Perceptual Processes Research Articles

Task difficulty, risk feeling, and safety margin in the determination of driver behavior to prepare for traffic conflicts

Unpredictable pedestrian and cyclist behavior associated with their appearance on the road in blind spots contributes to traffic near-misses or crashes. When experienced drivers are confronted with uncertainty, they take defensive measures called hazard-anticipatory driving, such as decreasing the vehicle velocity and/or increasing the lateral distance. Our research sought to understand the motivational determinants and perceptual processes that determine driver behavior in preparation for traffic conflicts with covert hazards.This study aimed to investigate the influence of driving experience on drivers’ perceptions and behaviors to prepare for traffic conflicts. Two experiments were designed with 8 experienced and 13 inexperienced participants. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to provide their subjective impressions of task difficulty, feeling of risk, and statistical risk pertaining to assess their perceptions of the separation between task demand and capability after viewing animation clips of road scenes with blind intersections under different forced speeds. In Experiment 2, participants drove using a driving simulator in scenes with blind intersections, similar to those in Experiment 1. We sought to explore the motivational determinants of behavior regarding the relationship between subjective feelings and objective safety margins.The results showed that the driver’s perception of task difficulty correlated with their driving speed, and inexperienced participants tended to underestimate task difficulty compared to experienced participants. The task difficulty and the feeling of risk were strongly correlated regardless of experience, and estimation of statistical risk differed depending on experience. The subjective task difficulty (and/or risk feeling) and objective safety margin were strongly correlated for experienced participants. Experienced participants who perceived a higher degree of difficulty in the forced-paced driving task tended to have greater safety margins in the self-paced driving task. These findings suggest that experienced participants with individually tolerable safety margins adjust their driving velocity and/or lateral distance in the control of task difficulty (and/or risk feeling) to prepare for traffic conflicts. Therefore, the underestimation of task difficulty should be considered when designing effective measures, such as driver assistance systems, to guide inexperienced drivers toward normative behaviors.

Hypnotic suggestion versus sensory modulation of bodily awareness.

Bodily awareness arises from somatosensory, vestibular, and visual inputs but cannot be reduced to these incoming sensory signals. Cognitive factors are known to also impact bodily awareness, though their specific influence is poorly understood. Here we systematically compared the effects of sensory (bottom-up) and cognitive (top-down) manipulations on the estimated size of body parts. Toward this end, in a repeated-measures design, we sought to induce the illusion that the right index finger was elongating by vibrating the biceps tendon of the left arm whilst participants grasped the tip of their right index finger (Lackner illusion; bottom-up) and separately by hypnotic suggestion (top-down), with a sham version of the Lackner illusion as an active control condition. The effects of these manipulations were assessed with perceptual and motor tasks to capture different components of the representation of body size. We found that hypnotic suggestion significantly induced the illusion in both tasks relative to the sham condition. The magnitudes of these effects were stronger than those in the Lackner illusion condition, which only produced a significantly stronger illusion than the sham condition in the perceptual task. We further observed that illusion magnitude significantly correlated across tasks and conditions, suggesting partly shared mechanisms. These results are in line with theories of separate but interacting representational processes for perception and action and highlight the influence of cognitive factors on low-level body representations.

Exploring the Use of AI in Autonomous Vehicles, Drones, and Robotics for Perception, Navigation and Decision-Making

The advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has ushered in a new era of automation and autonomy in various industries. Among the most prominent beneficiaries of AI are autonomous vehicles, drones, and robotics, where AI plays a pivotal role in enhancing perception, navigation, and decision-making capabilities. This paper explores the application of AI in these domains and its transformative impact on their functionalities. This research paper delves into the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence (AI) applied to autonomous vehicles, drones, and robotics. The integration of AI technologies in these domains has revolutionized perception, navigation, and decision-making processes, making them more efficient, safe, and adaptable. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the current state of AI in these sectors, including the key technologies, challenges, and future prospects. It emphasizes the critical role of AI in transforming these industries and discusses the potential societal impacts.

Comprehensive voxel-wise, tract-based, and network lesion mapping reveals unique architectures of right and left visuospatial neglect

Visuospatial neglect is a common, post-stroke cognitive impairment which is widely considered to be a disconnection syndrome. However, the patterns of disconnectivity associated with visuospatial neglect remain unclear. Here, we had 480 acute stroke survivors [age = 72.8 (SD = 13.3), 44.3% female, 7.5 days post-stroke (SD = 11.3)] undertake routine clinical imaging and standardised visuospatial neglect testing. The data were used to conduct voxel-wise, tract-level, and network-level lesion-mapping analyses aimed at localising the neural correlates of left and right egocentric (body-centred) and allocentric (object-centred) visuospatial neglect. Only minimal anatomical homogeneity was present between the correlates of right and left egocentric neglect across all analysis types. This finding challenges previous work suggesting that right and left visuospatial neglect are anatomically homologous, and instead suggests that egocentric neglect may involve damage to a shared, but hemispherically asymmetric attention network. By contrast, egocentric and allocentric neglect was associated with disconnectivity in a distinct but overlapping set of network edges, with both deficits related to damage across the dorsal and ventral attention networks. Critically, this finding suggests that the distinction between egocentric and allocentric neglect is unlikely to reflect a simple dichotomy between dorsal versus ventral networks dysfunction, as is commonly asserted. Taken together, the current findings provide a fresh perspective on the neural circuitry involved in regulating visuospatial attention, and provide important clues to understanding the cognitive and perceptual processes involved in this common and debilitating neuropsychological syndrome.

When feeling is for seeing: comparing the effects of motivated perception between fear and anger on ambiguous threatening stimuli.

We do not see the world as it is: distortions of visual perception can occur depending on the goals we wish to achieve ("wishful seeing"). Following functionalist theories of emotions (e.g., "feeling is for doing"), visual perception biases could also be involved in the link between emotion and specific behavior. Previous research has shown that anger can modify visual perception towards ambiguous menacing stimuli, or that fear can similarly direct our attention and perception towards threatening stimuli (e.g., weapons). The aim of our research was to replicate these effects by directly comparing the effects of these two emotions on perceptual biases and by relying on general mixed models to control Type I errors and reduce the risk related to the non-independence between observations. Our results partially replicate a perceptual bias toward threatening objects for both emotions although this effect depends on the type of stimulus and of the emotional dimension involved. These results are discussed in terms of the impact of emotions in attentional and perceptual processes and in relation to alternative theoretical explanations for motivated perception.

Pre- to Postoperative Longitudinal Follow-up of Phoneme Perception in Glioma Patients: Evidence from the Mismatch Negativity and P300

ABSTRACT Background and Aims Glioma growth in eloquent language areas induces adaptive activation changes in the language network. The present study aimed to (1) investigate the pre- to postoperative evolution of neural phoneme perception processes in glioma patients and (2) assess if event-related potentials (ERPs) reflecting phoneme perception can provide added value to the diagnostic approach in individuals undergoing awake surgery. Methods and Procedures In five persons undergoing an awake craniotomy for the resection of a glioma, pre- and postoperative behavioural language assessment (Aachen Aphasia Test, Comprehensive Aphasia Test and Boston Naming Test) and electrophysiological investigation of phoneme perception was performed. For the latter, ERPs were obtained through the administration of an inattentive (Mismatch Negativity; MMN) and attentive (P300) oddball paradigm containing a phonemic articulation place contrast during EEG recording. Outcomes and Results Aberrant phoneme categorization processing was evidenced in all five participants preoperatively based on the MMN and P300 amplitude and latency. Moreover, mild behavioural impairments were found in four participants at this time. Postoperatively, three out of five participants reached behavioural ceiling effects, while four individuals displayed normalization of electrophysiological measures. Conclusions While neural processing of phoneme contrasts was preoperatively affected by glioma-induced disturbances, a high potential for postsurgical plasticity was shown. As four participants presented with a high grade glioma, tumour grade might partially account for this pattern. Addition of electrophysiological tests to the language assessment could provide benefits in both the pre- and postoperative clinical diagnostic approach in glioma patients. These preliminary results need validation in a larger sample.

Shared Perception Is Different From Individual Perception: A New Look on Context Dependency

Human perception is based on unconscious inference, where sensory input integrates with prior information. This phenomenon, known as context dependency, helps in facing the uncertainty of the external world with predictions built upon previous experience. On the other hand, human perceptual processes are inherently shaped by social interactions. However, how the mechanisms of context dependency are affected is to date unknown. If using previous experience - priors - is beneficial in individual settings, it could represent a problem in social scenarios where other agents might not have the same priors, causing a perceptual misalignment on the shared environment. The present study addresses this question. We studied context dependency in an interactive setting with a humanoid robot iCub that acted as a stimuli demonstrator. Participants reproduced the lengths shown by the robot in two conditions: one with iCub behaving socially and another with iCub acting as a mechanical arm. The different behavior of the robot significantly affected the use of prior in perception. Moreover, the social robot positively impacted perceptual performances by enhancing accuracy and reducing participants overall perceptual errors. Finally, the observed phenomenon has been modelled following a Bayesian approach to deepen and explore a new concept of shared perception.

A review of experimental task design in psychophysical eye tracking research.

While eye tracking is a technique commonly used in the experimental study of higher-level perceptual processes such as visual search, working memory, reading, and scene exploration, its use for the quantification of basic visual functions (visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, color vision, motion detection) is less explored. The use of eye movement features as dependent variables in a psychophysical investigation can serve multiple roles. They can be central in studies with neurological patients or infants that cannot comply with verbal instructions, understand task demands, and/or emit manual responses. The technique may also serve a complementary role, determining the conditions under which a manual or verbal response is given, such as stimulus position in the visual field, or it can afford the analysis of new dependent variables, such as the time interval between oculomotor and manual responses. Our objective is to review the literature that applied the eye tracking technique to psychophysical problems. The two questions our review raises are: can eye movements (reflex or voluntary) be an objective index of stimulus detection in psychophysical tasks? If so, under what conditions, and how does it compare with traditional paradigms requiring manual responses? Our (non-systematic) methodological review selected studies that used video-oculography as the technique of choice and had a basic visual function as their primary object of investigation. Studies satisfying those criteria were then categorized into four broad classes reflecting their main research interest: (1) stimulus detection and threshold estimation, (2) the effects of stimulus properties on fixational eye movements, (3) the effects of eye movements on perception, and (4) visual field assessment. The reviewed studies support the idea that eye tracking is a valuable technique for the study of basic perceptual processes. We discuss methodological characteristics within each of the proposed classification area, with the objective of informing future task design.

Bringing the body into play: The corporeal aspect in second language acquisition

AbstractThis article foregrounds the role of the learner's experienced and expressive body in the process of action‐oriented intercultural second language acquisition (SLA), drawing on phenomenological and related research on embodiment. It suggests that processes of perception, cognition, intentionality, and action are fundamentally shaped by the preconscious experiences of the moving body and its real‐time, unmediated interaction with affordances of the social, cultural, and material environment. The prereflective corporeal resonances and experiences provide foundational orientations and scaffoldings for perceptive, emotive, and cognitive processes, emerging through situated bodily activities. Thus, the explicit integration of learners’ active bodies in SLA processes mobilizes largely untapped resources of embodied learning. Preconscious resonances with the second language and the cultural other can be directly sensed in, through, and with the body, allowing for spontaneous behavior to flow naturally in intercultural situations. By engaging the active body in SLA, elements of body memory, and not just episodic memory, are continually reenacted and actualized. The regular training of attentiveness to the corporeal resonances with and adaptive responses to the affordances in the SLA process serves to orientate and scaffold hermeneutical learning and to anchor it in learners’ life experience.

Can we dissociate hypervigilance to social threats from altered perceptual decision-making processes in lonely individuals? An exploration with Drift Diffusion Modeling and event-related potentials.

It has been hypothesized that lonely individuals demonstrate hypervigilance toward social threats. However, recent studies have raised doubts about the reliability of tasks commonly used to measure attentional biases toward threats. Two alternative approaches have been suggested to overcome the limitations of traditional analysis of attentional bias. First, the neurophysiological indicators of orienting to threats were shown to have superior psychometric characteristics compared to overt measures of behavioral performance. The second approach involves utilizing computational modeling to isolate latent components corresponding to specific cognitive mechanisms from observable data. To test the usefulness of these approaches in loneliness research, we analyzed behavioral and electroencephalographic (EEG) data from 26 lonely and 26 non-lonely participants who performed a dot-probe task using a computational modeling approach. We applied the Drift Diffusion Model (DDM) and extracted N2pc-an event-related potential that serves as an indicator of spatial attention. No evidence for social threat hypervigilance has been found in DDM parameters nor in N2pc characteristics in the current study. However, we did observe decreased drift rate and increased variability in drift rate between trials within the lonely group, indicating reduced efficiency in perceptual decision-making among lonely individuals. These effects were not detected using standard behavioral measures used in the dot-probe paradigm. Given that DDM indicators were sensitive to differences in perceptual discrimination between the two groups, even when no overt differences were found in standard behavioral measures, it may be postulated that computational approaches offer a more comprehensive understanding of cognitive processes.

Explanation in theories of the specious present

ABSTRACT Time-consciousness theories aim to explain what our experiences must be like so that we can experience change, succession, and other temporally extended events (or at least why we believe we have such experiences). The most popular and influential explanations are versions of theories of the specious present, which maintain that what we experience appears to us as temporally extended. However, the role that specious presents have in bringing about temporal experiences remains undescribed. The briefly mentioned suggestions maintain that having temporally extended experiential content is either necessary or sufficient for having temporal experiences, or that the contents provide input for separate perceptual processes. In this paper, I argue that none of these suggestions succeed. Consequently, the theories of the specious present have not provided a satisfactory explanation of temporal experiences and their central motivation is lost.

When fixing problems kills personal development: fMRI reveals conflict between Real and Ideal selves.

Many coaching approaches aim to change behavior by increasing self-knowledge. However, self-knowledge can be difficult to achieve. One hypothesis (e.g., Jung, Rogers) is that self-knowledge is challenging because there is inherent conflict between different aspects of the self. This hypothesis is foundational to Boyatzis' intentional change theory (ICT). ICT holds that effective coaching requires deliberate sequencing of the client's exploration of different aspects of their self. Coaches initially encourage clients to focus exclusively on their Ideal self. The ICT approach differs from that advocated by most coaching organizations that suggest collaborative goal setting at the start of the coaching engagement, encouraging clients to focus on fixing performance deficits and problematic behaviors-aspects of the Real self. If there is conflict between thinking about Ideal and Real selves, then this strategy will be suboptimal. The hypothesis of attentional conflict therefore has significant implications for coaching practice. Previous findings establish a link between attention to Ideal vs. Real selves and global vs. local visual processing, respectively. This association alone does not imply conflict because, in naturalistic settings, global and local perceptual processes usually work in concert. However, certain stimuli such as Navon figures (letters made from many smaller letters, e.g., a large E made of small R's) create conflict due to incongruence between the global and local features. Does thinking about the self inherently generate conflict, like a Navon figure, or is it more akin to everyday perception? To answer this question the current study uses functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the overlap in brain activity in young adults between two pairs of otherwise very dissimilar tasks: coaching interactions focused on Ideal vs. Real self; and attention to global vs. local features of Navon figures. Despite the ostensible absence of overlap in the psychological processes involved in these pairs of tasks, we find a remarkable degree of overlap in brain activity. This overlap was pronounced in higher (parietal and temporal) areas known to be involved in resolving attentional conflict. These findings provide compelling biological evidence for inherent conflict between thinking about Ideal and Real selves.

Auditory neural correlates and neuroergonomics of driving assistance in a simulated virtual environment

Objective. Driver assistance systems play an increasingly important role in modern vehicles. In the current level of technology, the driver must continuously supervise the driving and intervene whenever necessary when using driving assistance systems. The driver’s attentiveness plays an important role in this human–machine interaction. Our aim was to design a simplistic technical framework for studying neural correlates of driving situations in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) setting. In this work we assessed the feasibility of our proposed platform. Methods. We proposed a virtual environment (VE) simulation of driver assistance as a framework to investigate brain states related to partially automated driving. We focused on the processing of auditory signals during different driving scenarios as they have been shown to be advantageous as warning stimuli in driving situations. This provided the necessary groundwork to study brain auditory attentional networks under varying environmental demands in an fMRI setting. To this end, we conducted a study with 20 healthy participants to assess the feasibility of the VE simulation. Results. We demonstrated that the proposed VE can elicit driving related brain activation patterns. Relevant driving events evoked, in particular, responses in the bilateral auditory, sensory-motor, visual and insular cortices, which are related to perceptual and behavioral processes during driving assistance. Conceivably, attentional mechanisms increased somatosensory integration and reduced interoception, which are relevant for requesting interactions during partially automated driving. Significance. In modern vehicles, driver assistance technologies are playing an increasingly prevalent role. It is important to study the interaction between these systems and drivers’ attentional responses to aid in future optimizations of the assistance systems. The proposed VE provides a foundational first step in this endeavor. Such simulated VEs provide a safe setting for experimentation with driving behaviors in a semi-naturalistic environment.

Examining Factors Influencing Cognitive Load of Computer Programmers.

In this study, the factors influencing the cognitive load of computer programmers during the perception of different code tasks were investigated. The eye movement features of computer programmers were used to provide a significant relationship between the perceptual processes of the sample codes and cognitive load. Thanks to the relationship, the influence of various personal characteristics of programmers on cognitive load was examined. Various personal parameters such as programming experience, age, native language, and programming frequency were used in the study. The study was performed on the Eye Movements in Programming (EMIP) dataset containing 216 programmers with different characteristics. Eye movement information recorded during two different code comprehension tasks was decomposed into sub-information, such as pupil movement speed and diameter change. Rapid changes in eye movement signals were adaptively detected using the z-score peak detection algorithm. Regarding the cognitive load calculations, canonical correlation analysis was used to build a statistically significant and efficient mathematical model connecting the extracted eye movement features and the different parameters of the programmers, and the results were statistically significant. As a result of the analysis, the factors affecting the cognitive load of computer programmers for the related database were converted into percentages, and it was seen that linguistic distance is an essential factor in the cognitive load of programmers and the effect of gender on cognitive load is quite limited.

The Patterns of Influence: LIWC Analysis of Leading News Portals' Impact and Communication Accommodation Theory on Twitter

A quantitative analysis was conducted on the tweets of 20 leading Serbian mass media outlets and their followers during the three months from January 1 to March 30, 2021. The analysis, that encompassed more than 1 million tweets, was conducted using (a) Twitter API, (b) the Serbian version of LIWC linguistic dictionary, and (c) additional statistical analyses. Analyses revealed that words related to affective processes (negative emotions), social processes (family and friends), perceptual processes (feel and hear), and personal concerns (work and religion) expressed in tweets of mass media were predictors of the same words in not necessarily related tweets of their followers. The research has shown that spread of psychological and linguistic patterns by media and social networking sites is not limited to negative emotions solely. This research highlights the significance of recommender systems, as they help to determine the content that social media users encounter on a personal level. The findings also indicate how we can address emerging and pressing issues that affect individuals' well-being and democratic capacity, such as echo chambers and polarization. The obtained findings are in line with the communication accommodation theory, emotional contagion theory and negativity bias. Limitations of the present research, future directions, and implications are discussed.

Perception of facial expressions involves emotion specific somatosensory cortex activations which are shaped by alexithymia

Somatosensory cortex (SCx) has been shown to crucially contribute to early perceptual processes when judging other's emotional facial expressions. Here, we investigated the specificity of SCx activity to angry, happy, sad and neutral emotions and the role of personality factors. We assessed participants' alexithymia (TAS-20) and depression (BDI) levels, their cardioceptive abilities and recorded changes in neural activity in a facial emotion judgment task. During the task, we presented tactile probes to reveal neural activity in SCx which was then isolated from visual carry-over responses. We further obtain SCx emotion effects by subtracting SCx activity elicited by neutral emotion expressions from angry, happy, and sad expressions. We find preliminary evidence for distinct modulations of SCx activity to angry and happy expressions. Moreover, the SCx anger response was predicted by individual differences in trait alexithymia. Thus, emotion expressions of others may be distinctly presented in the observer's neural body representation and may be shaped by their personality trait.

Transforming Psychological Testing With Saccadic Responses: Internal Consistency is High for Rorschach and Facial Expressions.

Psychologists have long been interested in the underlying visual perceptual processes associated with forming responses to certain psychological tests, including the Rorschach Ink Blot Test, which modern users conceptualize as a conceptual problem-solving task. Accordingly, we used eye tracking technology to assess the internal consistency of saccadic responses to both the Rorschach Ink Blot Test and a facial expression task. Internal consistency was highest for eye Fixation Duration (FD) and Saccade Amplitude (SA), and both FD and SA measures in the Rorschach were positively related to the same measures in the facial expression task. Given this high internal consistency of FD and SA for viewing Rorschach ink blots and viewing pictures from well-known collections of facial expressions, and given high correlations between these eye tracking measures across the two tasks, FD and SA may now be used in further studies of eye movements in visuo-attentive psychological/neuropsychological tests (e.g., the Thematic Apperception Test). Reliability of these eye movement measures across tasks enables their use for better understanding of underlying visual processes and improved interpretations of the meaning of behavioral responses to psychological/neuropsychological tests.

Individual differences in emotional reactions to bistable perception.

To assess whether there are individual differences in emotional reactions to bistable images, and if so, to identify some of the psychological factors that predict them. Bistable images - which have two competing perceptual interpretations - have long been used in the scientific study of consciousness. Here we applied a different lens and investigated emotional reactions to them. Method Participants were adult humans in a cross-sectional study. Participants were presented with three bistable images and rated their emotional reactions to experiencing bistability. They also completed measures of intolerance of uncertainty, cognitive empathy, affective empathy, and negative affect. Results There were marked individual differences in these reactions, ranging from feeling highly negative to highly positive. These individual differences in emotional response to bistability were linked to a number of psychological processes: intolerance of uncertainty, cognitive empathy, and negative affect, but not affective empathy. Conclusions These finding have important implications because: (a) these emotional reactions could distort scientific investigations that use these stimuli to study non-emotional perceptual and cognitive processes; and (b) they highlight that this approach offers a useful window into how individuals react to these stimuli that demonstrate that there is not always a single viable interpretation of the world around us.

Exploring preservice teachers’ professional vision: Modes of isolation, ethical noticing, and anticipation in research communities of practice

Research-based teacher education programs are designed to develop preservice teachers' multifaceted attitudes to teaching, including their professional vision or the perceptual processes and ability to notice and interpret education fundamentals in a classroom. Nonetheless, such programs' influence on preservice teachers' professional vision remains unclear. Utilising Australian preservice teachers’ interviews, research projects and surveys in a research-based teacher education program built upon principles of Communities of Practice (CoPs), this study illuminates modes of isolation, ethical noticing, and anticipation in shaping their professional vision. The latter captures an emerging capacity to (re)structure schooling fundamentals as research/practice amalgamations rather than merely practice-driven constructs.

No differences in implicit hand maps among different degrees of autistic traits.

People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or higher levels of autistic traits have atypical characteristics in sensory processing. Atypicalities have been reported for proprioceptive judgments, which are tightly related to internal bodily representations underlying position sense. However, no research has directly investigated whether self-bodily representations are different in individuals with ASD. Implicit hand maps, estimated based on participants' proprioceptive sensations without sight of their hand, are known to be distorted such that the shape is stretched along the medio-lateral hand axis even for neurotypical participants. Here, with the view of ASD as falling on a continuous distribution among the general population, we explored differences in implicit body representations along with autistic traits by focusing on relationships between autistic traits and the magnitudes of the distortions in implicit hand maps (N ~ 100). We estimated the magnitudes of distortions in implicit hand maps both for fingers and hand surfaces on the dorsal and palmar sides of the hand. Autistic traits were measured by questionnaires (Autism Spectrum [AQ] and Empathy/Systemizing [EQ-SQ] Quotients). The distortions in implicit hand maps were replicated in our experimental situations. However, there were no significant relationships between autistic traits and the magnitudes of the distortions as well as within-individual variabilities in the maps and localization performances. Consistent results were observed from comparisons between IQ-matched samples of people with and without a diagnosis of ASD. Our findings suggest that there exist perceptual and neural processes for implicit body representations underlying position sense consistent across levels of autistic traits.