing between the two types of apparent motion displays when asked to make such judgments (Experiment 2). Experiments 3 and 4 explored some variables that may constrain the search process. Search times under LR conditions were reduced when some of the distractors were stationary or the motion of the distractors was homogeneous. Form and motion were found to be separable, whereas color and motion were not. Varying the color (and brightness) interfered with the processing of motion information.

The time it takes to make judgments of velocity.

Reaction times were measured in an absolute judgment experiment involving either the location of a point on a screen, or the direction of a moving point, or its velocity. Stimuli were chosen to be almost perfectly detectable and discriminable when presented pairwise to avoid confusions at the sensory coding level. Typical results associated with absolute judgment tasks were observed, as to the amount of information transmission and anchoring effects. More in particular, latencies appear to be a direct function of the number N of alternatives. For N constant, responses are much slower for velocity than for both location and direction. This difference itself is a direct function of N, and, presumably, drops to zero for N = 1, i.e., when stimulus uncertainty vanishes. These observations support the idea that the difference should not be attributed to some velocity-specific integration of space and time but to some performance decision strategies in evaluation of magnitude.

Vocal cues to speaker affect: Testing two models

We identified certain assumptions implicit in two divergent approaches to studying vocal affect signaling. The ‘‘covariance’’ model assumes that nonverbal cues function independently of verbal content, and that relevant acoustic parameters covary with the strength of the affect conveyed. The ‘‘configuration’’ model assumes that both verbal and nonverbal cues exhibit categorical linguistic structure, and that different affective messages are conveyed by different configurations of category variables. We tested these assumptions in a series of two judgment experiments in which subjects rated recorded utterances, written transcripts, and three different acoustically masked versions of the utterances. Comparison of the different conditions showed that voice quality and F0 level can convey affective information independently of the verbal context. However, judgments of the unaltered recordings also showed that intonational categories (contour types) conveyed affective information only in interaction with grammatical features of the text. It appears necessary to distinguish between linguistic features of intonation and other (paralinguistic) nonverbal cues and to design research methods appropriate to the type of cues under study.

The relativity of ‘absolute’ judgements

Suppose that, with rather few exceptions, the assignment of a number to a stimulus on one trial of a magnitude estimation or category judgement experiment serves as the point of reference for choosing an appropriate assignment on the next trial. This principle of relative judgement—relative to the immediate context—is developed to generate models for both magnitude estimation and category judgement experiments. It is applied, in particular, to the explanation of three, hitherto unrelated, phenomena: these are (a) the limited transmission of information in category judgements; (b) sequential constraints on the resolving power of category judgements; and (c) the autocorrelation of successive numerical magnitude estimates. Finally, some comparison is made between the principle of relative judgement introduced here and other contemporary ideas which have been addressed to one or more of these three critical phenomena.

Assessing The Discriminant Validity Of Regression Models And Subjectively Weighted Models Of Judgments

When either regression models or subjectively weighted models are used as aids in making placement decisions, the discriminant validity of these models is of interest. When all predictor information is used in all decisions, models which assign equal weights cannot simultaneously show high levels of predictive accuracy and discriminant validity; in some settings, both regression models and subjectively weighted models may. The discriminant validity of regression models and of subjectively weighted models was investigated in two judgment experiments. Both types of models showed high levels of accuracy and cross-validity in both experiments. Regression models showed discriminant validity in both experiments, while subjectively weighted models failed to show discriminant validity in the second. The homogeneity of cue validities appeared to moderate both the level of discriminant validity and the relationship between similarity of subjective models, across tasks, and discriminant validity.

Attention bands: Some implications for categorical judgement

It is shown that results of categorical judgement experiments cannot simultaneously conform to a single process signal detectability model and to the recently proposed two process attention band model. Since there is substantial evidence for the Thurstone case V version of the signal detectability model for categorical judgement of prothetic continua, it is argued that the attention band model cannot apply to such judgements. Methods are presented for calculating all the parameters of the attention band model from a single categorical judgement task where the physical stimuli are widely separated.

On sequential effects in absolute judgment experiments.

On sequential effects in absolute judgment experiments.