Perceptual Phenomena Research Articles

Trust in leader and positive employee outcomes: To transform or to serve in cross-cultural leadership

Considering the potential impacts of context-specific value systems in individuals’ perceptions of phenomena, this study seeks to investigate whether and how cultural differences could influence the effectiveness of leadership styles in establishing trust and positive employee outcomes (PEOs) as well as the relationships between such outcomes based on the GLOBE project. The sample consisted of 1647 valid responses from 128 independent hotels’ employees in four countries from two GLOBE clusters (Anglo and South Asia). Multilevel structural equation modelling has been used for the analysis. Significant but different relationships were found between Servant Leadership and Transformational Leadership with Trust, and PEOs in the two clusters, which could be potentially attributed to societal and contextual factors as a deeper layer mechanism. Our findings have significant implications for both academics and hotel managers in terms of the critical role of alignment between context-specific contingencies and the selected leadership style in establishing trust and PEOs.

Anisotropy of object nonrigidity: High-level perceptual consequences of cortical anisotropy.

We present a surprising anisotropy in perceived object nonrigidity, a complex, higher-level perceptual phenomenon, and explain it unexpectedly by the distribution of low-level neural properties in primary visual cortex. We examined the visual interpretation of two rigidly connected rotating circular rings. At speeds where observers predominantly perceived rigid rotation of the rings rotating horizontally, observers perceived only nonrigid wobbling when the image was rotated by 90°. Additionally, vertically rotating rings appeared narrower and longer compared to their physically identical horizontally rotating counterparts. We show that these perceived shape changes can be decoded from V1 outputs by incorporating documented anisotropies in orientation selectivity. We then show that even when the shapes are matched, the increased nonrigidity persists in vertical rotations, suggesting that motion mechanisms also play a role. By incorporating cortical anisotropies into optic flow computations, we show that the kinematic gradients (Divergence, Curl, Deformation) for vertical rotations align more with physical nonrigidity, while those for horizontal rotations align closer to rigidity, indicating that cortical anisotropies contribute to the orientation dependence of the perception of nonrigidity. Our results reveal how high-level percepts are shaped by low-level anisotropies, which raises questions about their evolutionary significance, particularly regarding shape constancy and motion perception.

Overlooked effects of wavefront reception with or without speed limit, from aberration to time measurement

A general approach to wavefront reception applicable to any type of wave allows to point out some overlooked aspects and ignored consequences of established theories. The Doppler and aberration effects of electromagnetic waves, the cosmological redshift and the measurement of durations are all perceptual phenomena, and as such require the use of reception rather than Lorentz-transformed coordinates, since perceived durations relate proper to proper durations whereas the famous time dilation of special relativity relates proper to improper durations. Taking this subtlety into account rehabilitates the controversial Poincaré ellipsoid whose polar equation is just the relativistic Doppler effect. The application of this approach to the Galilean case whose transformed and received wavefronts are homothetic, reveals new aberration relations and the existence of a transverse Doppler effect very similar, in proportion to the respective wave velocities, to the relativistic one, thus forbidding in practice the test of his theory proposed by Einstein. The reasons for the long persistence of a classical angular Doppler formula divorced from wavefront reception are discussed, one of them ironically being the theory of special relativity.

Mistuning perception in music is asymmetric and relies on both beats and inharmonicity

An out-of-tune singer or instrument can ruin the enjoyment of music. However, there is disagreement on how we perceive mistuning in natural music settings. To address this question, we presented listeners with in-tune and out-of-tune passages of two-part music and manipulated the two primary candidate acoustic cues: beats (fluctuations caused by interactions between nearby frequency components) and inharmonicity (non-integer harmonic frequency relationships) across seven experiments (Exp 1: N = 101; Exp 2: N = 63; Exp 3a: N = 87; Exp 3b: N = 28; Exp 3c: N = 69; Exp 4: N = 160; Exp 5: N = 105). Mistuning detection worsened markedly when removing either beating or inharmonicity cues, suggesting important contributions from both. The relative importance of the two cues varied reliably between listeners but was unaffected by musical experience. Finally, a general asymmetry in sensitivity to mistuning was discovered, with compressed pitch differences being more easily detected than stretched ones, thereby demonstrating a generalization of the previously found stretched-octave effect. Overall, the results reveal the acoustic underpinnings of the critical perceptual phenomenon of dissonance through mistuning in natural music.

Политическое восприятие в историко-философской концепции

The article presents the development of philosophical thought on the problem of political perception in a diachronic aspect. Dynamism and diversity in the study of the phenomenon of political perception are traced. Each epoch and each philosophical concept corrects the view of the process and the specifics of political perception. It is becoming common to think that sensory perception becomes the basis for social, social and political perception, but different concepts and different researchers place varying degrees of trust in sensory experience and the world of sensations. Political perception is always associated with cognitive activity, as well as with the emotional sphere and, according to theorists throughout human history, acts as a management tool that allows you to control the political thinking and political behavior of perceiving subjects.

Generating Sonic Phantoms with Quadratic Difference Tone Spectrum Synthesis

Abstract Quadratic difference tones belong to a family of perceptual phenomena that arise from the neuromechanics of the auditory system in response to particular physical properties of sound. Long deployed as “ghost” or “phantom” tones by sound artists, improvisers, and computer musicians, in this article we address an entirely new topic: How to create a quadratic difference tone spectrum (QDTS) in which a target fundamental and harmonic overtone series are specified and in which the complex tone necessary to evoke it is synthesized. We propose a numerical algorithm that solves the problem of how to synthesize a QDTS for a target distribution of amplitudes. The algorithm aims to find a solution that matches the desired spectrum as closely as possible for an arbitrary number of target harmonics. Results from experiments using different parameter settings and target distributions show that the algorithm is effective in the majority of cases, with at least 99% of the cases being solvable in real time. An external object for the visual programming language Max is described. We discuss musical and perceptual considerations for using the external, and we describe a range of audio examples that demonstrate the synthesis of QDTSs across different cases. As we show, the method makes possible the matching of QDTSs to particular instrumental timbres with surprising efficiency. Also included is a discussion of a musical work by composer Marcin Pietruszewski that makes use of QDTS synthesis.

Features of consumer perception of product innovations

The article examines the phenomenon of consumer perception of product innovations in order to identify features determined by modern market conditions. The purpose of the study is achieved by analysing the specifics of customer perception of: the degree of product innovativeness; product innovations in the framework of information overload and amid high intensity of their introduction to the market. As a result of the research, the following features of the сonsumer perception, characteristic of modern market conditions, are identified: subjectivity of perception of the product innovativeness; actualisation of the phenomenon of information neglect in conditions of information overload of consumers and the phenomenon of consumer stupor within the framework of high intensity of product innovations being introduced to the market. The work proves the need to study the psychology of perception of innovations by potential consumers in the process of developing and introducing a new product deeply and comprehensively, in particular, to study cognitive, value, need-motivational systems as well as the characteristics of behaviour patterns of consumers of innovative products. Only in this case it is possible to create a product innovation that is truly needed and therefore quickly and easily accepted by the market.

CIELAB Color Space as a Field for Tracking Color-Changing Chemical Reactions of Polymeric pH Indicators.

Two types of cross-linked polymeric dye films that exhibit reversible color changes in response to pH were prepared. Upon protonation, films with a nitrophenol dye moiety (NP) changed from yellow to colorless, whereas films with an azobenzene dye moiety (AB) changed from yellow to reddish-purple. The colored light transmitted through these films from a D65 white-light source was measured colorimetrically, and the transition of the chromaticity point in CIELAB upon protonation of the polymeric dyes was observed. At low dye concentrations ([NP] < 4.7 × 10-5 and [AB] < 2.7 × 10-5 mol L-1), linear loci of the chromaticity points were displayed for both polymeric dye films, indicating perceptual linearity. This linearity is caused by the avoidance of nonlinear perceptual phenomena such as the Abney effect and the Bezold-Brücke phenomenon. The perceptual linearity of space is a necessary condition for achieving stoichiometric linearity, which requires an additional linear relationship between the dye concentration and each component, a*, b*, and L*. A geometric equation that included the AB concentration and the protonation ratio of AB was used to successfully depict, on the basis of stoichiometric linearity, the protonation of the polymeric AB films three-dimensionally in the restricted area of CIELAB.

Size adaptation: Do you know it when you see it?

The visual system adapts to a wide range of visual features, from lower-level features like color and motion to higher-level features like causality and, perhaps, number. According to some, adaptation is a strictly perceptual phenomenon, such that the presence of adaptation licenses the claim that a feature is truly perceptual in nature. Given the theoretical importance of claims about adaptation, then, it is important to understand exactly when the visual system does and does not exhibit adaptation. Here, we take as a case study one specific kind of adaptation: visual adaptation to size. Supported by evidence from four experiments, we argue that, despite robust effects of size adaptation in the lab, (1) size adaptation effects are phenomenologically underwhelming (in some cases, hardly appreciable at all), (2) some effects of size adaptation appear contradictory, and difficult to explain given current theories of size adaptation, and (3) prior studies on size adaptation may have failed to isolate size as the adapted dimension. Ultimately, we argue that while there is evidence to license the claim that size adaptation is genuine, size adaptation is a puzzling and poorly understood phenomenon.

Neural correlates of perisaccadic visual mislocalization in extrastriate cortex

When interacting with the visual world using saccadic eye movements (saccades), the perceived location of visual stimuli becomes biased, a phenomenon called perisaccadic mislocalization. However, the neural mechanism underlying this altered visuospatial perception and its potential link to other perisaccadic perceptual phenomena have not been established. Using the electrophysiological recording of extrastriate areas in four male macaque monkeys, combined with a computational model, we were able to quantify spatial bias around the saccade target (ST) based on the perisaccadic dynamics of extrastriate spatiotemporal sensitivity captured by a statistical model. This approach could predict the perisaccadic spatial bias around the ST, consistent with behavioral data, and revealed the precise neuronal response components underlying representational bias. These findings also establish the crucial role of increased sensitivity near the ST for neurons with receptive fields far from the ST in driving the ST spatial bias. Moreover, we showed that, by allocating more resources for visual target representation, visual areas enhance their representation of the ST location, even at the expense of transient distortions in spatial representation. This potential neural basis for perisaccadic ST representation also supports a general role for extrastriate neurons in creating the perception of stimulus location.

Generic color correction for tone mapping operators in high dynamic range imaging.

One of the significant challenges in tone mapping is to preserve the perceptual quality of the tone-mapped images. Traditional tone mapping operators (TMOs) compress the luminance of high dynamic range (HDR) images with little to no consideration of image color information resulting into suboptimal colors. Existing color management algorithms require either manual parameter tuning or introducing lightness and hue shifts. The current study aimed to develop a color correction model in plausible agreement with the psychophysical phenomenon of color appearance perception for optimal color reproduction of tone mapped images. The proposed model leverages CIECAM16 perceptual correlates i.e., lightness, chroma, and hue. It is adaptive and entirely automatic while preserving the lightness of the tone-mapped image and maintaining the hue from the HDR image. Moreover, it does not require any gamut mapping correction algorithm in natural color reproduction. The effectiveness of the model was validated using objective and subjective methods. The experiments revealed that the model achieved optimal color reproduction in terms of the naturalness of the colors.

Conscious vision in blindness: A new perceptual phenomenon implemented on the "wrong" side of the brain.

Patients with lesions in the visual cortex are blind in corresponding regions of the visual field, but they still may process visual information, a phenomenon referred to as residual vision or "blindsight". Here we report behavioral and fMRI observations with a patient who reports conscious vision across an extended area of blindness for moving, but not for stationary stimuli. This completion effect is shown to be of perceptual and not of conceptual origin, most likely mediated by spared representations of the visual field in the striate cortex. The neural output to extra-striate areas from regions of the deafferented striate cortex is apparently still intact; this is, for instance, indicated by preserved size constancy of visually completed stimuli. Neural responses as measured with fMRI reveal an activation only for moving stimuli, but importantly on the ipsilateral side of the brain. In a conceptual model this shift of activation to the "wrong" hemisphere is explained on the basis of an imbalance of excitatory and inhibitory interactions within and between the striate cortices due to the brain injury. The observed neuroplasticity indicated by this shift together with the behavioral observations provide important new insights into the functional architecture of the human visual system and provide new insight into the concept of consciousness.

Leveraging natural language processing models to automate speech-intelligibility scoring

ABSTRACT Assessment of speech intelligibility in noise is critical for measuring the impact of age-related hearing loss. However, quantifying intelligibility often requires a human to manually process responses provided by a participant or patient to obtain a speech-intelligibility score – typically the proportion of correctly heard words. This manual process can be time-consuming and thus costly. The current study investigates whether state-of-the-art Natural Language Processing (NLP) models from Google and OpenAI could be used to calculate speech-intelligibility scores as an alternative to human scoring. It was specifically tested whether NLP models capture common speech-in-noise perception phenomena in younger and older adults (N = 144) listening to speech masked by modulated or unmodulated babble noise. The results show that NLP speech-intelligibility scores closely matched intelligibility scores from a human scorer (r ∼0.95). The main difference is, on average, ∼2% underestimation of NLP intelligibility scores relative to human intelligibility scores for moderate to high signal-to-noise ratios. This underestimation results from participants making minor errors related to misspellings, gender, or tense, to which NLP models are sensitive, but human scorers typically correct prior to scoring. Critically, NLP models capture the known age-related reduction in intelligibility and the age-related reduction in the benefit from a modulated relative to an unmodulated masker. OpenAI’s ADA2 appears to perform the best out of the tested NLP models, showing no difference in the speech-in-noise phenomena compared to human scoring. The current study suggests that modern NLP models can be used to score speech-intelligibility data.

Registered report “Categorical perception of facial expressions of anger and disgust across cultures”

ABSTRACT Previous research has demonstrated that individuals from Western cultures exhibit categorical perception (CP) in their judgments of emotional faces. However, the extent to which this phenomenon characterises the judgments of facial expressions among East Asians remains relatively unexplored. Building upon recent findings showing that East Asians are more likely than Westerners to see a mixture of emotions in facial expressions of anger and disgust, the present research aimed to investigate whether East Asians also display CP for angry and disgusted faces. To address this question, participants from Canada and China were recruited to discriminate pairs of faces along the anger-disgust continuum. The results revealed the presence of CP in both cultural groups, as participants consistently exhibited higher accuracy and faster response latencies when discriminating between-category pairs of expressions compared to within-category pairs. Moreover, the magnitude of CP did not vary significantly across cultures. These findings provide novel evidence supporting the existence of CP for facial expressions in both East Asian and Western cultures, suggesting that CP is a perceptual phenomenon that transcends cultural boundaries. This research contributes to the growing literature on cross-cultural perceptions of facial expressions by deepening our understanding of how facial expressions are perceived categorically across cultures.

When the Ends Justify the Mean: The Endpoint Leverage Effect in Distribution Perception.

Previous research described different cognitive processes on how individuals process distributional information. Based on these processes, the current research uncovered a novel phenomenon in distribution perception: the Endpoint Leverage Effect. Subjective endpoints influence distribution estimations not only locally around the endpoint but also influence estimations across the whole value range of the distribution. The influence is largest close to the respective endpoint and decreases in size toward the opposite end of the value range. Three experiments investigate this phenomenon: Experiment 1 provides correlational evidence for the Endpoint Leverage Effect after presenting participants with a numerical distribution. Experiment 2 demonstrates the Endpoint Leverage Effect by manipulating the subjective endpoints of a numerical distribution directly. Experiment 3 generalizes the phenomenon by investigating a general population sample and estimations regarding a real-world income distribution. In addition, quantitative model analysis examines the cognitive processes underlying the effect. Overall, the novel Endpoint Leverage Effect is found in all three experiments, inspiring further research in a wide area of contexts.

Perceptions of University Teachers on the Use Of Icts in Teaching: an Exploratory Qualitative Study

Objective: Analysis aims to analyze the perceptions of university teachers about the use of ICT in teaching from a exploratory study. Methods: Fulfill this a documentary search of 22 articles carried out on University of Ecuador regarding the use and perception of ICT in university teaching; second, the theoretical foundation and relevant findings on the topic are selected to form an analysis regarding possibilities and opportunities for improvement; Third, a discussion is carried out that allows the understanding of social representation phenomena regarding ICTs in Ecuadorian universities. As a methodology, an exploratory qualitative study is implemented through a literary review that accounts for the phenomenon of teachers' perceptions in the use of technologies as a fundamental tool for learning. Thus, the documentary search is carried out in studies from Ecuador that have been completed for a maximum of 5 years. Result: As a result, the analysis seeks to form an analysis that explains teachers' perceptions and build strategies that help improve their application for teaching.

Shape from dots: a window into abstraction processes in visual perception

IntroductionA remarkable phenomenon in perception is that the visual system spontaneously organizes sets of discrete elements into abstract shape representations. We studied perceptual performance with dot displays to discover what spatial relationships support shape perception.MethodsIn Experiment 1, we tested conditions that lead dot arrays to be perceived as smooth contours vs. having vertices. We found that the perception of a smooth contour vs. a vertex was influenced by spatial relations between dots beyond the three points that define the angle of the point in question. However, there appeared to be a hard boundary around 90° such that any angle 90° or less was perceived as a vertex regardless of the spatial relations of ancillary dots. We hypothesized that dot arrays whose triplets were perceived as smooth curves would be more readily perceived as a unitary object because they can be encoded more economically. In Experiment 2, we generated dot arrays with and without such “vertex triplets” and compared participants’ phenomenological reports of a unified shape with smooth curves vs. shapes with angular corners. Observers gave higher shape ratings for dot arrays from curvilinear shapes. In Experiment 3, we tested shape encoding using a mental rotation task. Participants judged whether two dot arrays were the same or different at five angular differences. Subjects responded reliably faster for displays without vertex triplets, suggesting economical encoding of smooth displays. We followed this up in Experiment 4 using a visual search task. Shapes with and without vertex triplets were embedded in arrays with 25 distractor dots. Participants were asked to detect which display in a 2IFC paradigm contained a shape against a distractor with random dots. Performance was better when the dots were sampled from a smooth shape than when they were sampled from a shape with vertex triplets.Results and discussionThese results suggest that the visual system processes dot arrangements as coherent shapes automatically using precise smoothness constraints. This ability may be a consequence of processes that extract curvature in defining object shape and is consistent with recent theory and evidence suggesting that 2D contour representations are composed of constant curvature primitives.

Emotional anticipation for dynamic emotional faces is not modulated by schizotypal traits: A Representational Momentum study.

Schizotypy, a personality structure that resembles schizophrenia symptoms, is often associated with abnormal facial emotion perception. Based on the prevailing sense of threat in psychotic experiences, and the immediate perceptual history of seeing others' facial expressions, individuals with high schizotypal traits may exhibit a heightened tendency to anticipate anger. To test this, we used insights from Representational Momentum (RM), a perceptual phenomenon in which the endpoint of a dynamic event is systematically displaced forward, into the immediate future. Angry-to-ambiguous and happy-to-ambiguous avatar faces were presented, each followed by a probe with the same (ambiguous) expression as the endpoint, or one slightly changed to express greater happiness/anger. Participants judged if the probe was "equal" to the endpoint and rated how confident they were. The sample was divided into high (N = 46) and low (N = 49) schizotypal traits using the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ). First, a forward bias was found in happy-to-ambiguous faces, suggesting emotional anticipation solely for dynamic faces changing towards a potential threat (anger). This may reflect an adaptative mechanism, as it is safer to anticipate any hostility from a conspecific than the opposite. Second, contrary to our hypothesis, high schizotypal traits did not heighten RM for happy-to-ambiguous faces, nor did they lead to overconfidence in biased judgements. This may suggest a typical pattern of emotional anticipation in non-clinical schizotypy, but caution is needed due to the use of self-report questionnaires, university students, and a modest sample size. Future studies should also investigate if the same holds for clinical manifestations of schizophrenia.

Toward a theory of perspective perception in pictures.

This paper reviews projection models and their perception in realistic pictures, and proposes hypotheses for three-dimensional (3D) shape and space perception in pictures. In these hypotheses, eye fixations, and foveal vision play a central role. Many past theories and experimental studies focus solely on linear perspective. Yet, these theories fail to explain many important perceptual phenomena, including the effectiveness of nonlinear projections. Indeed, few classical paintings strictly obey linear perspective, nor do the best distortion-avoidance techniques for wide-angle computational photography. The hypotheses here employ a two-stage model for 3D human vision. When viewing a picture, the first stage perceives 3D shape for the current gaze. Each fixation has its own perspective projection, but, owing to the nature of foveal and peripheral vision, shape information is obtained primarily for a small region of the picture around the fixation. As a viewer moves their eyes, the second stage continually integrates some of the per-gaze information into an overall interpretation of a picture. The interpretation need not be geometrically stable or consistent over time. It is argued that this framework could explain many disparate pictorial phenomena, including different projection styles throughout art history and computational photography, while being consistent with the constraints of human 3D vision. The paper reviews open questions and suggests new studies to explore these hypotheses.

The Role of Uniform Textures in Making Texture Elements Visible in the Visual Periphery.

There are important differences between central and peripheral vision. With respect to shape, contours retain phenomenal sharpness, although some contours disappear if they are near other contours. This leads to some uniform textures to appear non-uniform (Honeycomb illusion, Bertamini et al., 2016). Unlike other phenomena of shape perception in the periphery, this illusion is showing how continuity of the texture does not contribute to phenomenal continuity. We systematically varied the relationship between central and peripheral regions, and we collected subjective reports (how far can one see lines) as well as judgments of line orientation. We used extended textures created with a square grid and some additional lines that are invisible when they are located at the corners of the grid, or visible when they are separated from the grid (control condition). With respects to subjective reports, we compared the region of visibility for cases in which the texture was uniform (Exp 1a), or when in a central region the lines were different (Exp 1b). There were no differences, showing no role of objective uniformity on visibility. Next, in addition to the region of visibility we measured sensitivity using a forced-choice task (line tilted left or right) (Exp 2). The drop in sensitivity with eccentricity matched the size of the region in which lines were perceived in the illusion condition, but not in the control condition. When participants were offered a choice to report of the lines were present or absent (Exp 3) they confirmed that they did not see them in the illusion condition, but saw them in the control condition. We conclude that mechanisms that control perception of contours operate differently in the periphery, and override prior expectations, including that of uniformity. Conversely, when elements are detected in the periphery, we assign to them properties based on information from central vision, but these shapes cannot be identified correctly when the task requires such discrimination.