Perceptual Experiments Research Articles

Digital Archiving of the Spatial Experience of Cultural Heritage Sites with Ancient Lighting

Although adaptive reuse has made the preservation, restoration, and maintenance of architectural heritage sites possible due to the revenue generated by the new program, it has unfortunately induced unavoidable renovations that have altered the original design. Consequently, while the physical configuration of an architectural scene of a heritage site can be preserved and restored to mimic how it looked in the past, how to experience it as rendered with the original lighting design that might no longer be available. With the advancement of technologies related to High Dynamic Range Imaging, light models of various ancient illumination can be reconstructed and used as lighting sources for the virtual environment. Although ancient light sources can now be preserved in this digital form, this technique falls short of preserving the real visual perception of the significant canonical scene of cultural heritage with the originally intended lighting. This study proposes a conceptual framework for the digital archiving of the perceptual realism of the original lighting scheme of an architectural heritage site. The Taiwanese folk religion temples were included in a case study to demonstrate the framework; the study investigated how to identify the discrepancy between the scene-based lighting from the past and that of the current period due to adaptive reuse; further, this study determined the systematic method to select the canonical view that can best invoke the memorial spatial experience of the historical space; additionally, this study provides a case report of the restoration of past lighting with candles made with ancient recipes that were recovered from the field study, and the computational process of documenting scene-based lighting with related technologies using high dynamic range imaging. Finally, the researcher of this study conducted two perceptual experiments. The results of the first experiment demonstrated that the pattern of light and dark induced by the daylight falling into the courtyard plays a significant role regarding the viewers’ preference of the canonical scene of the traditional temple. The second experiment further demonstrated canonical views of three temples illuminated with artificial light, modern candlelight, and ancient candlelight, with ancient lighting being the preferred option of viewers.

Questioning questions - the perception of f0 scaling in German questions between categorical function and continuous attitude.

In previous studies comparing the intonation of questions and statements in German, greater f0 excursions of phrase-final rises have been associated with questions in both read speech and spontaneous speech. This holds for production studies as well as perception studies. However, a major question remains whether these differences are perceived categorically or continuously. Furthermore, we ask whether the differences in f0 scaling correspond to categorical linguistic functions or rather an attitudinal continuum. We conducted three different perception experiments: a classical categorical perception task, an imitation task, and a semantic evaluation task. The results suggest that f0 scaling in phrase-final rises is perceived as a phonetic continuum rather than in phonological categories. Furthermore, the gradual increase of the final rise is associated with a gradual increase in perceived questioning. Lastly, the phonetic cues to this degree of questioning are distinct from those to the other investigated meanings surprise and uncertainty. Accordingly, this study supports the assumption that questioning constitutes an attitudinal meaning in its own right.

Serial dependence in timing at the perceptual level being modulated by working memory.

Recent experiences bias the perception of following stimuli, as has been verified in various kinds of experiments in visual perception. This phenomenon, known as serial dependence, may reflect mechanisms to maintain perceptual stability. In the current study, we examined several key properties of serial dependence in temporal perception. Firstly, we examined the source of the serial dependence effect in temporal perception. We found that perception without motor reproduction is sufficient to induce the sequential effect; motor reproduction caused a stronger effect and is achieved by biasing the perception of the future target duration rather than directly influencing the subsequent movement. Secondly, we ask how working memory influences serial dependence in a temporal reproduction task. By varying the delay time between standard duration and the reproduction, we showed that the strength of serial dependence is enhanced as the delay increased. Those features of serial dependence are consistent with what has been observed in visual perceptual tasks, for example, orientation perception or location perception. The similarities between the visual and the timing tasks may suggest a similar neural coding mechanism of magnitude between the visual stimuli and the duration.

토픽 모델링과 언어 네트워크 분석에 기반한 한국어 발음 연구 동향 분석

Objectives This study aims to analyze Korean language education pronunciation research trends using topic modeling and language network analysis and suggest future research tasks and development directions. Methods Using Netminer 4.5 as a tool, 424 dissertations and 517 academic journal papers in the field of pronunciation in Korean language education were analyzed focusing on the title. Results This study aims to analyze Korean language education pronunciation research trends using topic modeling and language network analysis and suggest future research tasks and development directions. As a result of the analysis, the first research on degree papers began in 1989 and academic journal in 1962, and a total of 719 studies were conducted, including 76.4% from 2008 to 2022. By period, research increased rapidly in the 2008-2012 period compared to the 2003-2007 period. In terms of frequency, degree papers were studied in the order of ‘learning’, ‘education’, ‘Chinese’, and ‘plan’, and in academic journal, ‘learning’, ‘education’, ‘Chinese’, and ‘analysis’. Looking at the pair of words in which two words appear at the same time, both the degree thesis and the academic journal showed the highest connection strength between the words “Chinese-learning”. Conclusions First, research is needed targeting learners of various nationalities. Second, there should be a study to analyze the difference by learner's mastery. Third, various perceptual experiments should be conducted. Fourth, more research is needed on pronunciation of the syllable-final liquid ‘ㄹ’ and syllable-final nasals.

Rod-cone signal interference in the retina shapes perception in primates.

Linking the activity of neurons, circuits and synapses to human behavior is a fundamental goal of neuroscience. Meeting this goal is challenging, in part because behavior, particularly perception, often masks the complexity of the underlying neural circuits, and in part because of the significant behavioral differences between primates and animals like mice and flies in which genetic manipulations are relatively common. Here we relate circuit-level processing of rod and cone signals in the non-human primate retina to a known break in the normal seamlessness of human vision - a surprising inability to see high contrast flickering lights under specific conditions. We use electrophysiological recordings and perceptual experiments to identify key mechanisms that shape the retinal integration of rod- and cone-generated retinal signals. We then incorporate these mechanistic insights into a predicti\ve model that accurately captures the cancellation of rod- and cone-mediated responses and can explain the perceptual insensitivity to flicker.

Multimodal impressions of voice quality settings: the role of vocal and visual symbolism

This study considers instances of voice quality settings under a sound-symbolic and synesthetic perspective, focusing on the auditory impressions these settings might have on listeners' attributions of meaning effects and associations between vocal and visual features related to emotional expression. Three perceptual experiments are carried out. The first experiment examined the impressionistic effects of eight voice quality settings characterized by differences in pitch. The second experiment examined the impressionistic effects of seven voice quality settings characterized by productions with the presence or absence of turbulent airflow, irregularity, and tenseness. The third experiment investigated associations between facial expressions of basic emotions and voice quality characteristics. Data are considered in terms of acoustic (fundamental frequency values), articulatory (reduced or expanded length of the vocal tract), perceptual impressions of size (big/small), strength (strong/weak), brightness (dark, clear), and distinctiveness (muffled/distinct), and visual features (facial expressions of the basic emotions sadness, happiness, anger, disgust, fear, and neutrality). The results provide corroborating evidence of existing links between sound and meaning and are discussed in relation to the frequency, production, sirenic biological codes, phonetic metaphors, and the vocal and facial gestures involved in emotional expression.

Perceptual Identification of Polish Vowels Due to F0 Changes

The paper investigates the interdependence between the perceptual identification of the vocalic quality of six isolated Polish vowels traditionally defined by the spectral envelope and the fundamental frequency F0. The stimuli used in the listening experiments were natural female and male voices, which were modified by changing the F0 values in the ±1 octave range. The results were then compared with the outcome of the experiments on fully synthetic voices. Despite the differences in the generation of the investigated stimuli and their technical quality, consistent results were obtained. They confirmed the findings that in the perceptual identification of vowels of key importance is not only the position of the formants on the F1 × F2 plane but also their relationship to F0, the connection between the formants and the harmonics and other factors. The paper presents, in quantitative terms, all possible kinds of perceptual shifts of Polish vowels from one phonetic category to another in the function of voice pitch. An additional perceptual experiment was also conducted to check a broader range of F0 changes and their impact on the identification of vowels in CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) structures. A mismatch between the formants and the glottal tone value can lead to a change in phonetic category.

Effect of Individualized Head-Related Transfer Functions on Distance Perception in Virtual Reproduction for a Nearby Sound Source

The head-related transfer function (HRTF) is dependent on the position of the sound source (both direction and distance) and is also affected by individual anatomical parameters. Individualized HRTFs have been shown to affect the perception of sound direction, but have not been considered in distance perception. This work aims to discover, by means of psychoacoustic experiments for a virtual reproduction system through a pair of in-ear headphones, the effect of individualized HRTF on auditory distance perception for a nearby sound source. The individualized HRTFs of six subjects and the non-individualized HRTFs of a mannequin at seven distances between 0.2 and 1.0 m and five lateral azimuths between 45X and 135X in the horizontal plane were processed with white noise to generate binaural signals. Further, the individualized and non-individualized HRTFs were used in the auditory distance perception experiments. Results of distance perception show that the variance of distance perception results among subjects is significant, the reason could be the stimuli are lack of dynamic cue and early reflections, or the auditory difference of distance perception among subjects. However, via the analyses of mean slope of perceptual distance and correlation between the perceptual and real distance, we find that the individualized HRTF cue has insignificant influence on distance perception.

Serial attention to serial memory: The psychological refractory period in forward and backward cued recall

Guided by the conjecture that memory retrieval is attention turned inward, we examined serial attention in serial memory, combining the psychological refractory period (PRP) procedure from attention research with cued recall of two items from brief six-item lists. We report six experiments showing robust PRP effects in cued recall from memory (1–4) and cued report from perceptual displays (5–6), which suggest that memory retrieval requires the same attentional bottleneck as “retrieval” from perception. There were strong direction effects in each memory experiment. Response time (RT) was shorter and accuracy was higher when the cues occurred in the forward direction (left-to-right, top-to-bottom, first-to-last), replicating differences between forward and backward serial recall. Cue positions had strong effects on RT and accuracy in the memory experiments (1–4). The pattern suggested that subjects find cued items in memory by stepping through the list from the beginning or the end, with a preference for starting at the beginning. The perceptual experiments (5–6) showed weak effects of position that were more consistent with direct access. In all experiments, the distance between the cues in the list (lag) had weak effects, suggesting that subjects searched for each cue from the beginning or end of the list more often than they moved through the list from the first cue to the second. Direction, distance, and lag effects on RT and inter-response interval changed with SOA in a manner that suggested they affect bottleneck or pre-bottleneck processes that create and execute a plan for successive retrievals. We conclude that sequential retrieval from memory and sequential attention to perception engage the same computations and we show how computational models of memory can be interpreted as models of attention focused on memory.

L1 variation and L2 acquisition: L1 German /eː/-/ɛː/ overlap and its effect on the acquisition of L2 English /ɛ/-/æ/.

A person's first language (L1) affects the way they acquire speech in a second language (L2). However, we know relatively little about the role different varieties of the L1 play in the acquisition of L2 speech. This study focuses on German (L1) learners of English (L2) and asks whether the degree to which German speakers distinguish between the two vowels /eː/ and /ɛː/ in their L1 has an impact on how well these individuals identify /æ/ and discriminate between the two English vowels /ɛ/ and /æ/. These two English vowels differ in both vowel quality and duration (/æ/ is longer than /ɛ/). We report on an identification and a discrimination experiment. In the first study, participants heard a sound file and were asked to indicate whether they heard "pen" or "pan" (or "pedal" or "paddle"). The stimuli differed from each other in terms of both vowel quality (11 steps on a spectral continuum from an extreme /æ/ to an extreme /ɛ/) and duration (short, middle, long). In the second study, participants had to signal whether two sound files they were exposed to differed from each other. We modeled the percentage of /æ/ ("pan," "paddle") selection (identification task only, binomial logistic regression), accuracy (discrimination task only, binomial logistic regression), and reaction time (identification and discrimination tasks, linear mixed effects models) by implementing the German Pillai score as a measure of vowel overlap in our analysis. Each participant has an individual Pillai score, which ranges from 0 (= merger of L1 German /eː/ and /ɛː/) to 1 (=maintenance of the contrast between L1 German /eː/ and /ɛː/) and had been established, prior to the perception experiments reported here, in a production study. Although the findings from the discrimination study remain inconclusive, the results from the identification test support the hypothesis that maintaining the vowel contrast in the L1 German leads to a more native-like identification of /æ/ in L2 English. We conclude that sociolinguistic variation in someone's L1 can affect L2 acquisition.

The use of Active Learning systems for stimulus selection and response modelling in perception experiments

To study the role of perceptual cues on categorization and decision making, participants are typically tested in (perception) experiments with a fixed set of randomized or pseudo-randomized trials. In linguistics and psycholinguistics, for instance, studies often investigate the relative weighting of different cues for a linguistic contrast (e.g., intonation vs. word order). For categorization beyond the segmental level (e.g., /p/ vs. /b/), it is important to establish that results generalise to different words or sentences, which necessitates the use of a range of different items. This may limit the number of conditions (cues and cue combinations) that can be sensibly tested in the same experiment. We show that Active Learning (AL) systems provide a solution: Since stimulus selection is informed by the system's learning mechanism (presenting certain conditions less often than uncertain conditions), they allow for efficient testing of numerous conditions and different items in the same experiment. In this paper, we compared two weighting approaches (average probability-based vs. regression-based) to model the outcome of three simulated scenarios with three binary factors each. Results show that valid results (i.e., little error between predicted values and the actual responses at the end of the experiment) are obtained after about a third of the trials of an original psycholinguistic experiment we replicated. For simulations with interactions between factors, the regression-based approach performed better. Our findings bear implications for the application of AL in psycholinguistic research (extraction of cue weights, inferential statistics, and a stopping criterion during an on-going experiment), which we will discuss.

한국인 영어 학습자의 학습 전ㆍ후 영어 유음 /l/과 /r/의 인지 및 산출

The aim of this study is to analyze errors made in the perception and production of English liquids by Korean college students. For this study, perception and production experiments were conducted with 27 Korean college students(14 males and 13 females). The experiment stimuli tested were /l/ and /r/, occurring in various positions: onset, onset cluster, word-medial, coda, and coda cluster. The results of this study are as follows. First, as a result of the perception experiments, the subjects showed a higher error rate in /r/ than in /l/. Second, in the production experiments, it was found that more errors were made in /l/ than in /r/, contrary to the perception experiment, due to the difficulty of pronouncing the dark [ɫ]. Third, in both the perception and production experiments, the error rate of the coda position was significantly higher and that of the onset cluster was the lowest. In addition, the results of this study proved the general trend seen in second language acquisition. First, in the perception and production of /l/ and /r/ in English, both negative and positive transfer of mother tongue appear. Second, there is a proportional correlation between perception and production in second language acquisition.

청감실험을 통한 옥타브밴드별 고무공충격음의 최소인지한계와 어노이언스 주관적 반응 분석

청감실험을 통한 옥타브밴드별 고무공충격음의 최소인지한계와 어노이언스 주관적 반응 분석

Discussion on Humanistic Design of Intersection Curb Radius Based on Passenger Experience

The huge waste of urban road resources caused by large turning radii of intersections has become a universal concern in traffic engineering. Here, an approach for determining curb radius at intersections is proposed using lateral acceleration to reflect ride perceptions, bringing human-oriented concepts into urban intersection design. First, we classified three kinds of ride perceptions into comfortable/uncomfortable but acceptable/unacceptable, after which the lateral acceleration and ride perceptions were obtained by ride perception experiments. The lateral acceleration critical values for each ride perception were obtained using the Raff critical gap method. Finally, we calculated the intersection curb radius based on the critical values, and verified vehicle safety under the recommended intersection curb radius. The results showed that the intersection curb radius based on the proposed approach was less than the specified value and safety was verified, indicating that enormous land resources could be saved were this methodology applied to intersection design.

The role of prosody in interpreting causality in English discourse.

Previous studies have well established that certain causal connectives encode information about the semantic-pragmatic distinction between different types of causal relations such as CAUSE-CONSEQUENCE versus CLAIM-ARGUMENT relations. These "specialized" causal connectives assist listeners in discerning different types of causality. Additionally, research has demonstrated that utterances expressing CLAIM-ARGUMENT relations exhibit distinct prosodic characteristics compared to utterances expressing CAUSE-CONSEQUENCE relations. However, it remains unknown whether the prosodic characteristics of utterances expressing causality can aid listeners in determining the specific type of causality being conveyed. To address this knowledge gap, this study investigates the impact of the prosody, specifically the prosody of the causal connective so in English, on listeners' interpretation of the type of causality expressed. We conducted a perception experiment employing a forced-choice discourse completion task, where the participants were required to select a continuation for each sound clip they heard. The sound clip consisted of factual events followed by the causal connective so. We found that the odds of listeners choosing subjective continuations over objective continuations increased when the connective so at the end of the sound clip was pronounced with subjective causality prosodic features, such as prolonged duration and a concave f0 contour. This finding suggests that the prosody of the connective so plays a role in conveying subjectivity in causality, guiding listeners in interpreting causal relations. In addition, it is important to note that our data revealed individual variation among listeners in their interpretations of prosodic information related to subjective-objective causality contrast.

42‐1: Perceptual Judgments of Simulated Low Temperatures in LCD based Vehicle Displays

A well‐known drawback with LCD‐displays in cold is a slow pixel response leading to poor picture quality. Low temperatures can constitute a hazard in viewing important displays in cars. Perceptual experiments with 20 test‐persons were conducted to find clear and acceptable ranges on screens simulating distortions in low temperatures. The results showed perception over clear and acceptable image quality was impaired beyond ‐20°C for the LCD‐screen in the experiments.

How Important are Detailed Hand Motions for Communication for a Virtual Character Through the Lens of Charades?

Detailed hand motions play an important role in face-to-face communication to emphasize points, describe objects, clarify concepts, or replace words altogether. While shared virtual reality (VR) spaces are becoming more popular, these spaces do not, in most cases, capture and display accurate hand motions. In this article, we investigate the consequences of such errors in hand and finger motions on comprehension, character perception, social presence, and user comfort. We conduct three perceptual experiments where participants guess words and movie titles based on motion captured movements. We introduce errors and alterations to the hand movements and apply techniques to synthesize or correct hand motions. We collect data from more than 1000 Amazon Mechanical Turk participants in two large experiments, and conduct a third experiment in VR. As results might differ depending on the virtual character used, we investigate all effects on two virtual characters of different levels of realism. We furthermore investigate the effects of clip length in our experiments. Amongst other results, we show that the absence of finger motion significantly reduces comprehension and negatively affects people’s perception of a virtual character and their social presence. Adding some hand motions, even random ones, does attenuate some of these effects when it comes to the perception of the virtual character or social presence, but it does not necessarily improve comprehension. Slightly inaccurate or erroneous hand motions are sufficient to achieve the same level of comprehension as with accurate hand motions. They might however still affect the viewers’ impression of a character. Finally, jittering hand motions should be avoided as they significantly decrease user comfort.

Perception of regional and nonnative accents: a comparison of museum laboratory and online data collection

Abstract Online testing for behavioral research has become an increasingly used tool. Although more researchers have been using online data collection methods, few studies have assessed the replicability of findings for speech intelligibility tasks. Here we assess intelligibility in quiet and two noise-added conditions for several different accents of English (Midland American, Standard Southern British, Scottish, German-accented, Mandarin-accented, Japanese-accented, and Hindi-English bilingual). Participants were tested in person at a museum-based laboratory and online. Results showed little to no difference between the two settings for the easier noise condition and in quiet, but large performance differences in the most difficult noise condition with an advantage for the participants tested online. Technology-based variables did not appear to drive the setting effect, but experimenter presence may have influenced response strategy for the in-person group and differences in demographics could have provided advantages for the online group. Additional research should continue to investigate how setting, demographic factors, experimenter presence, and motivational factors interact to determine performance in speech perception experiments.

The Architectural Design of Building Façade Models Related to Optimizing Daylight Distribution

Lighting control integrated with daylighting is recognized as an important and useful strategy in energy efficient building design. One of the right factors to reduce energy consumption for artificial lighting during the day is the maximum utilization of sunlight. The aim of this research, distribution of daylight into the building analysis with five models of building facades and value of illuminance in the morning, afternoon and evening with orientation of the window openings to the northeast and southwest. Bank Mega is one of the tall buildings in Makassar Indonesia, which is located in a coastal area that is not blocked by other tall buildings, so this building is the object of research as a basis for designing façade models on building envelopes. The methodology this study is quantitative, analyzing the performance of sunlight as a source of daylighting in office buildings. This paper presents field measurements in office buildings, namely in rooms that are oriented northeast and southwest. The analysis in the two spaces is a reference to determine the effect of sunlight on the orientation of the building. In this study also conducted visual perception experiments by submitting questionnaires to 43 respondents. the results show that there are some complaints for employees, because of the high illuminance value in certain areas. Furthermore, simulate using the Radiance Illuminance Program software to determine the illuminance value of room in the morning, noon and afternoon with five building facade model designs, i.e., massive glass, vertical, horizontal, diagonal, and vertical-diagonal model. The results presented in this paper show that the distribution of daylight in an east-oriented room is higher in the morning than in the evening and noon. Whereas in the southwest orientation it is inversely proportional, the value of light distribution is higher in the afternoon than in the morning and noon. Accordingly, orientation of the building affects distribution of daylight. The massive glass facade model without using sun shading has the highest light distribution value compared to other façade models, but can cause glare and excessive brightness. Furthermore, the second highest distribution of daylight with the vertical facade model, but there are also areas that exceed the standard illuminance level for workspaces, but only in areas near window openings. The combined model of the vertical-diagonal facade which also has a high distribution of illuminance value and to redirect daylight deep into building interior simultaneously in the morning, afternoon and evening. Accordingly, façade model on envelope of building affects distribution of daylight. The aesthetic value of architectural design shows that the appearance of the building does not look monotonous or massive, when using the building facade models because there are attractive areas in the building envelope.

TouchScope: A Passive-Haptic Device to Investigate Tactile Perception Using a Refreshable Braille Display.

The sense of touch is underrepresented in cognitive psychology research. One of the reasons is that controlling the timing of stimulus presentation, which is a hallmark of cognitive research, is significantly more difficult for tactile stimuli than visual or auditory stimuli. In the present work, we present a system to display tactile stimuli (braille cells) and collect response time with the capability for static and dynamic (passive haptic) stimuli prsentation that will contribute to the development of tactile research. While the system requires some construction, it can be put together with commercially available materials. Here, we present the step-by-step instructions for constructing the tool, the code used to control it, and some basic experiments to validate it. The data from the experiments show that the device can be used for a variety of tactile perception experiments.