Theory Of Perception Research Articles

Social Cluster and Heritage Memory: A Study on the Space Perception of Zhaozhou Basin Horse Caravan Vernacular Architecture

Located in Dali, Yunnan, the Zhaozhou basin is home to many precious architectural heritages, particularly the historical horse caravan architecture. These buildings face the challenge of renewal and transformation. It is of great significance to explore the local population’s awareness of the architectural heritage of the horse caravan in order to protect the architectural heritage and facilitate rural revitalization. This study reviews the related research on “space perception”, establishes a theoretical framework of space perception under the architectural dimension, and develops hypotheses. The social cluster of typical settlements in the Zhaozhou basin is selected as the research object, and empirical analyses are carried out using SPSS and AMOS software. An analytical framework model of empirical research is constructed to evaluate the space perception of the current social population. The results of the reliability and validity tests of the questionnaire show that the CR is greater than 0.7 and that the AVE is greater than 0.5. The value of the structural equation model fitting index χ2/df is 1.863, which is less than 3. The model test results show that research hypotheses H1–H5 are supported; that is, space perception has a significant positive impact on cognition and local identity, cognition has a significant positive impact on local identity and space function, and place identity has a significant positive impact on space appeal. This study demonstrates the relationship between space perception and the architectural remains of the horse caravan, and it analyzes the human psychological perception behind the material space. The findings support the need for further conservation of the horse caravan architecture. This study further deepens the theory of space perception and its application in the study of vernacular architecture, which can provide a research path for the protection and development of vernacular architectural heritage.

Both pleasant and unpleasant emotional feelings follow Weber's law but it depends how you ask.

It remains unclear how we become aware of our emotions. The perceptual theory argues that emotions are a form of perception and reach awareness just like simple sensations. The theory was recently supported by Berkovich and Meiran (2023) showing, using evidence accumulation modeling of pleasantness reports, that pleasant emotional feelings follow one of the most basic psychophysical laws, Weber's Law, as nearly all sensations do. Contrary to predictions, this was true for pleasantness and not for unpleasantness. In this work, of which data were collected at the end of 2022, we employed the same experimental approach and successfully replicated the results but only when pleasantness was probed directly (emotions described as either "positive feeling" or "positive vs. negative feeling"). We unexpectedly found that the results flipped when we probed unpleasantness directly (i.e., "negative feeling") where we found that unpleasantness followed Weber's Law while pleasantness did not. Thus, Weber's Law holds for both pleasant and unpleasant feelings when probed directly, thereby providing an even stronger support for the perceptual theory. This in turn suggests that Weber's Law contributes to phenomena such as the unsuccessful pursuit of happiness and why psychotherapy is especially effective in leading to felt improvement when focusing on enhancing positive emotions and not on reducing negative emotions. The findings are limited by the fact that the participants were nondepressed undergraduate students. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Acoustic Depth

Summary Acoustic depth is an elusive indicator that touches the world of emergencies, or perceptual focus, in a peculiar way. The realm in which these forms of recognition operate indeed links media theory to perception theory and aesthetic reflection. Expressions such as acoustic scene, sound depth or sharpness, or acoustic image when discussing the receptive forms of various microphone models, are just a few cases where imaginative synthesis translates the sense of phenomena arising from the resistance of sensory properties to the structures of linguistic formalization. The language of media is full of these references, which seem to refer to a common sense that emerges in the differentiation of perceptual channels, but is rarely made explicit in a clear manner. To understand acoustic depht’s nature, we can use the concept of emergence: every time we hear a sound, that acoustic process is always surrounded by a myriad of small sounds that interact with it. The notion of emergence can be applied to anything present in the surrounding environment. It can be applied to any configuration that breaks the homogeneity of a perceptual field. So, we can analyze the complexity of this synthetic formation by tracing it back to increasingly simpler synthetic planes. When talking about composition, synthesis, and association, it has already the results of compositional operations and which provided the ultimate or primary material – either term suffices, depending on the direction we choose to take. These are essential factors in spatial orientation processes, but they are structurally opaque: we’ll work on three examples taken from classical music, ethnomusicology, and hearing aids.

여성의 몸에 대한 여성주의적 이해와 그 교육적 의미

This study aims to demonstrate that the female body is not an object to be overcome or negated but a constructive agent of social change based on philosophical and feminist discussions about the female body and to present the results of this discussion as an educational-theoretical basis for the formation of female subjectivity. To this end, this study systematically applied the methods of conceptual analysis and argument to philosophical and feminist discussions. This study is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews the meaning-giving function of experience of perception and the medial function of the body based on Merleau-Ponty’s theory of perception. Experience of perception, which individually reveals the meaning of self and object, is presented as the authority for the unity of mind and body and the integration of subject and object. Section 3 discusses from the perspective of social constructionism that femininity is not innately attributed to the female body but is constructed socioculturally. The distinctive way of experience and perception provided by the female body is presented as the starting point for the formation of individual identity and subjectivity. Section 4 attempts an educational criticism of the modern form of the oppression of women based on philosophical and feminist discussions about the female body. Expression based on the body and development of sensibility and sentiment are presented as educational measures to form female subjectivity from the perspective of self-formation (Bildung).

Interrelations Among Adolescents’ Family Connections, Solitude Preferences, Theory of Mind and Perceptions of Academic and Work Competence

This study explored the links among family connections, solitude preferences, perceptions of work (academic and job) competence, and Theory of Mind (ToM) in 73 Canadian adolescents aged 11–18 (M age = 13.1). Previous studies show significant connections among these factors, although little is known about how such associations may relate to one another, especially the role of young people’s perceptions. To address these gaps in the literature, this study focused on adolescents’ experiences and perceptions of their family relationships, solitude preferences, and competence in the school context and workplace. Participants completed a series of self-report measures, advanced ToM tasks and written explanation for perceived family emotional connections. Results revealed that adolescents with more positive family connections reported higher levels of self-perceived academic and job competence, embraced solitude positively, yet felt less desire to be alone. Girls showed a higher affinity for solitude than boys, and the presence of more siblings reduced the desire for solitude. Those youth who were proficient in ToM skills reported positive family connections and high levels of academic competence. Findings hold implications for future research and education in adolescent’s social cognition and social and academic outcomes.

Factors that influence consumers’ inclination to acquire counterfeit luxury goods

This study investigates the influence of perceived value and perceived risk on consumer intentions to purchase counterfeit luxury goods, drawing upon an integrated theoretical framework encompassing perceived value theory, risk perception theory, and consumer behavior models. Through a quantitative research design involving a structured survey and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), the study examines the relationships among perceived value dimensions (functional, emotional, social, economic), perceived risk factors (financial, social, performance), consumer attitudes, and purchase intentions. The findings reveal that perceived value positively influences purchase intentions, with consumer attitudes acting as a critical mediating mechanism. Conversely, perceived risk negatively impacts purchase intentions, with this relationship also mediated by consumer attitudes. Furthermore, Bayesian Network analysis uncovers the indirect pathways through which perceived risk shapes purchase intentions via its influence on consumer attitudes. By integrating these theoretical frameworks and employing advanced analytical techniques, this study contributes to a comprehensive understanding of the complex decision-making processes underlying counterfeit luxury goods consumption. The findings provide valuable insights for policymakers, luxury brand managers, and consumer protection agencies in devising targeted strategies to address consumer perceptions of value and risk, ultimately mitigating the proliferation of counterfeit luxury goods.

A Gender Analysis of Perceptions of Traditional Medicines by Sikerei

This paper analyzed gender perceptions of traditional medicine by sikerei in Mentawai Islands Regency. Traditional medicine by sikerei still exists amid the modernization of medicine. The Mentawai Islands are one of the unique regions in Indonesia with a rich culture and traditions. One of the important aspects of Mentawai culture is the system of traditional medicine developed by shamans or sikerei. Sikerei is an individual who has knowledge and skills in traditional medicine and is recognized as a religious and spiritual leader in the Mentawai community. The Mentawai people develop traditional medications through rituals and use leaves as medicine in the healing process. Traditional medicine by sikerei in the Mentawai community is a practice that has existed for a long time and continues to be passed down from generation to generation. The people of the Mentawai Islands Regency view males as the ones who prioritize logic in their actions and tend to be different from females, who prioritize their feelings and hearts. This also impacts their perception of the traditional sikerei healing culture. This is in line with the Perception Theory proposed by Bimo Walgito, which states that perception is a view of an object that is obtained from the process of sensing, organizing and interpreting the object received by a person so that it is something meaningful and an integrated activity within oneself. The research method used in this research was a qualitative approach with data collection through in-depth interviews. Research participants were selected purposively by considering variations in gender, age, and socio-economic background. Interviews were conducted with sikerei, men and women in several villages in the Mentawai Islands. The study took 150 samples from the Mentawai Islands. Data was analyzed using a thematic approach. Data collected from interviews were processed and analyzed to identify the patterns and themes that emerge in the perception of traditional medicine by sikerei. Comparisons between female and male perceptions were made to explore the differences and similarities in their perceptions. The results indicated that there is a relationship between gender and perceptions of sikerei traditional medicine. The chi-square test showed the number 6.732 with df 2 which meant there was a relationship between the two variables, while the contingency coefficient test showed the number 0.214 which meant that there was a low positive relationship. Keywords: Gender perception, traditional medication, sikerei

The Theory of Projection

Abstract Whitehead’s process philosophy offers a wide range of speculatively generalized concepts that allow for an application in transdisciplinary research. The notion of projection is an often-overlooked detail of his philosophy that not only appears in his far-reaching theory of perception, but also constitutes an integral part of his theory of extension as the formal foundation of his metaphysical project. His perceptive theory relies on the idea of projection as the fundamental ontological relationship that lifts the past into the present. Projections of sensa describe one side of the ‘double-barreled’ theory of perception and the spatial relations of the contemporary world. The microscopic projection is just as fundamental for perception and for the integrity of a relational theory of becoming, as the perceptual projection is necessary ingredient for symbolic modes of experience. The simple projection in the mode of presentational immediacy is the basis of temporary stability of events and of any perceptual situation in the biological realm. Whitehead was aware of the possible misconceptions that this term might lead to. Discussing his remarks on the hierarchical variety of different modes of projection can resolve those misconceptions and throw a new light on the importance of projection for interdisciplinary inquiries.

The radial-tangential anisotropy of numerosity perception.

Humans can estimate the number of visually presented items without counting. In most studies on numerosity perception, items are uniformly distributed across displays, with identical distributions in central and eccentric parts. However, the neural and perceptual representation of the human visual field differs between the fovea and the periphery. For example, in peripheral vision, there are strong asymmetries with regard to perceptual interferences between visual items. In particular, items arranged radially usually interfere more strongly with each other than items arranged tangentially (the radial-tangential anisotropy). This has been shown for crowding (the deleterious effect of clutter on target identification) and redundancy masking (the reduction of the number of perceived items in repeating patterns). In the present study, we tested how the radial-tangential anisotropy of peripheral vision impacts numerosity perception. In four experiments, we presented displays with varying numbers of discs that were predominantly arranged radially or tangentially, forming strong and weak interference conditions, respectively. Participants were asked to report the number of discs. We found that radial displays were reported as less numerous than tangential displays for all radial and tangential manipulations: weak (Experiment 1), strong (Experiment 2), and when using displays with mixed contrast polarity discs (Experiments 3 and 4). We propose that numerosity perception exhibits a significant radial-tangential anisotropy, resulting from local spatial interactions between items.

The Corrective Effect of Fact-Checking and Hostile Media Perceptions: A Three-Way Interaction Model between Social Media News Usage and Political Misperceptions

With the proliferation of fake news and misinformation, fact-checking journalism is booming worldwide. However, whether its corrective effect is still valid and generalizable in daily news consumption settings outside the laboratory requires further inves­tigation. In addition, some partisans argue that the content of fact-checking news has a partisan bias that makes it unfavorable to particular political figures or parties. This perceived bias is beginning to take root in some citizens’ minds. Using data from a national survey during the 2022 Korean presidential election (N = 948), we explore whether hostile media perception theory extends to biased perceptions of fact-checking news and affects its corrective effect. The results of the three-way interaction model indicate that exposure to fact-checking news helps reduce citizens’ belief in political misinformation when using social media news. However, perceived hostility to fact-checking news reduces the corrective effect of fact-checking. Specifically, those who are frequently exposed to fact-checking news but have a strong hostile media perception related to fact-checking news are less likely to assess misinformation more accurately than those with low perceived hostility when using social media news. The implications and limitations of this study are discussed.

Seeing Wrongness

Abstract This paper examines the plausibility of an attention-based version of moral perceptualism (amp). According to amp, our perception of moral properties is characterized by perceptual attentional patterns that reflect a sensitivity to morally salient features. First, I argue that the explanation for the empirical evidence offered to support amp primarily hinges on cognitive processes rather than perceptual ones. Second, while I acknowledge the critical importance of attention in recognizing moral properties, I contend that we must expand amp’s explanatory scope to address the question of what drives this attention. I propose an account of our (in)sensitivity to wrongness that builds on amp’s core statement. In this account, the notion of salience structure of information, defined by the varying accessibility of both perceptual and cognitive representations, plays a central explanatory role.

Interfacing consciousness.

The current stage of consciousness science has reached an impasse. We blame the physicalist worldview for this and propose a new perspective to make progress on the problems of consciousness. Our perspective is rooted in the theory of conscious agents. We thereby stress the fundamentality of consciousness outside of spacetime, the importance of agency, and the mathematical character of the theory. For conscious agent theory (CAT) to achieve the status of a robust scientific framework, it needs to be integrated with a good explanation of perception and cognition. We argue that this role is played by the interface theory of perception (ITP), an evolutionary-based model of perception that has been previously formulated and defended by the authors. We are specifically interested in what this tells us about the possibility of AI consciousness and conclude with a somewhat counter-intuitive proposal: we live inside a simulation instantiated, not digitally, but in consciousness. Such a simulation is just an interface representation of the dynamics of conscious agents for a conscious agent. This paves the way for employing AI in consciousness science through customizing our interface.

Illumination Fading

Abstract Bertrand Russell abandoned the notion of acquaintance in July 1918. What changes does this force in his account of the mind? This paper focuses on one puzzle of interpretation about this. In 1913, Russell offered an account of ‘egocentric particulars’, his term for indexicals and demonstratives. He argued that the fundamental objection to neutral monism was that it could not provide an adequate theory of these terms. In 1918, Russell now embraces a form of neutral monism, but he does not return to the problem of indexicals until 1940 in his William James lectures. Is the account given in 1940 significantly different from the one given in 1913? What was the argument against neutral monism in 1913? Does Russell offer a new solution in 1940 or reject his earlier view as mistaken? The answers offered here are used to draw more general morals about the current debate concerning relational theories of sense perception.

Gromov–Wasserstein unsupervised alignment reveals structural correspondences between the color similarity structures of humans and large language models

Large Language Models (LLMs), such as the General Pre-trained Transformer (GPT), have shown remarkable performance in various cognitive tasks. However, it remains unclear whether these models have the ability to accurately infer human perceptual representations. Previous research has addressed this question by quantifying correlations between similarity response patterns of humans and LLMs. Correlation provides a measure of similarity, but it relies pre-defined item labels and does not distinguish category- and item- level similarity, falling short of characterizing detailed structural correspondence between humans and LLMs. To assess their structural equivalence in more detail, we propose the use of an unsupervised alignment method based on Gromov–Wasserstein optimal transport (GWOT). GWOT allows for the comparison of similarity structures without relying on pre-defined label correspondences and can reveal fine-grained structural similarities and differences that may not be detected by simple correlation analysis. Using a large dataset of similarity judgments of 93 colors, we compared the color similarity structures of humans (color-neurotypical and color-atypical participants) and two GPT models (GPT-3.5 and GPT-4). Our results show that the similarity structure of color-neurotypical participants can be remarkably well aligned with that of GPT-4 and, to a lesser extent, to that of GPT-3.5. These results contribute to the methodological advancements of comparing LLMs with human perception, and highlight the potential of unsupervised alignment methods to reveal detailed structural correspondences.

Non-Perceptual Representational Immersion in Video Games: a Response to David Chalmers’ Reality+

This article criticises David Chalmers’ ‘Reality+’ by interrogating its distinction of virtual reality (VR) from 2D, non-VR video games, a distinction made on the grounds that VR is immersive and these types of video games are not because immersion is a distinct characteristic of 3D perceptually represented VR. Building on the Balcerak Jacksons’ account of ‘representational immersion’, which they acknowledge has ‘perceptual’ and ‘non-perceptual’ elements, I develop an account of ‘non-perceptual representational immersion’ and use it to critique Chalmers’ treatment of VR, immersion, and video games, indirectly problematizing his central ontological claim that ‘virtual reality is genuine reality’ and the reflections he makes about future society which rest upon it. I argue that video games are rich in non-perceptual representational immersion, which includes the representation of non-perceptual information about the structure and behaviour of a virtual world and its systems, the non-perceptual cognitive states that are generated in the player by the virtual world, and the immersion which comes from the constitutively cognitive nature of the player’s engagement with the virtual world, a cognitive engagement construed in an enactive sense. These are just as crucial to the phenomenon of digital immersion as perception. Immersion generally is a much more complicated phenomenon than Chalmers allows for, and it is better conceived as taking place on a spectrum which includes both 3D and 2D experiences of virtual worlds, not as hinging on 3D perceptual representation. I use ‘immersive simulation’ games as a case study.

Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on online consumption share: Evidence from China's mobile payment data

This study investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the online retail market in China and explores the mechanisms underlying this relationship. By developing a theoretical model based on utility theory and consumer risk perception theory and utilizing monthly mobile payment consumption data along with the number of people diagnosed with COVID-19 at the city level in 2020, this study finds that the COVID-19 pandemic has driven an increase in the share of online consumption, thereby changing the structure of the retail market. The primary mechanism is that the pandemic boosts e-commerce activity while concurrently reducing the service quality for consumers shopping offline. Furthermore, this study confirms that online consumption has mitigated the negative impact of the pandemic on overall consumption expenditure. Heterogeneity analyses suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly increased the online share of necessity and upgraded consumption. For city heterogeneity, the effects of the pandemic on online and offline consumption structures are more pronounced in regions with larger consumption scales and lower urbanization rates. Thus, the pandemic has accelerated the development of the online retail market and strengthened consumer inertia for online channels. According to consumer inertia theory, this trend may continue even as the pandemic gradually weakens. The applicability and effectiveness of this study's conclusions and methods provide a new perspective for future research on online retail and e-commerce markets.

Differences in perceptual representations in multilinguals' first, second, and third language.

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the differences in perceptual representations among multilingual individuals. In Experiment 1, the immediate sentence-picture verification paradigm was used to investigate perceptual representations in the working memory stage. The results suggest a match effect within the first language (Cantonese), but not within the second language (Mandarin) or the third language (English), showing perceptual representations only in first language comprehension. In Experiment 2, the delayed sentence-picture verification paradigm was used to investigate perceptual representations in long-term memory. Similarly, the results suggest a match effect within the first language (Mandarin), but not within the second language (English). The findings of both experiments suggest that the first language was perceptually represented, regardless of whether it was Cantonese or Mandarin, regardless of the processing in working memory or long-term memory. No evidence was found for perceptual representations in the later-learned languages, regardless of high or low proficiency. Our study has implications for theories of language comprehension and embodied cognition.

‘The ghost I expected to see’: Vernon Lee, the Gothic, and the Spectrality of Perception

Vernon Lee considered the conventional ghost story to be in rather bad taste and, in her own Gothic fiction, evoked ghosts that are never directly apprehended, but are perceived as agential bodies nonetheless. The distinctive ghosts that Lee creates haunt by exploiting the mechanisms of perception that she studied and theorised throughout her career. I analyse Lee’s depictions of perception in three stories, ‘Oke of Okehurst’, ‘Amour Dure’, and ‘The Image’, through the lens of philosopher Alva Noë’s theory of perception as ‘a kind of skilful bodily activity’. Noë argues that we make sense of the world by using our sensorimotor knowledge – ‘a knowledge of the way sensory stimulation varies as a function of movement’. Lee’s ghosts draw on this sensorimotor knowledge of characters and readers, allowing her to convey a potentiality for agency without depicting unambiguously supernatural events. Using mirror neuron studies and cognitive readings of how works of art transport their audiences into virtual environments, I argue that this sensorimotor engagement builds up a cognisance of Lee’s haunting figures as agential bodies that occupy space, acted upon by the material world and, in turn, acting upon it. Lee used these ghosts to adopt speculative perspectives on perception and cognition more broadly, such as questioning the stability and reliability of perception, and suggesting a loss of identity involved in all acts of perception. These perspectives are excluded from her studies and essays but are explored in the fictional space that the Gothic opens up; in her gothic stories, Lee exploits the uncanny aspects of cognition, suggesting and experimenting with queerer and more speculative theories than the objective studies she also pursued could accommodate.

The Domains of Aesthetics and Perception Theories: A Review Relevant to Practice-based Doctoral Theses in the Visual Arts

Abstract Every doctoral thesis requires contextualization within its specific discipline's theoretical bases. For a visual arts practice-based thesis, the relevant bases include those of aesthetics and visual perception. This article reviews a Western history of the domain of visual aesthetic theory, addressing both the analytical philosophical efforts to define art and the continental approaches, which construe art as social construction. It then reviews a third, normative stance that foregrounds cognitive value before definition or sociological context—an aesthetic cognitivist position, art practice as a means of acquiring and sharing experiential knowledge and understanding. Contemporary concerns about environmental aesthetics and somaesthetics are also addressed in the Introduction. Aesthetic theories are related to visual perception theories as an aid to fulfilling the scholarly requirements for a practice-based thesis.

Amodal Completion: Mental Imagery or 3D Modeling?

AbstractIn amodal completion the mind in some sense completes the visual perceptual representation of a scene by representing parts of the scene hidden behind other objects. Cognitive science has had a lot to say about how amodal completion occurs but has had little to say about the format of the representations involved and the way in which they represent. Some philosophers hold that amodal completions take the form of sensory imaginings of the occluded portions. This theory poses a puzzle for both philosophy and neuroscience about how the occluded parts are imagined to be located relative to the unoccluded parts. A better theory begins with the observation that for many purposes it is useful to suppose that the mind contains mental models of three-dimensional structure. Visual perceptions and mental images may be conceived as mental models that represent external scenes by virtue of homomorphism and which possess both a deep aspect, representing both visible and occluded three-dimensional structure, and a perspectival aspect, representing only an arrangement of visible surfaces. In these terms we can explain various problem-solving abilities, such as the ability to imagine what a scene will look like from another point of view. Amodal completions can be treated as deep perceptual representations of three-dimensional structure. Thus amodal completions do not consist of mental imagery, but they can be used to generate mental imagery representing how a scene would look from alternative points of view.