Precision Hypothesis Research Articles

L1 category precision hypothesis in L2 production: Korean learners’ English front vowels

It has been hypothesized that learners with more precisely defined categories in their native language (L1) are better at learning nonnative sounds in a second language (L2). Some perception studies have supported this hypothesis, but not many production studies have been conducted. Our study aims to fill this gap. Focusing on front vowels in F1/F2 acoustic space, we calculated compactness scores of L1 vowels and distances between learners’ and native speakers’ productions to operationalize category precision and L2 accuracy, respectively. Then, we examined whether learners with a lower compactness score would produce L2 vowels with a closer distance. The learners’ productions were taken from a corpus containing native Korean speakers’ reading and retelling of the North Wind and the Sun in Korean and English and comparable native English speakers’ productions from ALLSSTAR corpus. Results showed that learners with lower compactness scores produced more accurate English /i/ and /ɪ/, but not for /ɛ/ or /æ/, which partially supports the hypothesis's application to L2 production. We speculate that the merger between /e/ and /æ/ in Korean, the Northern Cities Vowel Shift in English, and/or perceptual mapping between native and L2 categories are responsible for the English non-high vowel results.

Emotion matters: Different psychophysiological responses to expressive and non-expressive full-body movements

We explore dance video clip stimuli as a means to test human observers' accuracy in detecting genuine emotional expressivity in full-body movements. Stimuli of every-day-type full-body expressions of emotions usually use culturally very recognizable actions (e.g. fist shaking for anger, etc). However, expressive dance movement stimuli can be created to contain fully abstract movements. The expressivity results from subtle variations in the body movements of the expressor, and emotions cannot be recognised by observers via particular actions (e.g. fist shaking, etc).Forty-one participants watched and rated 24 pairs of short dance videos –from a published normalised dance stimuli library– in randomised order (N = 48). Of each carefully matched pair, one version of the full-body movement sequence had been danced to be emotionally genuinely expressive (clip a), while the other version of the same sequence (clip b) had been danced –while technically correct– without any emotional expressivity. Participants rated (i) expressivity (to test their accuracy; block 1), and (ii) how much they liked each movement (an implicit measure to test their emotional response (“liking”); block 2).Participants rated clips that were intended to be expressive as more expressive (part 1: expressivity ratings), and liked those expressive clips more than the non-expressive clips (part 2: liking ratings). Besides, their galvanic skin response differed, depending on the category of clips they were watching (expressive vs. non-expressive), and this relationship was modulated by interceptive accuracy and arts experience. Results are discussed in relation to the Body Precision Hypothesis and the Hypothesis of Constructed Emotion.

Even distorted felt size engenders visual-haptic integration.

Intersensory interactions predicted by the sensory precision hypothesis have been infrequently examined by distorting the reliability of size perception by touch. Consequently, participants were asked to see one size and manually feel another unseen size either with bare fingers or with fingers sleeved in rigid tubes to decrease the precision of touch. Their subsequent visual estimates of the perceived size favored the more precise modality. Experiment 1 (N = 46) varied the intersensory discordance to examine whether the estimate arose from trivial response biases or from perceptual binding effects. Experiment 2 (N = 32) examined the presence of the perceptual effect in the absence of discordant sensory cues. Results favored a perceptual interpretation because the haptic and visual cues merged regardless of the discordance amount only when the stimulation arose from separate sources. The observed interaction between touch imprecision and visual bias is consistent with computational models of optimal perception.

Why some size illusions affect grip aperture

There is extensive literature debating whether perceived size is used to guide grasping. A possible reason for not using judged size is that using judged positions might lead to more precise movements. As this argument does not hold for small objects and all studies showing an effect of the Ebbinghaus illusion on grasping used small objects, we hypothesized that size information is used for small objects but not for large ones. Using a modified diagonal illusion, we obtained an effect of about 10% on perceptual judgements, without an effect on grasping, irrespective of object size. We therefore reject our precision hypothesis. We discuss the results in the framework of grasping as moving digits to positions on an object. We conclude that the reported disagreement on the effect of illusions is because the Ebbinghaus illusion not only affects size, but—unlike most size illusions—also affects perceived positions.

Distinct Mechanisms of Imagery Differentially Influence Speech Perception.

Neural representation can be induced without external stimulation, such as in mental imagery. Our previous study found that imagined speaking and imagined hearing modulated perceptual neural responses in opposite directions, suggesting motor-to-sensory transformation and memory retrieval as two separate routes that induce auditory representation (Tian and Poeppel, 2013). We hypothesized that the precision of representation induced from different types of speech imagery led to different modulation effects. Specifically, we predicted that the one-to-one mapping between motor and sensory domains established during speech production would evoke a more precise auditory representation in imagined speaking than retrieving the same sounds from memory in imagined hearing. To test this hypothesis, we built the function of representational precision as the modulation of connection strength in a neural network model. The model fitted the magnetoencephalography (MEG) imagery repetition effects, and the best-fitting parameters showed sharper tuning after imagined speaking than imagined hearing, consistent with the representational precision hypothesis. Moreover, this model predicted that different types of speech imagery would affect perception differently. In an imagery-adaptation experiment, the categorization of /ba/-/da/ continuum from male and female human participants showed more positive shifts towards the preceding imagined syllable after imagined speaking than imagined hearing. These consistent simulation and behavioral results support our hypothesis that distinct mechanisms of speech imagery construct auditory representation with varying degrees of precision and differentially influence auditory perception. This study provides a mechanistic connection between neural-level activity and psychophysics that reveals the neural computation of mental imagery.

Precise movements in awkward postures: A direct test of the precision hypothesis of the end-state comfort effect.

When humans manipulate an object, they prefer to grasp the object in a way that allows to terminate the manipulation in a comfortable posture. The reasons for this end-state comfort effect have remained elusive so far. One explanation assumes that comfortable end-states are not preferred per se, but rather because they come with increased movement precision, which is typically required by the end of an object manipulation. Five experiments were conducted to test this hypothesis and yielded 3 main results. First, grasps that increase control over an object are preferred irrespective of the resulting arm postures. Second, differences in the controllability associated with comfortable and uncomfortable postures are sufficient to elicit the end-state comfort effect. Third, grasps that optimize control are preferred even when this implies adopting uncomfortable end-states. Altogether, these findings directly support the hypothesis that the end-state comfort emerges because it maximizes the control over the manipulated object at the end of object manipulations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Supplemental Material for Precise Movements in Awkward Postures: A Direct Test of the Precision Hypothesis of the End-State Comfort Effect

Supplemental Material for Precise Movements in Awkward Postures: A Direct Test of the Precision Hypothesis of the End-State Comfort Effect

Touch Precision Modulates Visual Bias

ABSTRACTThe sensory precision hypothesis holds that different seen and felt cues about the size of an object resolve themselves in favor of the more reliable modality. To examine this precision hypothesis, 60 college students were asked to look at one size while manually exploring another unseen size either with their bare fingers or, to lessen the reliability of touch, with their fingers sleeved in rigid tubes. Afterwards, the participants estimated either the seen size or the felt size by finding a match from a visual display of various sizes. Results showed that the seen size biased the estimates of the felt size when the reliability of touch decreased. This finding supports the interaction between touch reliability and visual bias predicted by statistically optimal models of sensory integration.

Do deer and raccoons defecate in the right place? Fitness consequences of vertebrate seed dispersal for a deciduous forest herb.

Precision of seed placement in a heterogeneous environment is often assumed to select for the evolution of animal-mediated dispersal systems, but this hypothesis has rarely been tested in a multivariate sense. We quantify the microsite fitness benefits of dispersal by white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) and raccoons (Procyon lotor) for mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum), a shade-tolerant perennial herb, in deciduous forests of southeastern Ohio, USA. Micro-environmental variables were recorded at dung-deposition microsites, at rooting points of mayapple shoots, and at random (control) points in the forest. Fitness was assessed as the degree of overlap in ordinations of microsites by environmental variables. Mayapple occupied a broad sector (56%) of environment space corresponding to low and mid-slope positions, ravines, and proximity to trees. Deer and raccoon defecation placed dung in 71-74 and 86-95% of environment space, respectively, reaching mayapple microsites in 57-60 and 53-54% of cases. Deer placed dung in mayapple environment space 7-9% more often than predicted by random distribution, and raccoons placed dung in mayapple space 0-5% more often, consistent with only a modest degree of directed dispersal. Thus, the precision hypothesis is only weakly supported. The greatest fitness benefit of vertebrate dispersal appears to be the broad distribution of seeds, thereby increasing the probability of randomly reaching a suitable microsite. Imprecise dispersal suggests that secondary mechanisms of seed movement need to be explored in deciduous forest communities.

Low flower-size variation in bilaterally symmetrical flowers: Support for the pollination precision hypothesis.

The evolutionary shift from radial to bilateral symmetry in flowers is generally associated with the evolution of low flower-size variation. This phenomenon supports the hypothesis that the lower size variation in bilateral flowers can be attributed to low pollinator diversity. In this study, we propose two other hypotheses to explain low flower-size variation in bilateral symmetrical flowers. To test the three hypotheses, we examined the relative importance of pollinator diversity, composition, and bilateral symmetry itself as selective forces on low flower-size variation. We examined pollinator diversity and composition and flower-size variation for 36 species in a seminatural ecosystem with high bee richness and frequent lepidopteran visitation. Bilateral flowers were more frequently visited than radial flowers by larger bees, but functional-group diversity of the pollinators did not differ between symmetry types. Although bilateral flowers had significantly lower flower-size variation than radial flowers, flower-size variation did not vary with pollinator diversity and composition but was instead related to bilateral symmetry. Our results suggest that the lower size variation in bilateral flowers might have evolved under selection favoring the control of pollinator behavior on flowers to enhance the accurate placement of pollen on the body of the pollinator, independent of pollinator type. Because of the limited research on this issue, future work should be conducted in various types of plant-pollinator communities worldwide to further clarify the issue.

Models provide specificity: Testing a proposed mechanism of visual working memory capacity development.

Numerous studies have established that visual working memory has a limited capacity, and that capacity increases during childhood. However, debate continues over the source of capacity limits and its developmental increase. Simmering (2008) adapted a computational model of spatial cognitive development, the Dynamic Field Theory, to explain not only the source of capacity limitations but also the developmental mechanism. According to the model, capacity is limited by the balance between excitation and inhibition that maintains multiple neural representations simultaneously. Moreover, development is implemented according to the Spatial Precision Hypothesis, which proposes that excitatory and inhibitory connections strengthen throughout early childhood. Critically, these changes in connectivity result in increasing precision and stability of neural representations over development. Here we test this developmental mechanism by probing children's memory in a single-item change detection task. Results confirmed the model's predictions, providing further support for this account of visual working memory capacity development.

Models provide specificity: Testing a proposed mechanism of visual working memory capacity development

Numerous studies have established that visual working memory has a limited capacity that increases during childhood. However, debate continues over the source of capacity limits and its developmental increase. Simmering (2008) adapted a computational model of spatial cognitive development, the Dynamic Field Theory, to explain not only the source of capacity limitations but also the developmental mechanism. Capacity is limited by the balance between excitation and inhibition that maintains multiple neural representations simultaneously in the model. Development occurs according to the Spatial Precision Hypothesis, which proposes that excitatory and inhibitory connections strengthen throughout early childhood. These changes in connectivity result in increasing precision and stability of neural representations over development. Here we test this developmental mechanism by probing children's memory in a single-item change detection task. Results confirmed the model's predictions, providing further support for this account of visual working memory capacity development.

Evaluation of the altimetry from SRTM-3 and planimetry from high-resolution PALSAR FBD data for semi-detailed topographic mapping in the Amazon Region

The Brazilian Amazon has a deficit of 35% of coverage regarding topographic mapping at semi-detailed (1:100,000) scale. This paper presents an alternative to overcome this scenario using a combination of planialtimetric information from two orbital SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) missions. The altimetry was acquired from Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), while the planimetry was provided from Fine Beam Dual (FBD) images of the Phased Array L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR) sensor. The research was carried out in the mountainous area of the Serra dos Carajás (Pará State), located on the Amazon region. The quality of the orbital topographic information was evaluated regarding precise planialtimetric measurements acquired from Global Positioning System (GPS) field campaigns. The evaluations were performed following two approaches: (1) the use of Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and (2) tendency and precision hypothesis tests. The investigation has shown that the planialtimetric quality of the orbital products fulfilled the Brazilian Map Accuracy Standards requirements for 1:100,000 A Class map. Thus, the use of combination of information provided by PALSAR and SRTM-3 data can be considered a promising alternative for production and update of semi-detailed topographic mapping in similar environments of the Amazon region, where topographic information is lacking or presents low quality.

Tests of the dynamic field theory and the spatial precision hypothesis: capturing a qualitative developmental transition in spatial working memory.

This study tested a dynamic field theory (DFT) of spatial working memory and an associated spatial precision hypothesis (SPH). Between 3 and 6 years of age, there is a qualitative shift in how children use reference axes to remember locations: 3-year-olds' spatial recall responses are biased toward reference axes after short memory delays, whereas 6-year-olds' responses are biased away from reference axes. According to the DFT and the SPH, quantitative improvements over development in the precision of excitatory and inhibitory working memory processes lead to this qualitative shift. Simulations of the DFT in Experiment 1 predict that improvements in precision should cause the spatial range of targets attracted toward a reference axis to narrow gradually over development, with repulsion emerging and gradually increasing until responses to most targets show biases away from the axis. Results from Experiment 2 with 3- to 5-year-olds support these predictions. Simulations of the DFT in Experiment 3 quantitatively fit the empirical results and offer insights into the neural processes underlying this developmental change.

Statistical Significance of Precisely Repeated Intracellular Synaptic Patterns

Can neuronal networks produce patterns of activity with millisecond accuracy? It may seem unlikely, considering the probabilistic nature of synaptic transmission. However, some theories of brain function predict that such precision is feasible and can emerge from the non-linearity of the action potential generation in circuits of connected neurons. Several studies have presented evidence for and against this hypothesis. Our earlier work supported the precision hypothesis, based on results demonstrating that precise patterns of synaptic inputs could be found in intracellular recordings from neurons in brain slices and in vivo. To test this hypothesis, we devised a method for finding precise repeats of activity and compared repeats found in the data to those found in surrogate datasets made by shuffling the original data. Because more repeats were found in the original data than in the surrogate data sets, we argued that repeats were not due to chance occurrence. Mokeichev et al. (2007) challenged these conclusions, arguing that the generation of surrogate data was insufficiently rigorous. We have now reanalyzed our previous data with the methods introduced from Mokeichev et al. (2007). Our reanalysis reveals that repeats are statistically significant, thus supporting our earlier conclusions, while also supporting many conclusions that Mokeichev et al. (2007) drew from their recent in vivo recordings. Moreover, we also show that the conditions under which the membrane potential is recorded contributes significantly to the ability to detect repeats and may explain conflicting results. In conclusion, our reevaluation resolves the methodological contradictions between Ikegaya et al. (2004) and Mokeichev et al. (2007), but demonstrates the validity of our previous conclusion that spontaneous network activity is non-randomly organized.

Precision hypothesis and the end-state comfort effect

Recently, motor control research has emphasized the planning of macroscopic aspects of control. In object manipulation studies, when participants complete a movement in a comfortable posture, an end-state comfort effect is attained. One explanation for this effect is the precision hypothesis, which states that precision increases when participants are in a comfortable position. This research directly tests the precision hypothesis in two experiments. In Experiment 1, participants picked up a dowel and touched a large or small target on a wall. For the second experiment, the same procedure was followed using a pinpoint target. The probability analyses of the first experiment indicated that the end-state comfort effect was magnified in the small target condition and that the point-of-change effect (Short and Cauraugh, 1997) appeared only when end-state comfort was magnified. Error analyses in Experiment 2 showed that participants were more accurate when in a more comfortable position. The present findings indicate that the precision hypothesis plays a significant role in the end-state comfort effect.

A Tale of Two Questions: Benefits of Asking More Than One Question

In the last two months have you had a physical exami- nation? The ability of 660 people to accurately report on their own recent health procedures was assessed by comparing the recollections of patients to information extracted from their medi- cal records. A major finding was that when people were asked whether they had a specific procedure in a given reference period (e.g., physical exam within the last two months), overreporting occurred. A simple technique reduced overreporting: The tech- nique entailed asking people about the procedure twice, first in connection with a different reference period (e.g., physical exam within the last six months) and then in connection with the refer- ence period of interest (e.g., physical exam within the last two months). Our data support a Precision hypothesis: The advan- tage of the two-time frame questioning procedure is that it con- veys to the respondent that the interviewer wants greater preci- sion in dating than the single-time frame question implies.