Perceptual Clues Research Articles

Exploring spherical units as perceptual clues in enumerating 3D arrays

This study continues an investigation of how spherical units, compared to cubical units, can facilitate students’ units-locating and organizing units in composites. We analyze how Norwegian grade 3 students enumerate 3D arrays with cubical and spherical units. Our results show how spherical units can act as perceptual clues that facilitate cognitive processes, underlying students’ strategies in the enumeration of 3D arrays. In particular, the results show how spherical units facilitate the units-locating process, which, in turn, supports processes of organizing-by-composites and spatial structuring of the array, in the action of developing a proper iterative strategy such as layer-based thinking.

Learning from dermoscopic images in association with clinical metadata for skin lesion segmentation and classification

Automatic segmentation and classification of lesions are two clinically significant tasks in the computer-aided diagnosis of skin diseases. Both tasks are challenging due to the nonnegligible lesion differences in dermoscopic images from different patients. In this paper, we propose a novel pipeline to efficiently implement skin lesions’ segmentation and classification tasks, which consists of a segmentation network and a classification network. To improve the performance of the segmentation network, we propose a novel module of Multi-Scale Holistic Feature Exploration (MSH) to thoroughly exploit perceptual clues latent among multi-scale feature maps as synthesized by the decoder. The MSH module enables holistic exploration of features across multiple scales to more effectively support downstream image analysis tasks. To boost the performance of the classification network, we propose a novel module of Cross-Modality Collaborative Feature Exploration (CMC) to discover latent discriminative features by collaboratively exploiting potential relationships between cross-modal features of dermoscopic images and clinical metadata. The CMC module enables dynamically capturing versatile interaction effects among cross-modal features during the model’s representation learning procedure by discriminatively and adaptively learning the interaction weight associated with each crossmodality feature pair. In addition, to effectively reduce background noise and boost the lesion discrimination ability of the classification network, we crop the images based on lesion masks generated by the best segmentation model. We evaluate the proposed pipeline on the four public skin lesion datasets, where the ISIC 2018 and PH2 are for segmentation, and the ISIC 2019 and ISIC 2020 are combined into a new dataset, ISIC 2019&2020, for classification. It achieves a Jaccard index of 83.31% and 90.14% in skin lesion segmentation, an AUC of 97.98% and an Accuracy of 92.63% in skin lesion classification, which is superior to the performance of representative state-of-the-art skin lesion segmentation and classification methods. Last but not least, the new model for segmentation utilizes much fewer model parameters (3.3 M) than its peer approaches, leading to a greatly reduced number of labeled samples required for model training, which obtains substantially stronger robustness than its peers.

Exploring units-locating in enumerating units of 3D arrays: linking units-locating to units-representation

The aim of the present study is to explore strategies in enumerating units of three dimensional (3D) arrays. We analyse enumeration strategies of students in grade 3 (ages 8 to 9) in situations of cubical and spherical representations of units of 3D arrays. By exploring students’ strategies in these two situations, we find that difficulties in enumerating units in 3D arrays can be traced to difficulties in units-locating, with the consequence of applying double and triple counting. Our results also indicate that spherical units can serve as perceptual clues in units-locating and in assembling units into relevant composites. With input from our findings, we suggest research to investigate the following three hypotheses: (i) spherical units can turn students away from double and triple counting, (ii) spherical units can support students’ units-locating process and their ability to assemble units into relevant composites and (iii) teaching of enumerating 3D arrays should start with spherical units before cubical units.

Rethinking Image Salient Object Detection: Object-Level Semantic Saliency Reranking First, Pixelwise Saliency Refinement Later.

Human attention is an interactive activity between our visual system and our brain, using both low-level visual stimulus and high-level semantic information. Previous image salient object detection (SOD) studies conduct their saliency predictions via a multitask methodology in which pixelwise saliency regression and segmentation-like saliency refinement are conducted simultaneously. However, this multitask methodology has one critical limitation: the semantic information embedded in feature backbones might be degenerated during the training process. Our visual attention is determined mainly by semantic information, which is evidenced by our tendency to pay more attention to semantically salient regions even if these regions are not the most perceptually salient at first glance. This fact clearly contradicts the widely used multitask methodology mentioned above. To address this issue, this paper divides the SOD problem into two sequential steps. First, we devise a lightweight, weakly supervised deep network to coarsely locate the semantically salient regions. Next, as a postprocessing refinement, we selectively fuse multiple off-the-shelf deep models on the semantically salient regions identified by the previous step to formulate a pixelwise saliency map. Compared with the state-of-the-art (SOTA) models that focus on learning the pixelwise saliency in single images using only perceptual clues, our method aims at investigating the object-level semantic ranks between multiple images, of which the methodology is more consistent with the human attention mechanism. Our method is simple yet effective, and it is the first attempt to consider salient object detection as mainly an object-level semantic reranking problem.

Impact of learning and training on wine expertise: a review

Experts are able to conduct both analytical and holistic tasks involved in evaluating wine quality. Although there is no standard for wine-tasting training, a number of papers have reported on experts’ ability to discriminate among and categorize wines, highlighting a process involving perceptual clues and cognitive processing. This review focuses on the influence of different training tasks on tasting and olfactory abilities. Moreover, recent researches in psychophysics and neurosciences demonstrated the potential functionality of mental imagery. The ability to create mental images may play an important role in discrimination and categorization, but is dependent on preliminary perceptual, attentional, and semantic training.

Conceptual rather than perceptual: Cross-modal binding of pitch sequencing is based on an underlying schematic structure

Theories on the origins of cross-modal correspondences involving pitch speculate on statistical, semantically-mediated, and structural factors. We hypothesize that five apparently different conceptualizations of pitch sequencing are based on an underlying structure consisting of at least two conceptual primitives: discrete distance and unidirectional scalar change. A total of 184 children and adults were asked to rate 52 animations set to a tonal and non-tonal scale and presented as a square moving vertically, shrinking/expanding in size, narrowing/thickening in width, rotating clockwise/counterclockwise, and changing in hue. We varied the underlying structure of each visual stimulus by including or excluding one or both postulated primitives. The scores generally increased as one and then two primitives were added but did not differ across animation type (“pitch/height,” “pitch/size,” “pitch/width,” “pitch/rotation,” “pitch/hue”) if the same number of primitives was present. Overt movement may be preferred to static representations as the third primitive factor. Results suggest that cross-modal binding of pitch-sequencing is a conceptual task – based on an abstract schematic structure rather than lexicalizations from the mother tongue or lower-level perceptual clues.

Combining spatial and DCT based Markov features for enhanced blind detection of image splicing

Nowadays, it is extremely simple to manipulate the content of digital images without leaving perceptual clues due to the availability of powerful image editing tools. Image tampering can easily devastate the credibility of images as a medium for personal authentication and a record of events. With the daily upload of millions of pictures to the Internet and the move towards paperless workplaces and e-government services, it becomes essential to develop automatic tampering detection techniques with reliable results. This paper proposes an enhanced technique for blind detection of image splicing. It extracts and combines Markov features in spatial and Discrete Cosine Transform domains to detect the artifacts introduced by the tampering operation. To reduce the computational complexity due to high dimensionality, Principal Component Analysis is used to select the most relevant features. Then, an optimized support vector machine with radial-basis function kernel is built to classify the image as being tampered or authentic. The proposed technique is evaluated on a publicly available image splicing dataset using cross validation. The results showed that the proposed technique outperforms the state-of-the-art splicing detection methods.

Analogical mapping across modalities in children with specific language impairment (SLI).

Analogical mapping is a domain-general cognitive process found in language development, and more particularly in the abstraction of construction schemas. Analogical mapping is considered as the general cognitive process which consists in the alignment of two or several sequences in order to detect their common relational structure and generalize it to new items. The current study investigated analogical mapping across modalities in children with specific language impairment (SLI). Nineteen children with SLI and their age-matched peers were administered two tasks: a linguistic analogical reasoning task (composed of syllables) and a similar non-linguistic analogical reasoning task (composed of pictures). In the two tasks, the items presented were divided into two groups: items with perceptual cues and items without perceptual cues. Children had to complete a sequence sharing the same relational structure as previously presented sequences. Results showed an expected group effect with poorer performance for children with SLI compared to children with typical language development (TLD). Results corroborate hypotheses suggesting that children with SLI have difficulties with analogical mapping, which may hinder the abstraction of construction schemas. Interestingly, whereas no interaction effect between group and modality (linguistic vs. non-linguistic) was revealed, a triple interaction Group*Modality*Perceptual support was observed. In the non-linguistic task, the performance of children with SLI was the same for items with and without perceptual clues, but in the linguistic task they performed more poorly for items without perceptual cues compared to items with perceptual cues. The results and limits of the study are discussed.

Combining Olfactory and Gustatory Clues in the Judgment of Aging Potential of Red Wine by Wine Professionals

The study was aimed at determining the relative importance of olfactory and gustatory information for the <i>vin de garde</i> concept, which refers to wine that is intended for aging. First, the study investigated how olfactory information contributed to the assessment of the aging potential of young wine. Burgundy wine professionals categorized 26 red wines (vintage 2005) according to their aging potential in two experimental conditions: orthonasal evaluation and overall evaluation. Second, the aromatic notes associated with wines perceived with an aging potential were examined. A trained descriptive panel described the odor of the 26 red wines to determine whether the wines judged by wine professionals to have an aging potential (orthonasal evaluation) were characterized by specific aromatic notes. Third, the study investigated how taste and mouthfeel contributed, together with odor, to judgments of aging potential. The trained descriptive panel also assessed taste (sweetness, acidity, and bitterness) and mouthfeel (alcohol and astringency) intensity of the wines. Results showed that odor provides some clues for professional judgment of aging potential. These olfactory clues are sufficient to assess the aging potential for some wines, but not all. Wines judged to have aging potential by orthonasal evaluation tended to have woody, caramel, roasted, and prune notes. Taste and mouthfeel also provided clues for professional judgment of aging potential. Red wines judged to have aging potential by overall evaluation tended to have high astringency and low acidity. Thus, the combination of gustatory and olfactory information allowed professionals to judge the aging potential of wines. The <i>vin de garde</i> concept involves a wide variety of complex perceptual clues (color, odor, taste, and mouthfeel).

Repression: Active Censorship of Stressful Memories vs. Source Amnesia for Self-Consciously Dissociated Memories

Three groups of subjects were presented solvable and unsolvable anagrams, along with clues that were either perceived or imaged. For the two groups in which failure was made stressful, the perceptual clues from failed anagrams were most likely to be misremembered as imaginal clues. This finding suggests that the repression of past failure is manifested primarily as source amnesia, and is a passive aftereffect of having dissociatively experienced failure as “not real” as well as not imaginary in source. Such a suggestion challenges two key Freudian assumptions: that repression is universal, and that it entails active censorship.

On locating objects by their distinguishing features in multisensory images

This paper reports preliminary work on a knowledge-based perceptual system for a robot that must function in an actual office environment. This system is distinguished by the following pragmatic considerations: (1) It is designed to find specific objects needed by the robot in the performance of a task rather than attempting the usually unnecessary and very much harder job of completely describing an environment of potentially overwhelming complexity. (2) It is based on the premise that in real scenes there is a sufficient redundancy of perceptual clues, as well as contextual constraints among objects, so that an intelligent system can devise a relatively simple strategy for distinguishing the specific objects of interest from others likely to be present. (3) It relies heavily on multisensory (i.e., color and range) data to increase the likelihood of finding distinguishing surface attributes for a particular object. Similarly, detailed descriptive representations for complex attributes (e.g., shape and texture) are avoided in favor of the simplest representations sufficient to distinguish the object of interest.

Visual Perception Versus Memory of Abstract Spatial Patterns and Unilateral Brain Damage

Many experimental data support view that visual recognition of abstract patterns involves dominant hemisphere patterns are meaningful (or may be given some sort of meaning by subject) and minor hemisphere patterns (both meaningful and not meaningful) are complex, and hence difficult, from a perceptual standpoint (De Renzi, Scotti, & Spinnler, 1969; Faglioni, Scotti, & Spinnler, 1969c; Kimura, 1963; Milner, 1958; Milner & Kimura, 1964). The same hemispheric asymmetry has been found in tests involving memory, i.e., requiring delayed identification of visual patterns (De Renzi, Faglioni, & Spinnler, 1968; De Renzi & Spinnler, 1966; Faglioni & Spinnler, 1969; Milner, 1968). The problem is complicated by finding of Boiler & De Renzi (1967) that patients with left-side brain damage do worse than those with a right-side lesion on a paired-associate test of visual memory for apparently meaningless scrawls. This finding may perhaps be explained by a specific inability of former patients to convert meaningless scrawls into meaningful stimuli by way of internal verbalization. The results of a recent investigation on relationship between perception and memory of visual patterns (Faglioni & Spinnler, 1969) support conclusions summarized by De Renzi (1968) that the left hemisphere plays a major role memory process can be reinforced by verbal or cognitive mechanisms, whereas, on other hand, when patient has to rely entirely upon perceptual clues in building up trace, importance of right hemisphere comes to fore. These conclusions, however, are provisional and should be considered with caution, since there are data that are not in agreement with them. For example, in a study on color memory, Boller & Spinnler (1967)

Behavioral mapping

This research is based on the premise that there is a relationship between children's play behaviour and the designed features of the residential environment in which they reside. Through systematic and unobtrusive observation, outdoor activities were monitored and described in behavioral as well as physical terms. Through successive observations, patterns emerge that suggest site planning arrangements provide certain perceptual clues and ambiguities for individual as well as group activities, depending upon age distribution and sex. Residential site planning, particularly for low‐income families, is an important factor in the range of experiences, behavior and development of its inhabitants, particularly children.

Grammatical Influences in Speech Perception

Most of our studies of speech perception have been conducted with lists of isolated words chosen to represent the phonetic structure of the language. There is good reason to believe, however, that intelligibility depends, at least in part, on the context in which the words occur and on the listener's expectations about them. In particular, the context provided by grammatical structure can provide valuable perceptual clues. This paper discusses a series of experiments designed to study how human listeners use grammatical context in order to facilitate their perception of speech.