Perceptual Foundations Research Articles

Projecting a Model of Semiotic Change

Projecting a Model of Semiotic Change

Perceptual foundations in the design of visual displays

This paper discusses how perception affects the relationship between screen design and memory and cognition. The effects of visual grouping, location of material, distinctiveness of elements and arrangement in layouts, and motion are discussed and analyzed. The perceptual and cognitive principles explored can be applied to the design of any visual display. This information provides designers with a perceptual framework for maximizing learning conditions.

Neuroethological studies of cognitive and perceptual processes

* Introduction: Neuroethology, Perception, and Cognition Sara J. Shettleworth. Specializations In Learning * Specializations in Honey Bee Learning James L. Gould. * Detecting Associations in Pavlovian Conditioning and Instrumental Learning in Invertebrates and in Vertebrates Ruth M. Colwill. * Neuroethological Studies on How Birds Discriminate Song Jeffrey Cynx. * Ecological Specialization in the Avian Brain Susan D. Healy. Specializations For Perception Of Biologically Relevant Stimuli * The Perceptual Foundations of Adult Vocal Learning in Budgerigars Robert J. Dooling, Susan D. Brown, Kazuchika Manabe, and Elizabeth F. Powell. * How Birds Use Frequency to Recognize Their Songs Daniel M. Weary. * Development of Perceptual Mechanisms in Birds: Predispositions and Imprinting Johan J. Bolhuis. * Neural Codes for Pitch Processing in a Unique Vertebrate Auditory System Andrea M. Simmons and Rebecca C. Buxbaum. * Recognition of Visual Signals: Eyes Specialize Russell D. Fernald. Specializations For Spatial Perception And Orientation * Perception Along the Axis of Target Range in the Echolocating Bat Cynthia F. Moss and James A. Simmons. * Converging Approaches to Determining Sound Localization Mechanisms in the Big Brown Bat, Eptesicus fuscus Tim Haresign, Janine M. Wotton, Michael Ferragamo, and J. A. Simmons. * Sound Localization from Binaural Cues by the Barn Owl Auditory System Andrew Moiseff, T. Haresign, and Jianxin Wang.

The perceptual foundations of categorization in infancy

In bilingual communities, individuals often communicate in one of their languages only, and they adjust to the linguistic background of different interlocutors with ease. What facilitates such efficiency? We investigated whether bilinguals’ language activation is supported by non-linguistic cues (e.g., interlocutor identity). First, in an audio–visual task, early (proficient) and late (less proficient) Basque–Spanish bilinguals were familiarized with six novel interlocutors who spoke either Spanish, Basque, or both languages. Then, participants completed an audio–visual lexical decision task, in which the interlocutors produced test items in Spanish or Basque. Early, but not late, bilinguals’ speed of processing decreased when the language that the interlocutors spoke during familiarization matched the language they spoke at test, relative to test trials when the interlocutors changed languages. Overall, results suggest that proficient and/or early bilinguals benefit from an association between language and interlocutor during (or even before) language comprehension, because they are able to predict the context-appropriate language based on non-linguistic cues, such as interlocutor context.

Recovering three-dimensional structure from motion with surface reconstruction

This paper addresses the computational role that the construction of a complete surface representation may play in the recovery of 3-D structure from motion. We first discuss the need to integrate surface reconstruction with the structure-from-motion process, both on computational and perceptual grounds. We then present a model that combines a feature-based structure-from-motion algorithm with a smooth surface interpolation mechanism. This model allows multiple surfaces to be represented in a given viewing direction, incorporates constraints on surface structure from object boundaries, and segregates image features onto multiple surfaces on the basis of their 2-D image motion. We present the results of computer simulations that relate the qualitative behavior of this model to psychophysical observations. In a companion paper, we discuss further perceptual observations regarding the possible role of surface reconstruction in the human recovery of 3-D structure from motion.

The first pictures: perceptual foundations of Paleolithic art.

Paleolithic representational art has a number of consistent characteristics: the subjects are almost always animals, depicted without scenic background, usually in profile, and mostly in outline; the means of representation are extremely economical, often consisting of only a few strokes that indicate the salient features of the animal which are sufficient to suggest the whole form; and it is naturalistic to a degree, but lacks anything like photographic realism. Two elementary questions are raised in this essay: (i) why did the earliest known attempts at depiction have just these characteristics and not others? and (ii) how are objects so minimally represented recognizable? The answers seem to lie with certain fundamental features of visual perception, especially figure-ground distinction, Gestalt principles of closure and good continuation, line surrogacy, component feature analysis, and canonical imaging. In the earliest pictures the graphic means used are such that they evoke the same visual responses as those involved in the perception of real-world forms, but eschew redundancies of color, texture, linear perspective, and completeness of representation.

Perceptual Foundations

Perceptual Foundations

The Perception of Exertion: A Social Psychophysiological Integration

For years, physiologists and psychologists have attempted to elucidate the perceptual foundations of perceived exertion and in the process have identified several psychometric variables that mediate the self-report of this experience. Recently, cognitively oriented psychologists have begun to demonstrate that our social and physical environments play a significant role in the subjective ratings of effort expenditure. Additionally, as an offshoot of attribution theory, we are now aware that perceived exertion is a topic relevant to the domain of interpersonal as well as self-perception. The present paper, then, offers an integrative review on research and theory pertinent to the perception of exertion in sport and physical activity. The framework presented emerges largely at a conceptual rather than empirical level and provides several direct challenges for future study.

New names for old things: the emergence of metaphoric language.

ABSTRACTCriteria were devised to distinguish between literal and metaphoric word usage in early language. These criteria were applied to the spontaneous speech transcripts of one child between 2; 3 and 4; 10.15. All unconventional word uses were identified and were then scored as overextensions, anomalies, or metaphors. The majority of unconventional word uses proved to be metaphors. Moreover, a developmental sequence of types of metaphors produced was found: those metaphors predominant during year 2 were based on the pretend actions of symbolic play; those predominant at year 4 were based on perceptual grounds alone, without the support of action.

The symbolic evocation of occupational prestige

symbols form much of the basis for social integration and political acquiescence We agree that people are probably expressing their perceptions of societal values more than their own reservations, especially on questions as ambiguous as those in the NORC survey. There is no opportunity in such a study for the expression of ambivalent feelings about occupations. Attitudinal surveys in general tend to tap only the dominant value system, not ambivalence, latency, or complexity in cognitive structures. Occupational prestige is an abstract value-set, moreover, removed from the concrete problems of daily life. There is usually much greater consensus across a society on abstract issues than on concrete ones. Abstract values are seldom questioned or abandoned because they are so unspecific and so are not challenged by everyday experiences. Yet abstract symbols form much of the basis for social integration and political acquiescence. Much of the agreement across subgroups regarding the occupational prestige scale, then, is an illusory product of the level of abstraction of scale items. It does not necessarily point to genuine consensus in individual rankings of occupational prestige. But the questions remain: Why is there such high agreement among people's perceptions of societal values? It is likely that prestige evaluations are a mixture of factual and normative elements, and that they represent a general consensus respecting the distinctive character of different occupations and the abstract values they produce. What accounts for agreement on this abstract value-set? We must also consider the genesis of the subordinate value-set, the reservations and resentments regarding the prestige scale. How is this ambivalence developed and how do people continue indefinitely to live with it? Because the value dimensions underlying prestige rest partly upon some nonobvious symbolic forms, they are worthy of study. The Perceptual Foundations The dominant value system is the "official" ideology and the justification for reward inequality of a society. It is promulgated through mass institutions---the school system and the mass media. People not only learn it; at one level the vast majority subscribes to it with a greater or lesser degree of commitment because it is the only cohesive, society-wide ideology disseminated to them. Reservations about this framework are localized or privatized and are accorded no such degree of legitimacy in mass institutions. Through the process of taking the role of the "generalized other," people learn to perceive the way society perceives or, more accurately, the way they think society perceives. It is on this foundation that people graft the exceptions and qualifications that they draw from their ties to more specific reference groups. Prestige is a perceptual phenomenon, and perceptions are based on the meanings symbols evoke. The objective characteristics of occupations are not crucial in themselves, though they may become so if they are selected as meaningful in the dominant value system. Thus the relative difficulty, risk, achievement potential, or importance of occupations, to the extent that such dimensions can be measured, are not the salient issues. The perceived difficulty, risk, achievement potential, and importance of different jobs are critical, but that formulation calls attention to the need to specify what accounts for such perceptions. It is revealing that some dimensions of occupations that are in relatively short supply do not serve as justifications for prestige and sometimes undermine it: danger to the incumbent and physical strength, for example. Symbolic Sources of Prestige The relationships among a value-set, its justifications, and its consequences are complex and not easily disentangled. People do not necessarily examine their evaluative beliefs for logical inconsistencies, especially when the beliefs are abstract and have little beating on their daily lives. No doubt one source of prestige perceptions is the material rewards associated with occupations. According to Saul Feldman and Gerald Thielbar, people see prestige as a justification for reward inequalities. At the same time, the symbols of material affluence are a source of prestige in themselves, even when the sources of this affluence are unknown. In her study of fifth and sixth graders in a midwestern community, Bernice L. Neugarten found that upper and upper middle-class children were perceived by their peers to rate high on traits such as good looks, liking for school, leadership, friendship, and other favorable characteristics. On the same dimensions, lower-class children were rated low. Status symbols are bases of prestige precisely because of this circular reasoning process. Joan Huber and William H. Form found that capitalist societies, especially the United States, tend not to support

Perceptual projects. A theory of veridicality and distortion in perception.

Abstract.— The split between objective and subjective information, characterizing dualistic theories of perception, is argued to have caused contradictions around the problems of veridicality of perception and the attention‐attracting power of stimulus properties. The theory of threshold‐regulation in categorical perception is criticized and an alternative model is suggested, where the main distinctions are between the “knowing how” and the “knowing that” of perception, between exteriorization and interiorization, and between the perceptual project and the perceptual foundation. It is demonstrated that concepts used in the analysis of dialogical communication are useful in the theory of perception to explain phenomena such as curiosity, boredom, and pathological perception.