Perceptual Readiness Research Articles

The Impact of Perceptual Readiness and Neglect on Human Relationships: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Cognitive Biases and Attachment Dynamics

Abstract: This paper delves into how the lenses of expectation and neglect shape our perceptions, relationships, and interactions with the world. Through the lens of expectation, individuals often fixate on objects or experiences that align with their desires, leading to a cognitive bias known as perceptual readiness. This bias results in a heightened focus on certain aspects of reality while potentially overlooking others. Conversely, the lens of neglect leads to the dismissal of stimuli that do not immediately attract our interest, often resulting in diminished engagement. These perceptual tendencies extend beyond inanimate objects to influence human relationships, where expectation can foster attachment to specific qualities in others, while neglect can erode potential connections. The study also examines the broader implications of these dynamics in cultural contexts, highlighting how our environment and cultural background shape our perceptual lenses. By acknowledging and understanding these biases, we can cultivate a more balanced and mindful approach to our interactions, fostering deeper and more meaningful relationships. Ultimately, this paper advocates for a mindset of tranquillity, where neither expectation nor neglect dominates our perceptions, allowing for genuine connections and personal growth.

Music Listening as Exploratory Behavior: From Dispositional Reactions to Epistemic Interactions with the Sonic World.

Listening to music can span a continuum from passive consumption to active exploration, relying on processes of coping with the sounds as well as higher-level processes of sense-making. Revolving around the major questions of "what" and "how" to explore, this paper takes a naturalistic stance toward music listening, providing tools to objectively describe the underlying mechanisms of musical sense-making by weakening the distinction between music and non-music. Starting from a non-exclusionary conception of "coping" with the sounds, it stresses the exploratory approach of treating music as a sound environment to be discovered by an attentive listener. Exploratory listening, in this view, is an open-minded and active process, not dependent on simply recalling pre-existing knowledge or information that reduces cognitive processing efforts but having a high cognitive load due to the need for highly focused attention and perceptual readiness. Music, explored in this way, is valued for its complexity, surprisingness, novelty, incongruity, puzzlingness, and patterns, relying on processes of selection, differentiation, discrimination, and identification.

Why Are There Developmental Stages in Language Learning? A Developmental Robotics Model of Language Development.

Most theories of learning would predict a gradual acquisition and refinement of skills as learning progresses, and while some highlight exponential growth, this fails to explain why natural cognitive development typically progresses in stages. Models that do span multiple developmental stages typically have parameters to "switch" between stages. We argue that by taking an embodied view, the interaction between learning mechanisms, the resulting behavior of the agent, and the opportunities for learning that the environment provides can account for the stage-wise development of cognitive abilities. We summarize work relevant to this hypothesis and suggest two simple mechanisms that account for some developmental transitions: neural readiness focuses on changes in the neural substrate resulting from ongoing learning, and perceptual readiness focuses on the perceptual requirements for learning new tasks. Previous work has demonstrated these mechanisms in replications of a wide variety of infant language experiments, spanning multiple developmental stages. Here we piece this work together as a single model of ongoing learning with no parameter changes at all. The model, an instance of the Epigenetic Robotics Architecture (Morse et al 2010) embodied on the iCub humanoid robot, exhibits ongoing multi-stage development while learning pre-linguistic and then basic language skills.

Rare Targets Induce Less "Perceptual Readiness:" Evidence from Pupillometry

Rare Targets Induce Less "Perceptual Readiness:" Evidence from Pupillometry

Fooled by Our Perceptions

Many people enjoy watching magicians perform magic acts and seemingly do the impossible. In many of these acts, magicians use sleight of hand, trickery, and special tools. There are, however, other occasions in which audience perceptions are used to make them see things differently. This exploits people's tendencies to see things based on their expectations and prior experience. One of these is perceptual readiness, the tendency for people to see what they expect or want to see. This article describes an exercise that illustrates that perceptions can be misleading.

Interventions Against Norm Violations

Moral courage is characterized as a bystander intervention against the norm violations of a perpetrator despite the potential for negative consequences for oneself. We tested a comprehensive set of potential personality determinants of moral courage derived from a model of helping. In Study 1, we used a vignette to assess the self-reported willingness to intervene against a theft. In Study 2, the theft was put into effect, and behavioral reactions were observed. The results of Study 1 showed that moral disengagement, self-efficacy, and social anxiety, which are traits that are known to predict helping, were also related to moral courage intentions. Differently, in Study 2, real moral courage was predicted only by beneficiary sensitivity, a disposition that captures perceptual readiness and affective reactivity to perceived injustice. Our results provide insights into the processes involved in moral courage in a realistic situation and stress the importance of behavioral observations.

Judging Managerial Actions as Ethical or Unethical: Decision Bias and Domain Relevant Experience

This is an empirical study comparing the susceptibility of managers and students to a decision-making bias when making judgments about ethical business practices. The managers and students read through vignettes and made judgments about how ethical they perceived the described business actions to be. Half of the participants (half of the managers and half of the students) were exposed to three situations in which the actions being judged were clearly unethical. The other half of each group was exposed to situations in which the actions being judged were clearly ethical. All were exposed to the same fourth situation of a business decision. In this ambiguous situation it was not clear if the business decision being evaluated was ethical or unethical. The decision bias examined here addressed the question of ‘to what extent does exposure to prior unethical (or ethical) actions influence one’s evaluation of how ethical a particular business decision is when it is not a clearly right or wrong action. The results demonstrated that students’ ethical judgments about the action in the fourth scenario (the same scenario for everyone) differed depending on what they were previously exposed to. Significant assimilation effects were found in the student sample suggesting support for the perceptual readiness models. The managerial sample yielded differences in the opposite direction, one of a contrast effect, but these did not reach statistical significance. Assimilation effects occurred in the sample without domain relevant experience and contrast effects occurred with the experienced sample. Implications are discussed.

Deficiencies within the education system with regard to perceptual motor learning

Increased concern about the low levels of literacy and numeracy among Grade 3 learners in South Africa is resulting in more emphasis being placed on the preparatory Grade R year. The level of learning readiness of pupils when entering formal teaching in Grade 1 is determined by perceptual motor stimulation that pupils received during the preschool phase. ‘Learning readiness’ can be influenced by the knowledge ofteachers, teacher/child ratio, the availability of teaching aids, as well as the amount of space and time allocated to movement activities. The aim of the study recounted in this article was to determine the physical deficiencies that could negatively affectchildren’s perceptual motor development and school readiness. Focus was placed on factors that influence perceptual motor development such as the training of teachers, availability of equipment and resources at schools with Grade R classes. Demographic information was collected with regards to; the qualification of teachers, the number of pupils, and intervention programmes that are offered at schools by outside institutions.A Likert scale questionnaire, with a combination of yes/no and open questions, was used and followed up by a personal interview. According to availability, 31 schools and 51 teachers were selected to participate in the research. Teachers of schools in developed areas and disadvantaged areas were involved in the study. The results of the study show that teachers are not sufficiently trained for the early child developmentalneeds within the education environment and that many schools are under-supplied in terms of resources and equipment. It is recommended that these teachers receive inservice training on learners’ perceptual motor development and that the Department of Education should provide schools with resources and equipment to prevent these deficiencies in the education system.

Can buy me love: Mate attraction goals lead to perceptual readiness for status products

Exposure to mating cues activates the goal to signal one's mate value to members of the opposite sex. This mate attraction goal may render men perceptually ready for products that signal their mate value to women. As men's mate value is partly determined by their financial prospects, men may be more likely to notice products that would signal their financial resources to women. The current study demonstrates that exposure to a sexily dressed woman increases single men's likelihood of noticing status products in a visual display. Not only do these findings further support the link between conspicuous consumption and male mating strategies, they are the first to demonstrate perceptual readiness for indirect (i.e., products) rather than direct (i.e., opposite sex individuals) means for reproduction.

On the Control Over Stereotype Activation and Stereotype Inhibition

Stereotypes are known to influence how we think about (judge, feel, plan, attend to, remember), and act toward, others. Stereotyping is typically described as pervasive in society for a variety of reasons, one of which being that the cognitive processes that initiate stereotyping occur effortlessly, without conscious intent, and without awareness. That is, upon encountering members of stereotyped groups, we ‘uncontrollably’ have stereotypes of those groups retrieved and held accessible in a state of perceptual readiness. This occurs without our knowledge or awareness of the stereotype’s ‘primed’ status, and thus our lacking awareness of its potential to influence how we respond. The current article explores various ways this implicit process of stereotype activation is controlled. Despite the fact that stereotype activation happens with ease, and outside of awareness, control processes also operate with ease, and outside of awareness. The review illustrates a variety of ways in which a stereotype may not be triggered (and thus downstream stereotyping of a person controlled) upon encountering a person. The dominant response to a person, stereotypic or not, is determined by the goals the individual perceiver has upon entering the interpersonal encounter. Many goals relevant to interpersonal interaction promote stereotyping. However, stereotype promotion is a form of stereotype control, and if control can be exhibited in the form of promotion, it should also be demonstrable in the form of prevention. Indeed, goals that are incompatible with stereotyping yield dominant responses to having encountered a member of a stereotyped group that does not involve activation of, and may involve inhibition of, stereotypes.

Memory for intention-related material presented in a to-be-ignored channel

Three experiments were conducted to investigate the fate of intention-related material processed in a to-be-ignored channel. Participants were given an intention to respond to cues in a visual-processing stream while simultaneously trying to ignore information being presented in an auditory stream. Subsequent to the ongoing activity, a surprise recognition test for information presented in the to-be-ignored auditory modality was administered. As compared with comparable neutral information, corrected recognition memory for intention-related material was significantly better, depending on the type of event-based prospective memory task. These results suggest that holding certain kinds of intentions can bias attentional processes in a manner consistent with a perceptual readiness for uptake of intention-related material.

On the psychology of drinking: being thirsty and perceptually ready.

The present research is concerned with cognitive effects of habitually regulated primary motives. Specifically, two experiments tested the idea that feelings of thirst enhance the cognitive accessibility of, or readiness to perceive, action-relevant stimuli. In a task allegedly designed to assess mouth-detection skills, some participants were made to feel thirsty, whereas others were not. Results showed that participants who were made thirsty responded faster to drinking-related items in a lexical decision task, and performed better on an incidental recall task of drinking-related items, relative to no-thirst control participants. These results suggest that basic needs and motives, such as thirst, causes a heightened perceptual readiness to environmental cues that are instrumental in satisfying these needs.

A review of preschool conservation training: An analysis of analyses

The theoretical stance of researchers influences the designs and outcomes of their experiments. This premise can be directly examined only when investigators of different persuasions are interested in the same phenomenon. Conservation training is one such phenomenon. The literature of preschool conservation training studies, 25 in all, is reviewed, and the theoretical stance of the author(s) is categorized as cognitive readiness, perceptual readiness, or specific experience. The three groups of studies are then analyzed to show that theory significantly affects many aspects of study design, outcome measures, and interpretation of results.

Individual construct accessibility and perceptual selection

The immediate environmental context in which social events occur and the current processing goals of the perceiver have been found to be important determinants of attentional focus, person memory, and social judgment. However, individuals may bring their own idiosyncratic perceptual sensitivities to bear on the selection of stimuli for further processing. The present experiment was designed to test whether one's chronically accessible social constructs constitute such a long-term perceptual readiness. The Stroop color-naming paradigm was employed to present trait-related adjectives to subjects who were to name the color in which each word was presented as quickly as possible. Subjects were paired according to the accessibility of their constructs for four different trait dimensions (so that one subject's accessible constructs were the other subject's inaccessible constructs, and vice versa). Analyses of color-naming latencies revealed that it took reliably longer for subjects to name the color of adjectives corresponding to their chronically accessible constructs than of those related to their inaccessible constructs. These results are consistent with a model in which stimulus properties relevant to one's accessible constructs receive preferential treatment in the initial automatic analysis of the environment.

Creative curriculum: Teaching self-awareness in a day care system

It has been several years since I began our center, and as my understanding about self-awareness has become more sophisticated, I have enlarged on the development of the Concept Center ideas. I am now designing a general day care curriculum based on these ideas, because I think it is vital to approach all aspects of the child's development, that is, motor skills, readiness skills, cognitive / intellectual / perceptual skills, readiness skills, language skills, social and emotional skills, from the core of growth which is self-awareness. As teachers we are guides to the adventurous journey of life. Difficult, draining as it is, I think it is a real privilege to act as such guides to the bright and innocent young humans we work with in day care, who are so vigorously acquiring the fluency they need to participate in this life. With a little recognition, support and belief, we have the opportunity to provide the foundation for the development of extraordinary human beings. In doing this we contribute to a more healthful human community. Seen in this area day care is a moveable feast of rich energy and growth. All small contributions to this end mean a future sparkling with promise for our young children of today. I believe it is through tools like the Concept Center that we can begin to make them such a promise.

Juries and the Death Penalty

Logically, it would seem that capital juries must be at least as fair, im partial, and representative as juries that sit in ordinary criminal prose cutions. But there is much evidence to suggest that this is not the case. In Witherspoon v. Illinois, the Supreme Court examined the process of "death qualification" used to impanel capital juries. The Court approved the exclusion of prospective jurors whose opposition to the death penalty would make it impossible for them to decide upon guilt fairly and im partially, but left open the question of whether the exclusion of others who would not consider imposing the death penalty under any circum stances violated the defendant's constitutional rights.Since Witherspoon, death qualification has been extensively studied. It has been found to affect both the composition of the jury panel that re sults and, through the process itself, jurors who are exposed to the pro cedure. The exclusion of characteristics or attitudes linked with opposi tion to the death penalty h...

Perceptual Categorization: Factors Influencing the Reproduction of Spoken Sounds Delivered at Suprathreshold Levels without Masking

45 Ss were patients of three clinical categories receiving phenathiozine medication. As Ss did not differ significantly with respect to the present analyses, data were pooled. Ss had normal hearing, and they repeated phonetic stimuli received via an earphone under standard audiological testing conditions. Errors in reproduction of common words (compound spondaic words, monosyllabic homonyms and non-homonyms), common prefixes and suffixes, nonsense syllables, and common words pronounced backward occurred least (2%) with the compound words, and they increased monotonically in the order given above to a frequency of 36% with the backward words. This result was interpreted as being due to the manipulation of the level of perceptual readiness and of the processes of categorization involved in classification of the stimulus in systematic and specific ways. This was accomplished variously by alteration of the expectancies relative to the phonetic, syntactic or semantic nature of succeeding stimuli, and to differences in the relative availability in memory of matching information caused by differences either in familiarity with the stimulus or in the range of meanings associated with the stimulus.

Sex differences in perceptual motor development.

Developmental patterns of perceptual motor functions of kindergarten-age children were studied in 16 boys and 34 girls. Perceptual motor differences found in 4½-yr.-old youngsters tend to persist at the 5-yr. level. Significant sex differences were found, with the boys maturing more rapidly during the 9-mo. interval of test-retest but never reaching the developmental levels of the girls on any perceptual tasks. Implications for educators concern planning more effectively for perceptual motor readiness as a prerequisite to the reading experience and changing the programming for boys and girls.

On perceptual readiness.

On perceptual readiness.