Properties Of Human Perception Research Articles

Study of Subjective and Objective Quality Assessment of Night-Time Videos

With the widespread usage of video capture devices and social media videos, videos are dominating the multimedia landscape. There is an emerging need for video quality assessment (VQA) that forms the backbone of advanced video systems. Night-time videos play an important role in user capturing, hence being able to accurately assess their quality is critical. However, the characteristics of night-time videos differ from those of general in-capture videos; and VQA algorithms that have been developed for general-purpose videos cannot accurately assess the quality of night-time videos. Research is needed to gain a better understanding of how humans perceive the quality of night-time videos, and use this new understanding to develop reliable VQA algorithms. To this end, we construct a large-scale night-time VQA database, namely Mobile In-capture Night-time Database for Video Quality (MIND-VQ), containing 1181 night-time videos, 435 subjects, and over 130000 opinion scores. We perform thorough analyses to reveal subjective quality assessment behaviors of night-time videos. Furthermore, we propose a new VQA model, namely Visibility-based Night-time Video Quality Assessment Network, VINIA. Spatial and temporal visibility-aware components are characterized to reflect properties of human perception of night-time VQA task. A series of experiments are conducted to compare our VINIA with other existing VQA algorithms using our new MIND-VQ database and other public VQA databases. Experimental results show that our subjective VQA database provides new insights and our new VINIA model achieves superior performance in accessing night-time video quality.

Russian Animalistic Art of the 20th Century as a Special Kind of Fine Art

This article aims at analyzing the genre features of the 20th century animalistic art as a special, original phenomenon of Russian artistic culture. There are highlighted the aspects that make up its content basis. The author considers the issues of human perception of an animal, attitude to it, the system of views on the world of flora and fauna, the methods of interpretation of animals and birds. Together, they form the specific characteristics of animalistic art, which appeared in their organized and integral form in the 20th century. The article is relevant because the relationship between human and nature is being more and more re-evaluated, which is why the ideological features and the system of views of the 20th century artists are getting increasingly important (in particular, in the historical and artistic aspect).Animalistic art, having become noticeable as a genre already in the 18th century, passed through the entire 19th century, and crystallized in the 20th century in the most characteristic, typical features in various types of fine arts (graphics, painting, sculpture and their varieties). There is no doubt that among other genres of fine art, animalistic art is an original visual and plastic phenomenon that is fundamentally different from the art that depicts a person. The article notes that the complexity of animalistic art lies in the properties of human perception, which is prone to subjective evaluation and, accordingly, gives an animal human traits. The principle of “imitation” of nature, the study of nature, being constantly followed by artists, pointed to the overcoming of the subjective moment and became the leading one in composing the figurative concept of an animal.

Integrated acoustic echo and noise suppression in modulation domain

The quality of speech transmission in mobile communication systems deteriorates due to the presence of background noise and acoustic echo. The background noises are the disturbances from the surroundings and acoustic echo is induced due to the reverberation of loudspeaker signal in the near end environment. In conventional acoustic echo suppression setup, the echo path effect is modelled either in time or in frequency domain, and to cancel the echo, a replica of the echo is created by estimating the echo path response adaptively in the corresponding domain. Recently, the modulation domain analysis, which captures the human perceptual properties, is widely being used in speech processing. Modulation domain conveys the temporal variation of the acoustic magnitude spectra which acts as an information bearing signal. In this work, a novel integrated system for acoustic echo and noise suppression in the modulation domain is developed. So far, no work in this context in modulation domain has been found as reported. An efficient method for modelling the echo path and estimating the echo in the modulation domain is introduced and implemented. The effects of echo and noise are suppressed using the modulation spectral manipulation and the performance of the proposed system is found to be better than other conventional integrated systems.

Synaesthesia

In the existing literature on synaesthetic metaphors in poetry it is proposed that transfers tend to go from the ‘lower’ (touch, smell, taste) to the ‘higher’ (sight, hearing) sensory modalities. The purpose of this article is to establish if the same directionality also holds for synaesthetic associations found in other text types. To this end, a method for the semi-automatic extraction of synaesthesia is introduced and applied to general-purpose corpora of English (ukWaC) and Italian (itWaC). In the data collected for these languages, most transfers proceed in the expected direction, e.g.sweet voice, but instances of ‘backward’ transfers are also found, e.g.bitter cold. Based on these results, it is claimed that the ‘directionality principle’ reflects thefrequencyof association types, rather than representing universal constraints on synaesthetic transfers, as has often been more or less explicitly assumed. It is here argued that both properties of human perception and more strictly linguistic factors can account for the frequency tendencies observed in synaesthesia. The proposed interpretation is also shown to account for apparently contradictory evidence coming from typological studies on verbs of perception.

The Research of Video Quality Evaluating Based on MATLAB

Video quality impairments mainly caused by noisy transmit channel. No-Reference evaluating method is an important way to predict the video quality due to without any other loader to the transmit channel. Aiming at improve the accuracy and effectiveness of No-Reference video quality evaluating model, a novel variable-weight evaluating model is proposed. Motion intensity is introduced to qualify the variation of video content. And a weight control function is obtained based on the statistic studying method. Then the weight of clearness and smoothness can be adjusted in real time through the weight control function. The variable-weight evaluating model takes into the human perceptual properties. The experimental results show that the variable-weight evaluation model outperforms the existing evaluation models and achieves high correlation with the subjective test results.

主観的力知覚空間におけるステアリングホイール操作特性の感性評価と設計への応用

Kansei engineering is a Japanese approach by which products and services are developed and improved with consumers' psychological feelings and needs incorporated into the design domain. This paper proposes a new Kansei evaluation method in which human perception properties in vehicle steering wheel operation are considered. The method does not involve consideration of steering wheel machine characteristics in their pure form; rather, psychological feelings and needs (Kansei) are evaluated using statistical techniques after these characteristics have been converted for representation in a human subjective force perception space. In this way, the relationship between Kansei evaluation results obtained using a semantic differential method and the machine characteristics of a steering wheel can be modeled. Kansei items can also be optimally designed using mathematical programming. In this study, an algorithm for the proposed method was formulated and a Kansei evaluation experiment was conducted. The results clearly showed that modeling accuracy for all Kansei items is improved by the conversion of machine characteristics for representation in a human subjective force perception space as compared to a case in which machine characteristics were used without conversion. The outcomes (1) confirmed the validity of converting machine characteristics for representation in a human subjective force perception space, and (2) proved that optimal design using estimated models of Kansei evaluation allows the derivation of machine characteristics suitable for a targeted Kansei item.

Psychological and physical impact of urban green spaces on outdoor thermal comfort during summertime in The Netherlands

Green infrastructure can improve thermal comfort in outdoor urban spaces in moderate climates. The impact of green spaces on thermal comfort is often exclusively investigated through meteorological variables and human-biometeorological indices. Yet, studies on perceived thermal comfort are scarce. As thermal comfort is a property of human perception of the thermal environment, this knowledge is crucial for understanding the relationship between green spaces and thermal comfort.We investigated inhabitants' long-term perception of thermal comfort on warm summer days in three Dutch cities by means of questionnaires. Additionally, we examined the daytime cooling effect of green spaces in Utrecht, in order to find physical evidence to verify thermal comfort perception. To this end we used bicycles equipped with micrometeorological sensors. We compared thermal conditions of 13 parks with thermal conditions in the city centre and in the open grassland outside the city. And we analysed dependences between thermal conditions and spatial variables of parks (size, tree canopy, upwind vegetation cover).Our results demonstrate that green infrastructure improves generally perceived thermal comfort. People evaluated green urban spaces as the most thermally comfortable spaces which was in line with the physical thermal investigations. Physiological equivalent temperature (PET) in parks on average was 1.9 K lower than in the city centre and 5 K lower than in the surrounding grasslands during the hottest period of the day. Thermal variance between parks was significantly influenced by tree canopy cover (mean radiant temperature p = 0.00005) and upwind vegetation cover (air temperature p = 0.013), not significantly for park size.

Problems of the development and using of automation monitoring systems of complex technical objects

In the article is considering a method for recursive-hierarchical representation of one-dimensional signals with fractal properties. The increasing of processing efficiency is achieved due to the recursive representation of self-similar patterns with arbitrary scale level, considering of human perception properties and fast computational realization.

Variable Weight No-Reference Video Quality Evaluating Model

The video quality impairments mainly caused by noisy transmit channel. No-Reference evaluating method is an important way to predict the video quality due to without any other loader to the transmit channel. Aiming at improve the accuracy and effectiveness of No-Reference video quality evaluating model, a novel variable-weight evaluating model is proposed. Motion intensity is introduced to qualify the variation of video content. And a weight control function is obtained based on the statistic studying method. Then the weight of clearness and smoothness can be adjusted in real time through the weight control function. The variable-weight evaluating model takes into the human perceptual properties. The experimental results show that the variable-weight evaluation model outperforms the existing evaluation models and achieves high correlation with the subjective test results.

A Canonical Model of Multistability and Scale-Invariance in Biological Systems

Multistability and scale-invariant fluctuations occur in a wide variety of biological organisms from bacteria to humans as well as financial, chemical and complex physical systems. Multistability refers to noise driven switches between multiple weakly stable states. Scale-invariant fluctuations arise when there is an approximately constant ratio between the mean and standard deviation of a system's fluctuations. Both are an important property of human perception, movement, decision making and computation and they occur together in the human alpha rhythm, imparting it with complex dynamical behavior. Here, we elucidate their fundamental dynamical mechanisms in a canonical model of nonlinear bifurcations under stochastic fluctuations. We find that the co-occurrence of multistability and scale-invariant fluctuations mandates two important dynamical properties: Multistability arises in the presence of a subcritical Hopf bifurcation, which generates co-existing attractors, whilst the introduction of multiplicative (state-dependent) noise ensures that as the system jumps between these attractors, fluctuations remain in constant proportion to their mean and their temporal statistics become long-tailed. The simple algebraic construction of this model affords a systematic analysis of the contribution of stochastic and nonlinear processes to cortical rhythms, complementing a recently proposed biophysical model. Similar dynamics also occur in a kinetic model of gene regulation, suggesting universality across a broad class of biological phenomena.

Misjudging where you felt a light switch in a dark room

Previous research has shown that subjects systematically misperceive the location of visual and haptic stimuli presented briefly around the time of a movement of the sensory organ (eye or hand movements) due to errors in the combination of visual or tactile information with proprioception. These briefly presented stimuli (a flash or a tap on the finger) are quite different from what one encounters in daily life. In this study, we tested whether subjects also mislocalize real (static) objects that are felt briefly while moving ones hand across them, like when searching for a light switch in the dark. We found that subjects systematically mislocalized a real bar in a similar manner as has been shown with artificial haptic stimuli. This demonstrates that movement-related mislocalization is a real world property of human perception.

Properties of Long-Range Illusory Contours Produced by Offset-Arcs

Researchers have used several different types of illusory contours to investigate properties of human perception. One rarely used illusory contour is a combination of the abutting grating and Kanizsa illusions. We call this the offset-arcs illusion and provide an empirical investigation of the illusion. Through a series of four experiments, using different methods of measurement, we show that changes to the phase of the abutting-grating part of the inducing stimulus can dramatically change the perceived strength and clarity of the long-range illusory contour. The easy manipulation of illusion strength should make the offset-arcs illusion applicable to a wide range of studies that utilize long-range illusory contours. The lack of a brightness component to the illusion should allow the offset-arcs illusion to help separate perceptual grouping from surface brightness effects that are often confounded in other illusory contours.

Integrative Bayesian model on two opposite types of sensory adaptation

Adaptation is a fundamental property of human perception. Recently, it was found that there are two opposite types of adaptation to repetitive stimuli with a temporal difference. In this article, we construct an integrative model of adaptation. We model the perception as a Bayesian inference, and represent the two types of adaptation as changes in the likelihood function and the prior distribution in the Bayesian inference. We examine our model analytically and show how the types of adaptation depend on model parameters.

Visual music and musical vision

This paper aims to bridge human hearing and vision from the viewpoint of database search for images or music. The semantic content of an image can be illustrated with music or conversely images can be associated with a piece of music. The theoretical basis of the bridge is synaesthesia, a property of human perception. A prototype cross-media retrieval system is built, using principles established in the neuroscientific study of synaesthesia.

On causal algorithms for speech enhancement

Kalman filtering is a powerful technique for the estimation of a signal observed in noise that can be used to enhance speech observed in the presence of acoustic background noise. In a speech communication system, the speech signal is typically buffered for a period of 10-40 ms and, therefore, the use of either a causal or a noncausal filter is possible. We show that the causal Kalman algorithm is in conflict with the basic properties of human perception and address the problem of improving its perceptual quality. We discuss two approaches to improve perceptual performance. The first is based on a new method that combines the causal Kalman algorithm with pre- and postfiltering to introduce perceptual shaping of the residual noise. The second is based on the conventional Kalman smoother. We show that a short lag removes the conflict resulting from the causality constraint and we quantify the minimum lag required for this purpose. The results of our objective and subjective evaluations confirm that both approaches significantly outperform the conventional causal implementation. Of the two approaches, the Kalman smoother performs better if the signal statistics are precisely known, if this is not the case the perceptually weighted Kalman filter performs better.

Perceptual Adaptive Insensitivity for Support Vector Machine Image Coding

Support vector machine (SVM) learning has been recently proposed for image compression in the frequency domain using a constant epsilon-insensitivity zone by Robinson and Kecman. However, according to the statistical properties of natural images and the properties of human perception, a constant insensitivity makes sense in the spatial domain but it is certainly not a good option in a frequency domain. In fact, in their approach, they made a fixed low-pass assumption as the number of discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficients to be used in the training was limited. This paper extends the work of Robinson and Kecman by proposing the use of adaptive insensitivity SVMs [2] for image coding using an appropriate distortion criterion [3], [4] based on a simple visual cortex model. Training the SVM by using an accurate perception model avoids any a priori assumption and improves the rate-distortion performance of the original approach.

On the Universal Neuropsychological Basis of the Syntax of Numerals

The aim of this paper is to relate certain properties of linguistic numeral systems to universal principles of human cognition/perception. As has been noted in the literature (c.f.， Greenberg 1978; Ifrah 1985; Hurford 1975，2001)，in many unrelated languages all around the world ，numerals referring to cardinalities in the range of ‘one’ to ‘four’ differ considerably from higher numerals . It seems that the facts in question can be explained only by means of referring to some ‘extralinguistic’， universal factors- i.e.， to factors that are not part of the language viewed as a closed system of purely arbitrary signs. The analysis argued for in the present paper will relate to the neuropsychological work by Cowan (2001). Basing his arguments independent of any linguistic data， Cowan (2001) suggests that there exists something what he calls ‘the magical number four’， which constrains human perception skills. He presents a wide variety of data on short-term memory capacity limits and shows that， if factors such as rehearsal and long-term memory are not used to combine stimulus items into chunks，a central short-term memory capacity limit averages to contain about four items. This means that the cardinalities ‘one’ to ‘four’ can be perceived independently from actual counting. In this paper， I will attempt to show that this universal property of human perception has influenced the development of many numeral systems. Only the lowest numerals seem to be part of the basic human vocabulary (they appear in most languages of the world-c .f.，Ifrah 1985，Dixon 1980); numerals higher than ‘four ’ were introduced to languages only when the speakers of those languages developed arithmetic. These different origins have resulted in different morphosyntactic propeerties.

Optimality and Functionality: Objections and Refutations

The classical generative theory of knowledge of language is that a speaker’s mental grammar is a pure combinatorial engine, blind to typology and resistant to grammar-external forces. It arises from domain-specific innate principles of UG, whose parametric variation becomes fixed upon exposure to a given linguistic experience. In this classical epistemology, markedness hierarchies such as the animacy hierarchy cannot play a role in the individual synchronic grammar of a present-day English speaker. These hierarchies are not universal; they are exceptionridden, both across languages and even within the individual languages where their effects sometimes appear. They also have no obvious structural basis in generative representations. Hence, they are regarded as at best vague tendencies reflecting scalar properties of human perception and cognition or socio-cultural categorizations, external to the specific domain of linguistic structure. Their appearance in languages typologically distant from English (e.g. Lummi, Dyirbal, Navajo) shows merely that grammar-external forces may leave their marks upon languages historically. On this view, some of the grammatical structure found in existing languages may be the conventionalized residue of external pressures on historical change, which are no longer active synchronically. But present-day speakers have no knowledge of typology, nor of the external pressures that have affected typological distributions—and their mentally represented grammars reflect this.

Adaptive global concealment of video up-conversion artefacts

Video field-rate conversion requires algorithms that improve dynamic resolution without degrading motion portrayal. Motion-compensated up-conversion is the state-of-the-art in this field. But motion compensation sometimes introduces objectionable artefacts into the output picture due to incorrect motion vectors. This paper describes a method of suppressing the image degradation due to motion compensation artefacts. It is unique in that it estimates global image degradation to determine the required level of error concealment or fallback. Two levels of fallback are implemented which take human perception properties into consideration. They are realized on a microprocessor's ROM connected to an up-converter IC.

Eye movements and visible persistence explain the mislocalization of the final position of a moving target

When observers are asked to localize the final position of a moving target, the judged position is usually displaced from the actual position in the direction of motion. The short-term time course of the displacement was investigated to test theories that attribute the localization error to spatial and temporal properties of human perception or to representational momentum. It was found that briefly after target offset, the judged position is already displaced in the direction of motion. It is argued that the shift results from eye movements after target offset that move the target's persisting image in the direction of motion.