Perceptual Mismatch Research Articles

Discrepancies in perceived humanness between spatially filtered and unfiltered faces and their associations with uncanny feelings.

Human and artificial features that coexist in certain types of human-like robots create a discrepancy in perceived humanness and evoke uncanny feelings in human observers. However, whether this perceptual mismatch in humanness occurs for all faces, and whether it is related to the uncanny feelings toward them, is unknown. We investigated this by examining perceived humanness for a variety of natural images of robot and human faces with different spatial frequency (SF) information: that is, faces with only low SF, middle SF, and high SF information, and intact (spatially unfiltered) faces. Uncanny feelings elicited by these faces were also measured. The results showed perceptual mismatches that LSF, MSF, and HSF faces were perceived as more human than intact faces. This was particularly true for intact robot faces that looked slightly human, which tended to evoke strong uncanny feelings. Importantly, the mismatch in perceived humanness between the intact and spatially filtered faces was positively correlated with uncanny feelings toward intact faces. Given that the human visual system performs SF analysis when processing faces, the perceptual mismatches observed in this study likely occur in real life for all faces, and as such might be a ubiquitous source of uncanny feelings in real-life situations.

Exploring neural oscillations in numerical inductive reasoning: unveiling effects of top-down and bottom-up conflict.

Previous research has delved into the brain's response to top-down and bottom-up conflicts in numerical inductive reasoning. However, the specific neural oscillatory patterns associated with these conflict types in numerical inductive reasoning processing have remained elusive. In this study, we employed a number series completion task in which participants had to determine whether a given target number adhered to concealed rules. Three conditions were established: an identity condition (e.g., 13, 13, 13), a perceptual mismatch condition (representing bottom-up conflict, e.g., 13 13 ), and a rule violation condition (representing top-down conflict, e.g., 13 13 14). Our EEG results revealed significant distinctions: rule violation induced more pronounced alpha desynchronization compared to both perceptual mismatch and identity conditions. Conversely, perceptual mismatch was associated with increased theta synchronization in contrast to rule violation and the identity condition. These findings suggest that alpha desynchronization may indicate the integration of rules during top-down conflict, while theta synchronization may function as a mechanism to inhibit bottom-up perceptual interference in numerical inductive reasoning.

Indonesian EFL Teachers' Identity Construction in a Global Englishes Era

Studies on English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ identity construction have been extensively investigated in recent years. However, the previous studies exclusively focused on teachers in higher education and neglected Global Englishes (GE) concept as a mediator in identity construction. Therefore, to fill this lacuna, the current narrative research study explored the identity construction of 10 Indonesian EFL secondary school teachers in the Global Englishes era. The data were gathered through in-depth interviews and observations and were analyzed using Braun and Clarke’s (2006) thematic analysis. Findings were elaborated into six emerging themes; they were 1) teachers’ perspectives of Global Englishes, 2) the goal of teaching English, 3) native speaker fallacy, 4) the use of mother tongue, 5) the use of Western cultures, and 6) the use of international English textbooks. Based on the investigation, the teachers echoed multiple identities as English teachers vis-à-vis the Global Englishes era. Although they are aware of such an issue, their tenets to adhere to the practice of native speaker fallacy are still strongly held. In other words, our study revealed a perceptual mismatch among the teachers with regard to their identities in a Global Englishes era.

“Guess You Like It” – How personalized recommendation timing and product type influence consumers’ acceptance: An ERP study

Personalized recommendation has been increasingly used in online shopping environment, and improving the effectiveness of personalized recommendation is an important issue. On the basis of two-stage decision theory and preference inconsistency theory, our study adopted the neuroscientific methodology of event-related potential to investigate the decision-making process and psychological mechanism of consumers for personalized recommendation under different recommendation timings (browsing and decision stages) and recommended product types (similar and related). Behavioral results showed that consumers’ acceptance of similar product recommendations was higher than that of related product recommendations during the browsing stage, whereas no difference was observed in consumers’ acceptance of the two product types during the decision stage. More importantly, neurophysiology results provided underlying psychological mechanism for exploring consumers’ decision-making process for personalized recommendations. Consumers’ psychological mechanism of the personalized recommendations might be divided into two processes, the early automatic cognitive process indicated by the N2 component, and the late advanced cognitive process indicated by the P3 component. We suggested that N2 reflects the perceptual mismatch between the recommended products and the target products, and P3 reflects the attention capture during categorization evaluation of the recommended product and the target product. These findings have important theoretical and practical significance for the deeper understanding of consumers’ decision-making process and psychological mechanism in personalized recommendation, as well as improving the effectiveness of personalized recommendation.

Perceptual Mismatch Between Meso and Macro Policy at Tokyo International University

Educational policies of Japanese institutions of higher education regarding English language instruction have looked at both macro and micro level variables. Through conducting interviews researchers gained knowledge of how or if institutions portray their standards to students and staff and how those goals are displayed through curriculum. This research showed a disconnect between the stated goals and in class instruction. While the researchers looked at overall disconnects, none looked at specific universities and their programs. My study aims to fill that gap, focusing on a university known for its international approach to learning. The intention is to find if there is a perceptual mismatch between documented university English proficiency standards at Tokyo International University (TIU) and what is communicated with students. This investigation explores how (or if) their goals are communicated and if the students believe they are able to communicate in English conversational settings.

Conflict Adaptation Effect on Numerical Inductive Reasoning: An ERP Study.

Conflict adaptation is of particular importance to human information processing, as it assists in efficient responding when confronted with inconsistent information. Past investigators have focused on the role and mechanisms of conflict adaptation effects in cognitive control tasks, but there have been few studies of conflict adaptation effects in numerical inductive reasoning. In this study we adopted identical, perceptual mismatch and rule violation conditions to investigate conflict adaptation in numerical inductive reasoning. Behaviorally, we found shorter response times on trials following our experimental condition, as compared to pre-trials. In our event-related potential (ERP) electroencephalogram (EEG) results, N2 reflected the improvement in processing efficiency of rule violations in numerical inductive reasoning. Thus, these data suggest the presence of a conflict adaptation effect in high-level processing.

Young domestic chicks spontaneously represent the absence of objects

Absence is a notion that is usually captured by language-related concepts like zero or negation. Whether nonlinguistic creatures encode similar thoughts is an open question, as everyday behavior marked by absence (of food, of social partners) can be explained solely by expecting presence somewhere else. We investigated 8-day-old chicks' looking behavior in response to events violating expectations about the presence or absence of an object. We found different behavioral responses to violations of presence and absence, suggesting distinct underlying mechanisms. Importantly, chicks displayed an avian signature of novelty detection to violations of absence, namely a sex-dependent left-eye-bias. Follow-up experiments excluded accounts that would explain this bias by perceptual mismatch or by representing the object at different locations. These results suggest that the ability to spontaneously form representations about the absence of objects likely belongs to the initial cognitive repertoire of vertebrate species.

Sympathy for the digital: Influence of synthetic voice on affinity, social presence and empathy for photorealistic virtual humans

In this paper, we investigate the effect of a realism mismatch in the voice and appearance of a photorealistic virtual character in both immersive and screen-mediated virtual contexts. While many studies have investigated voice attributes for robots, not much is known about the effect voice naturalness has on the perception of realistic virtual characters. We conducted the first experiment in Virtual Reality (VR) with over two hundred participants investigating the mismatch between realistic appearance and unrealistic voice on the feeling of presence, and the emotional response of the user to the character expressing a strong negative emotion. We predicted that the mismatched voice would lower social presence and cause users to have a negative emotional reaction and feelings of discomfort towards the character. We found that the concern for the virtual character was indeed altered by the unnatural voice, though interestingly it did not affect social presence. The second experiment was conducted with a view towards heightening the appearance realism of the same character for the same scenarios, with an additional lower level of voice realism employed to strengthen the mismatch of perceptual cues. While voice type did not appear to impact reports of empathic responses towards the character, there was an observed effect of voice realism on reported social presence, which was not detected in the first study. There were also significant results on affinity and voice trait measurements that provide evidence in support of perceptual mismatch theories of the Uncanny Valley.

Tau and β-Amyloid Burden Predict Actigraphy-Measured and Self-Reported Impairment and Misperception of Human Sleep.

Alzheimer's disease is associated with poor sleep, but the impact of tau and β-amyloid (Aβ) pathology on sleep remains largely unknown. Here, we test the hypothesis that tau and Aβ predict unique impairments in objective and self-perceived human sleep under real-life, free-living conditions. Eighty-nine male and female cognitively healthy older adults received 18F-FTP-tau and 11C-PIB-Aβ PET imaging, 7 nights of sleep actigraphy and questionnaire measures, and neurocognitive assessment. Tau burden, but not Aβ, was associated with markedly worse objective sleep. In contrast, Aβ and tau were associated with worse self-reported sleep quality. Of clinical relevance, Aβ burden predicted a unique perceptual mismatch between objective and subject sleep evaluation, with individuals underestimating their sleep. The magnitude of this mismatch was further predicted by worse executive function. Thus, early-stage tau and Aβ deposition are linked with distinct phenotypes of real-world sleep impairment, one that includes a cognitive misperception of their own sleep health.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Alzheimer's disease is associated with sleep disruption, often before significant memory decline. Thus, real-life patterns of sleep behavior have the potential to serve as a window into early disease progression. In 89 cognitive healthy older adults, we found that tau burden was associated with worse wristwatch actigraphy-measured sleep quality, and that both tau and β-amyloid were independently predictive of self-reported sleep quality. Furthermore, individuals with greater β-amyloid deposition were more likely to underestimate their sleep quality, and sleep quality underestimation was associated with worse executive function. These data support the role of sleep impairment as a key marker of early Alzheimer's disease, and offer the possibility that actigraphy may be an affordable and scalable tool in quantifying Alzheimer's disease-related behavioral changes.

Recollection and familiarity in schizophrenia:An ERP investigation using face recognition exclusion tasks

Recent studies suggest that the recollection deficit observed in schizophrenia may not be a unitary phenomenon but could depend on the information to retrieve.Here we investigated whether the nature of the perceptual information affects recollection and familiarity in schizophrenia. ERP old/new effects were explored in 20 patients with schizophrenia and 20 healthy controls during unfamiliar face exclusion tasks, with either intrinsic (expression) or extrinsic (background) information either changing or remaining the same between study and test. Schizophrenia patients rejected old faces as distractors in a greater extent than healthy controls. The FN400 old/new effect (300-500ms) was found in both groups. It was sensitive to facial expression change for healthy controls but not schizophrenia patients. In addition, the parietal old/new effect was lower for correctly excluded faces for patients, but not for controls. This points to the conclusion that schizophrenia patients discriminate between target and non-target faces on the basis of the memory strength signal corresponding to the study-test mismatch rather than the recollection of the critical information, as observed in healthy controls. This functioning can be useful when study-test perceptual mismatch must be detected but, in return, can lead to the over-exclusion of old stimuli.

Creepy cats and strange high houses: Support for configural processing in testing predictions of nine uncanny valley theories.

In 1970, Masahiro Mori proposed the uncanny valley (UV), a region in a human-likeness continuum where an entity risks eliciting a cold, eerie, repellent feeling. Recent studies have shown that this feeling can be elicited by entities modeled not only on humans but also nonhuman animals. The perceptual and cognitive mechanisms underlying the UV effect are not well understood, although many theories have been proposed to explain them. To test the predictions of nine classes of theories, a within-subjects experiment was conducted with 136 participants. The theories’ predictions were compared with ratings of 10 classes of stimuli on eeriness and coldness indices. One type of theory, configural processing, predicted eight out of nine significant effects. Atypicality, in its extended form, in which the uncanny valley effect is amplified by the stimulus appearing more human, also predicted eight. Threat avoidance predicted seven; atypicality, perceptual mismatch, and mismatch+ predicted six; category+, novelty avoidance, mate selection, and psychopathy avoidance predicted five; and category uncertainty predicted three. Empathy's main prediction was not supported. Given that the number of significant effects predicted depends partly on our choice of hypotheses, a detailed consideration of each result is advised. We do, however, note the methodological value of examining many competing theories in the same experiment.

Task relevance effect on number/shape conflict detection in the number-matching task: An ERP study

It is debatable whether the task relevance effect on a conflict occurs in the detection or in the inhibition underlying sequential matching. To explore this issue, three types of number pairs, identical (e.g., 12, 12), conserved (e.g., 12, 十二), and non-conserved (e.g., 12, 15) pairs, were displayed to be judged as perceptually (identical shape condition) or quantitatively (identical value condition) the same. Both error rates and RTs for the three types of number pairs showed different patterns to detect perceptual mismatch in the identical shape condition and number inequivalence in the identical value conditions. The event-related potential (ERP) results showed that increased N200 and N400 as well as decreased P300 were triggered by the conserved and non-conserved pairs in contrast to identical pairs in the identical shape condition and by the non-conserved pairs relative to the conserved and identical pairs in the identical value condition. These results showed that task-relevant mismatches were attended to and detected in both conditions. Therefore, for the task-relevance effect on a conflict, attention is selectively directed to task-relevant features rather than inhibiting task-irrelevant conflict.

Common and distinct brain responses to detecting top-down and bottom-up conflicts underlying numerical inductive reasoning.

Complex reasoning problems are commonly influenced by a combination of top-down and bottom-up conflicts; however, the common and distinct brain responses to the two types of conflicts have remained unclear. Participants were required to identify the hidden rules in a number series completion task, which included identity condition (e.g., 13, 13, 13), perceptual mismatch condition (bottom-up conflict, e.g., 13 13 +≡), and relational mismatch condition (top-down conflict, e.g., 13 13 14). The ERP results showed that (a) both the perceptual and relational mismatch conditions triggered greater P200, N200, P300, and late positive component than the identity condition, reflecting attention reallocation, perceptual template deviations, feelings of uncertainty, and working memory updating, respectively, and (b) smaller N400 and decreased late negative component were found in the relational mismatch condition in contrast to other conditions, which suggested that changing number values violated rule expectancy as top-down conflict. Therefore, multiple strategies were utilized to detect the conflicts underlying complex reasoning problems.

The uncanny valley effect in typically developing children and its absence in children with autism spectrum disorders

Robots and virtual reality are gaining popularity in the intervention of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). To shed light on children’s attitudes towards robots and characters in virtual reality, this study aims to examine whether children with ASD show the uncanny valley effect. We varied the realism of facial appearance by morphing a cartoon face into a human face, and induced perceptual mismatch by enlarging the eyes, which has previously been shown as an effective method to induce the uncanny valley effect in adults. Children with ASD and typically developing (TD) children participated in a two-alternative forced choice task that asked them to choose one they liked more from the two images presented on the screen. We found that TD children showed the effect, i.e., the enlargement of eye size and the approaching realism reduced their preference. In contrast, children with ASD did not show the uncanny valley effect. Our findings in TD children help resolve the controversy in the literature about the existence of the uncanny valley effect among young children. Meanwhile, the absence of the uncanny valley effect in children with ASD might be attributed to their reduced sensitivity to subtle changes of face features and their limited visual experience to faces caused by diminished social motivation. Last, our findings provide practical implications for designing robots and virtual characters for the intervention of children with ASD.

Role of the Hippocampus in Distinct Memory Traces: Timing of Match and Mismatch Enhancement Revealed by Intracranial Recording.

A previous functional magnetic resonance imaging study reported evidence for parallel memory traces in the hippocampus: a controlled match signal detecting matches to internally-generated goal states and an automatic mismatch signal identifying unpredicted perceptual novelty. However, the timing information in this process is unknown. In the current study, facilitated by the high spatial and temporal resolution of intracranial recording from human patients, we confirmed that the left posterior hippocampus played an important role in the goal match enhancement effect, in which combinations of object identity and location were involved. We also found that this effect happened within 520ms to 735ms after the probe onset, ~150ms later than the perceptual mismatch enhancement found bilaterally in both the anterior and posterior hippocampus. More specifically, the latency of the perceptual mismatch enhancement effect of the right hippocampus was positively correlated with the performance accuracy. These results suggested that the hippocampus is crucial in working memory if features binding with location are involved in the task and the goal match enhancement effect happens after perceptual mismatch enhancement, implying the dissociation of different components of working memory at the hippocampus. Moreover, single trial decoding results suggested that the intracranial field potential response in the right hippocampus can classify the match or switch task. This is consistent with the findings that the right hippocampal activity observed during the simulation of the future events may reflect the encoding of the simulation into memory.

Dialect classification reveals mismatch between speech processing and dialect perception

Familiar dialects can facilitate speech processing. However, recent investigations of speech processing of the Northern and Midland dialects of American English reveal a different pattern: in noise-masked speech, listeners from both dialect regions identify Midland words and phrases with higher accuracy than Northern words and phrases. This preference may be explained by inconsistencies between Northern talkers’ production and perception of their own dialect. The goal of the current study was to determine whether cross-dialect processing differences between the Northern and Midland dialects reflect listeners’ explicit dialect identification ability. Participants completed a speech intelligibility in noise task followed by a forced-choice dialect categorization task. Speech stimuli in both tasks were short phrases taken from passages read by eight Northern and eight Midland talkers. Responses in both tasks were scored for accuracy. Results revealed higher accuracy in intelligibility for Midland phrases than Northern phrases, as in previous work, but poor dialect categorization performance across all listeners. The inability of listeners to explicitly categorize talkers by dialect while showing an intelligibility benefit for Midland forms indicates that the observed cross-dialect processing differences emerge even in the absence of explicit dialect categorization, revealing a perceptual mismatch between speech processing and dialect perception.

Visual-perceptual mismatch in robotic surgery.

The principal objective of the experiment was to analyze the effects of the clutch operation of robotic surgical systems on the performance of the operator. The relative coordinate system introduced by the clutch operation can introduce a visual-perceptual mismatch which can potentially have negative impact on a surgeon's performance. We also assess the impact of the introduction of additional tactile sensory information on reducing the impact of visual-perceptual mismatch on the performance of the operator. We asked 45 novice subjects to complete peg transfers using the da Vinci IS 1200 system with grasper-mounted, normal force sensors. The task involves picking up a peg with one of the robotic arms, passing it to the other arm, and then placing it on the opposite side of the view. Subjects were divided into three groups: aligned group (no mismatch), the misaligned group (10cm z axis mismatch), and the haptics-misaligned group (haptic feedback and z axis mismatch). Each subject performed the task five times, during which the grip force, time of completion, and number of faults were recorded. Compared to the subjects that performed the tasks using a properly aligned controller/arm configuration, subjects with a single-axis misalignment showed significantly more peg drops (p=0.011) and longer time to completion (p<0.001). Additionally, it was observed that addition of tactile feedback helps reduce the negative effects of visual-perceptual mismatch in some cases. Grip force data recorded from grasper-mounted sensors showed no difference between the different groups. The visual-perceptual mismatch created by the misalignment of the robotic controls relative to the robotic arms has a negative impact on the operator of a robotic surgical system. Introduction of other sensory information and haptic feedback systems can help in potentially reducing this effect.

Opioid-Induced Nausea Involves a Vestibular Problem Preventable by Head-Rest.

Background and AimsOpioids are indispensable for pain treatment but may cause serious nausea and vomiting. The mechanism leading to these complications is not clear. We investigated whether an opioid effect on the vestibular system resulting in corrupt head motion sensation is causative and, consequently, whether head-rest prevents nausea.MethodsThirty-six healthy men (26.6±4.3 years) received an opioid remifentanil infusion (45 min, 0.15 μg/kg/min). Outcome measures were the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) gain determined by video-head-impulse-testing, and nausea. The first experiment (n = 10) assessed outcome measures at rest and after a series of five 1-Hz forward and backward head-trunk movements during one-time remifentanil administration. The second experiment (n = 10) determined outcome measures on two days in a controlled crossover design: (1) without movement and (2) with a series of five 1-Hz forward and backward head-trunk bends 30 min after remifentanil start. Nausea was psychophysically quantified (scale from 0 to 10). The third controlled crossover experiment (n = 16) assessed nausea (1) without movement and (2) with head movement; isolated head movements consisting of the three axes of rotation (pitch, roll, yaw) were imposed 20 times at a frequency of 1 Hz in a random, unpredictable order of each of the three axes. All movements were applied manually, passively with amplitudes of about ± 45 degrees.ResultsThe VOR gain decreased during remifentanil administration (p<0.001), averaging 0.92±0.05 (mean±standard deviation) before, 0.60±0.12 with, and 0.91±0.05 after infusion. The average half-life of VOR recovery was 5.3±2.4 min. 32/36 subjects had no nausea at rest (nausea scale 0.00/0.00 median/interquartile range). Head-trunk and isolated head movement triggered nausea in 64% (p<0.01) with no difference between head-trunk and isolated head movements (nausea scale 4.00/7.25 and 1.00/4.5, respectively).ConclusionsRemifentanil reversibly decreases VOR gain at a half-life reflecting the drug’s pharmacokinetics. We suggest that the decrease in VOR gain leads to a perceptual mismatch of multisensory input with the applied head movement, which results in nausea, and that, consequently, vigorous head movements should be avoided to prevent opioid-induced nausea.

A review of empirical evidence on different uncanny valley hypotheses: support for perceptual mismatch as one road to the valley of eeriness.

The uncanny valley hypothesis, proposed already in the 1970s, suggests that almost but not fully humanlike artificial characters will trigger a profound sense of unease. This hypothesis has become widely acknowledged both in the popular media and scientific research. Surprisingly, empirical evidence for the hypothesis has remained inconsistent. In the present article, we reinterpret the original uncanny valley hypothesis and review empirical evidence for different theoretically motivated uncanny valley hypotheses. The uncanny valley could be understood as the naïve claim that any kind of human-likeness manipulation will lead to experienced negative affinity at close-to-realistic levels. More recent hypotheses have suggested that the uncanny valley would be caused by artificial–human categorization difficulty or by a perceptual mismatch between artificial and human features. Original formulation also suggested that movement would modulate the uncanny valley. The reviewed empirical literature failed to provide consistent support for the naïve uncanny valley hypothesis or the modulatory effects of movement. Results on the categorization difficulty hypothesis were still too scarce to allow drawing firm conclusions. In contrast, good support was found for the perceptual mismatch hypothesis. Taken together, the present review findings suggest that the uncanny valley exists only under specific conditions. More research is still needed to pinpoint the exact conditions under which the uncanny valley phenomenon manifests itself.

Event-related potential responses to letter-string comparison analogies.

Previous studies have used analogy completion tasks (e.g., abe is to abf as ijk is to what?) to examine the event-related potential (ERP) parameters of analogical reasoning. In the present study, ERP responses to analogies were investigated using an analogy comparison task (e.g., is abe to abf as ijk is to ijl?), with a focus on structural evaluation. The results showed that the identical match task elicited an N2 component with smaller amplitude than that of the N2 component in the zero- and one-step consistent analogies, reflecting automatic match detection. The data also showed that there were significant differences in the N400 during the consistent and inconsistent analogies, which may reflect a delayed perceptual mismatch with semantic strategies. Moreover, one-step consistent analogies evoked smaller late positive component (LPC) amplitudes than that evoked by identical match or zero-step consistent analogies in the 500- to 800-ms time interval, and one-step inconsistent analogies elicited smaller amplitude LPCs than that elicited by zero-step inconsistent analogies in the 500- to 750-ms time interval, which suggested that LPCs reflected structure evaluation in analogy comparison tasks.