Perceptual Behavior Research Articles

Neural coding.

Neural coding.

Consciousness – subject to agreement

The claim that isomorphism in perceptual behaviour allows for differences in inner experience holds only if experience is taken to be an entity quite distinct from perceptual behaviour and only accidentally related to it. But this is not so. The two are internally related; experience as conceptualised being inherent to perception as a species of normative behaviour.

The historical roots of the theories of local signs and labelled lines.

The theories of labelled lines and local signs are commonly invoked to explain numerous perceptual phenomena. These theories postulate that perceptual systems use information about which nerve cells or which information channels are activated by the stimulus. The origins of this idea in nineteenth century German psychophysics are traced. From Descartes's idea of a dualistic mind, Kant's idea of a mental ability to conceive space, Da Vinci's ideas of pictorial 'signs', and Müller's idea of 'specific nerve energies' to explain perceptual qualities, Steinbuch, Lotze, and others derived the conclusion that neural-level signs exist that signal stimulus location to the mind. Helmholtz, Hering, and others soon suggested variations on this basic idea. By the time of James the theory had changed yet again. It was revived elsewhere in the 1920s and again in the 1970s, although used implicitly by many workers in between and since. Against a modern metaphysical background, however, a distinction between labels (hardware) and signs (symbols) is the minimum step needed towards an appropriate and comprehensive explanation of perceptual behaviour and experience.

Qualitative spatial representations from task-oriented perception and exploratory behaviors

We describe motor and perceptual behaviors that have proven useful for indoor navigation of an autonomous mobile robot. These behaviors take advantage of the large amount of structure that characterizes many indoor, office-like environments. Based on pre-existing structural landmarks, a mobile robot has the ability to explore, map, and navigate one among several office buildings sharing similar structural features, while coping with slow environment variations and local dynamics. The mobile robot develops and maintains an internal spatial representation of the environment in terms of a topological and qualitative map. The types of structural features suitable as navigation landmarks largely depend upon the available sensors. Adequate navigation performance is achieved by subdividing perception and navigation into a number of behaviors layered upon a multi-threaded real-time control architecture.

Perception of two-tone complexes by the goldfish ( Carassius auratus)

Previous experiments on the sense of hearing in goldfish have used a stimulus generalization paradigm to investigate the perceptual dimensions evoked by spectrally and temporally complex sounds. The present experiments investigated the effects on perception of the frequency separation between two tones. In the first set of experiments, six groups of goldfish were classically conditioned to a single tone and then tested for generalization to two-tone complexes having one frequency component equal to the conditioning tone, and the other differing by 2–256 Hz. Generalization declined with increasing frequency differences up to about 32 Hz, and then increased for wider frequency separations. These functions indicate that a restricted range of beat rates produces a perceptual quality that is quite unlike that of a single tone. The generalization function of frequency separation resembles the inverse of the `fluctuation strength' and `roughness' functions for human listeners. The second experiment investigated the effects of spectral location on the perception of a 32 Hz beat rate. Goldfish were conditioned to a two-tone complex (500 and 532 Hz) and then tested for generalization to single tones at various frequencies between 200 and 1200 Hz, and to two-tone complexes having a 32 Hz beat rate but with the lower tone component at various frequencies. For single-tone stimuli, generalization was relatively weak but showed a peak at 500 Hz. For the two-tone stimuli, generalization was more robust, but showed a similarly shaped gradient centered on 500 Hz. Thus, goldfish behaved as if they had acquired information about both temporal modulation and the frequency location of the tone components. These perceptual behaviors appear to be shared with humans and other vertebrates.

Models for entrainment of neural rhythms

Psychological results suggest that motor and perceptual behavior are organized by neural rhythms with periods from seconds to tenths of a second. It appears that their entrainment to external speech and music or to internal motor coordination rhythm is essential for effective performance. It is proposed that theta-alpha sensory-motor cycles (5–15 Hz) form the basis of these rhythms. They generate and entrain rhythmic motor output or temporal perceptual expectancies. It is hypothesized that cortical EEG and event-related potentials (ERPs) reflect thalamic biasing currents. The cortical evoked potential is a 5–15 Hz signal whose peaks and troughs correlate with stages of cortical information processing in sensory-motor tasks. Cortical rhythms are found in visual, auditory, and somatosensory areas as well as the hippocampus and reticular system that entrain to periodic inputs. If the arrival of an auditory stimulus is regular, it has been shown that 5–12 Hz auditory activity becomes phase locked in advance of the target stimulus to the expected arrival time. Our model of rhythmic expectation accounts for this since the theta-alpha rhythmic cycles constitute a fast clock that adjusts phase and frequency to match stimulus arrival, and longer period cycles are derived from this base clock.

Music, Education, and the Development of Pitch Perception: The Role of Context, Age and Musical Experience

This paper presents the results of an investigation into children's music listening capabilities with respect to musical pitch, focusing on the effects of types of materials presented in a short-term listening situation using the probe-note methodology. Results from a listening task administered to children of different levels of musical experience aged between 6 and 16 illustrate that children's capabilities exceeded those typically ascribed to them by music educators and psychologists. In particular, children appeared more sensitive to higher-order musical features such as interval content than to more surface features such as contour, and these sensitivities increased with age and experience. Furthermore, the distinction between musicians and non-musicians typically drawn in music- psychological research was found to be insufficient in characterising the range of children's perceptual behaviours. Evidence was also found to support the reliability of responses given in short-term listening situations.

Visual activity in relation to head movement in infants with leukomalacia

Leukomalacies are supposed to have consequences for visual and cognitive development. However, authors describe opposite changes with age : for instance, both increasing and decreasing acuity have been reported (Levene and al. 1992; Dubowitz and al. 1996;). There is also no general agreement about performance in visual detection and attention. Moreover, some motor impairment often accompany perceptual defects. Because the patietal areas are touched by these lesions, it is assumed that specific motor constraints influence the perceptual behavior of leukomalacic infants. In order to detect caracteristic visual-motor features, we have studied the orienting reaction to visual stimuli and the capacity of visual detection in leukomalacic infants.

Perceptual biases, affect, and behavior in the relationships of dependents and self-critics.

Aspects of interpersonal, personality, and cognitive models of depression were tested in a college sample. The perceptions and actual interpersonal behaviors of dependent and self-critical women and their romantic partners were assessed during a conflict-resolution task. Dependent women were characterized by positive biases in the perception of lovingness expressed within the relationship. The partners of dependent women, however, experienced a decrease in positive affect and a trend toward increasing hostility during the conflict-resolution task. Self-critical women were objectively rated as less loving and more hostile, and their partners were also rated as less loving. Self-critics also exhibited negative biases in self-perceptions of submissiveness. The results are interpreted within a comprehensive framework integrating various elements of interpersonal, personality, and cognitive models of depression.

Formant transition duration and place perception in misarticulating children and adolescents

The explanation of articulatory problems as an output speech disorder does not preclude the possibility that auditory processing problems are associated. Identification of brief auditory spectral cues in a place-of-articulation continuum was studied in children with articulation problems. First, it was shown that formant transition durations smaller than 20·0 ms dramatically decreased phonemic identification rates for alveolar stop consonants in control subjects. Identification tasks based on two place-of-articulation continua /pαk/-/tαk/ with F2/F3 transition durations of 52 and 20 ms were administered to groups of misarticulating children and adolescents and two control groups (children and adults). For all subject groups there was poorer phonetic processing with shorter transition durations of F2 and F3. The misarticulating subjects demonstrated poorer phonetic processing of formant transitions than did the control subjects. Shortening F2/F3 transition duration did not differentially influence perceptual behaviour between the experimental and the control groups. In determining the causal link between perception and production, an explanation of perception preceding production was favoured. It was argued that, in addition to assessing the specificity between perception and production mechanisms, assessment of perception of formant transitions may have potential as a clinical tool for evaluating phonetic processing.

Prenatal auditory experience directs species-typical perceptual responsiveness in bobwhite quail chicks (Colinus virginianus).

The present study examined the role of the relationship between pre- and postnatal stimulus cues in directing perceptual preferences of bobwhite quail chicks. Bobwhite quail were exposed to either prenatal auditory or prenatal auditory-visual stimulation. Both prenatal auditory and auditory-visual stimulation resulted in accelerated responsiveness to combined postnatal auditory-visual cues. However, whether or not subjects displayed accelerated perceptual responsiveness depended on the relationship between the nature of the pre- and postnatal auditory stimuli used. These results demonstrate the salience of auditory cues in directing early postnatal perceptual behavior in precocial birds and help to explicate why prior research in this area has found that augmented prenatal sensory stimulation can result in either accelerated or decelerated patterns of perceptual functioning.

Listener Experience and Perception of Voice Quality

Five speech-language clinicians and 5 naive listeners rated the similarity of pairs of normal and dysphonic voices. Multidimensional scaling was used to determine the voice characteristics that were perceptually important for each voice set and listener group. Solution spaces were compared to determine if clinical experience affects perceptual strategies. Naive and expert listeners attended to different aspects of voice quality when judging the similarity of voices, for both normal and pathological voices. All naive listeners used similar perceptual strategies; however, individual clinicians differed substantially in the parameters they considered important when judging similarity. These differences were large enough to suggest that care must be taken when using data averaged across clinicians, because averaging obscures important aspects of an individual's perceptual behavior.

Species-specific auditory preference of bobwhite quail chicks (Colinus virginianus) is altered by social interaction with siblings.

This study examined whether reinstating specific aspects of the normally occurring postnatal setting (ongoing social interaction with siblings during rearing and/or testing) would influence bobwhite quail chicks' attraction to their species-typical maternal call. Results revealed that incubator-reared chicks exhibit a strong preference for the species-typical bobwhite maternal call over a group of same-aged siblings in simultaneous choice tests at 24 hr and 48 hr after hatching, but only if the birds are kept in relative social isolation. No preference for the maternal call was found at 24 hr or at 48 hr if chicks were reared in a group of same-aged chicks from hatching and tested to the maternal call vs. siblings or the maternal call paired with a live adult bobwhite hen vs. siblings. These results raise doubts about the appropriateness of the usual methods of isolation rearing in the study of species-typical perceptual preferences and underscore the importance of considering features of the natural social context in the analysis of early perceptual and social behavior.

Perceptual and Motor Impairment within 2 Weeks after a Stroke: A Multifactorial Statistical Approach

Visual perceptual performance (12 items) and motor behavior were assessed in 109 patients within 2 weeks poststroke and were related to self-care activities of daily living (ADL) proficiency. A cluster analysis revealed that scores for motor behavior and self-care ADL were closely associated whereas visual-perception items could be separated into two groups One of these incorporated relatively meaningless (Low-Order Perception [L-OP]) and the other relatively meaningful (High-Order Perception [H-OP]) stimuli. When the disability parameter, ADL, was excluded factor analyses identified three orthogonal factors—motor behavior, H-OP, and L-OP—which were similar to those of the cluster analysis and explained about 75% of the variance. Standardized factor scores were sizable predictors for self-care ADL-score for motor behavior and H-OP, but not for L-OP. The present findings of grouping of visual perception into two factors are contradictory to espoused categorizations and may shed new light on occupational therapy research, functional diagnosis, and the treatment of stroke patients.

Four Properties Common among Perceptions Confirmed by a Large Sample of Subjects: An Ecological Approach to Mechanisms of Individual Differences in Perception: II

The four properties which correspond to mechanisms determining individual differences in perception were proposed hypothetically and confirmed by responses to a 60-item check list for 214 women and also for 530 men and women. Properties were intense sensitivity, temporal sensitivity, possible range of total stimuli (the total stimulation in a perception is given a product of intensity and duration of the stimulus for the perception), and sensory-motor reactivity. These were the same as those for 316 men subjects in prior work. The three properties, intense sensitivity, temporal sensitivity, and possible range of stimulation, were obtained from two groups of items which related culture-free and culture-bound behavior. So the mechanisms determining individual differences regulate the two kinds of perceptual behaviors. All correlation coefficients of factor-score estimates between the two properties were near zero. The properties were independent of each other within subjects. This independence among the properties supported Satow's model of four types of individuals, explaining the individual differences on the grounds of the relations among the properties. Analysis suggested no sex difference in the mechanisms determining individual differences in perceptions. Another property, preference for weak stimuli, related to values of lower limits of the possible range of total stimulation.

Illusion in Theater: The Sign/Stimulus Equivalence

Maurice Merleau-Ponty concludes his discussion of the Higher Forms of Behavior: Pavlov's Reflexology and its Postulates (1967:52-128) by submitting two major propositions: first, unlike lower responses which are functions of antecedent conditions unfolding in objective time and space, higher responses do not depend on stimuli, taken materially, but rather on the meaning of the situation (1967:125). Second, behavior consists of relations that are irreducible to their alleged parts-whether these parts are coming from outside or inside. structure of behavior as it presents itself to perceptual experience is neither thing nor consciousness (1967:127). Is it, then, a sign? Ivan Pavlov, of course, looked into perceptual behavior as an extension of his theories on respondent conditioning. In theater studies, however, interdisciplinary research teams such as the late Tinchon/Dietrich team at the Institute for Audience Research at the University of Vienna or the more recent Schoenmakers/Tan team at the Institute for Reception Esthetics at the University of Amsterdam, seek to describe the audiovisual of performance-texts and to explain the emotional/cognitive aspects of spectator response to these (Schoenmakers 1982, 11:146). The findings of such teams hopefully will help theater companies increase the affective quality (impact) that performance-texts have on spectators. Interestingly, Umberto Eco argued persuasively enough that stimuli cannot be regarded as signs (1979:19-20; 241-242). Without first disproving Eco, the above teams proceeded to harness semiotics and psychological esthetics to a common task. This paper aims at refuting Eco's point and at justifying an interdisciplinary approach to theatrical phenomena. Wilfried Passow negotiated a way of lifting the barrier between the two disciplines by pairing three types of theatrical experience (visceral, emotional, and cognitive) to Charles Peirce's three kinds of interpretants (immediate, dynamic, and final). Passow suggested that these

What Eye Movement Research Tells Us about Perceptual Behavior of Children and Adults: Implications for the Visual Arts

record of eye fixations and movements is an objective measure of an individual's involvement with an art object. This review of eye movement research reveals distinct patterns of viewing behavior which are determined by the age of the viewer, the type of visual material, nature of the problem confronting the viewer, and the structure of the object. Strategies to employ, alter, or measure the effect of these behaviors are important to learning and research in the visual arts. Eye movement research over the last forty-five years provides evidence that some general characteristics of eye movement behavior can be identified for children and adults while viewing works of art and pictures. perception of an art object occurs so rapidly that the individual is unaware of the many eye movements and fixations used to scan the surface of the object. record of eye movements and fixations is an objective measure which can help in understanding the perceptual process with works of art. Descriptions of the relationship of eye movements and perceptual response to works of art can be found in the art literature. Bevlin (1971) describes John Sargent's painting The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit in the following manner: The two strong groupings of standing figures are balanced by the seated child. Our eyes are led to the child by the downward sweep in the aprons on the older sisters (p. 246). Taylor (1957) outlines a viewing pattern concerning Pietro Perugino's painting The Crucifixion with Saints: our eyes tend to relate similar colors. Further, strong contrasts, whether of hue or of value,

Maternal perceptual style and mother-infant play behavior

Maternal perceptual style and mother-infant play behavior

Modes of Observing Behaviour Among Undergraduate Science Education Students

Abstract This study was based on the nature of the processes of science and the cognitive‐affective variables that often seem to influence the validity of scientific explanations. The perceptual behaviours of individual observers were chosen among the variables of affect, and using attentive responses as its construct, four modes of observing behaviours were theoretically identified. The purpose of the study was to estimate the proportions of science students using each of the identified modes and subsequently examine their performances on four cognitive variables. Thirty‐two freshmen and sophomore science education students of Hiroshima University were individually requested to observe a system, comprising a burning candle in a limited supply of air, over water, and write explanations for their observations. Each student had three observation sessions of the same system. Results indicate that 43.75% of the students used the fastest mode of Short Stimulation Time/Short Response Time (SST/SRT), but had the lowest mean score of 1‐64 on the cognitive variables 1 to 4. There was also a significant difference between the mean scores of all subjects using Long Response Time (LRT) and those using Short Response Time (SRT), t(30)>2#lb042, p<#lb05. With these results, an integrative approach to the teaching of science was suggested to encourage students in the use of reflective thinking behaviours.

"Same"–"different" judgments: A review of current controversies in perceptual comparisons.

A commonly used experimental paradigm for studying human information processing asks subjects to classify two stimuli with respect to their similarities and differences. The same-different judgment task, in particular, has useful applications in a variety of studies. The interpretation of same-diiferent reaction time data, however, is complicated by the existence of two seemingly anomalous effects, the fast-same effect and the criterion effect. This article examines explanations of these effects and brings evidence from the literature to bear on them. Current models of same-different judgments, two of which are widely accepted, can be rejected on the evidence of data reviewed here. Among the disconfirming data are several results that offer suggestions both for improving current models and for questioning some of their fundamental presuppositions. Sameness and difference are fundamental cognitive relations that enter, at least implicitly, into most forms of adaptive perceptual behavior. Accordingly, experimental tasks requiring subjects to discriminate sameness and difference among stimulus patterns have become standard investigative tools in a number of areas of psychological research, areas ranging from basic psychophysics and stimulus coding to concept learning and language processing. The time taken to make a same-different judgment has been a particularly useful measurement because reaction times (RTs) can often be used to isolate mental processes underlying phenomena of interest (Sternberg, 1969).' Aside from its methodological use as an adaptable and sensitive probe of extrinsic phenomena, the same-different judgment task has itself been the subject of considerable study over the past 15 years. The resulting body of empirical evidence has produced substantial agreement on the functional significance of information-processing operations that subserve perceptual comparisons. However, a debate, contentious at times and still unresolved, has surrounded same-different judgment