Soft Dimensions Research Articles

Hand differences on a sensory test using tactual stimuli.

To examine hand differences in the sensory feeling of texture, 35 subjects made sensory evaluations with the left and the right hands to a tactile stimulus (sponge rubber) and also marked on a 5-point Likert scale 50 adjectives which represented various tactual feelings. Factor analyses, applied to the data of 35 subjects, showed that the left hand related more to a keen and sharp dimension while the right hand related more to a mild and soft dimension of the tactile stimulus. Possible relations of these hand differences in sensitivity to hemisphere functioning were discussed.

Reconstruction of the Au (001) surface

The Au (100) surface has been a widely studied surface producing a variety of reconstructions using several different techniques. LEED has determined the clean surface reconstruction to consist of (5x20)1 and (26x68)2 surface domains. More recently an ultra high vacuum transmission electron microscope study of small Au(001) crystallites has found a reconstructed surface with (28x5)3 slightly rotated surface unit cells. The common elements in all these studies seem to be that the ‘5’ dimension is a hard dimension and does not seem to vary from study to study save one. It is also generally accepted that this surface can be thought of as the an hexagonal layer superimposed on a bulk terminated surface. Generally the long dimension is representative of an average number taken from the analysis of many domains. We have found the Au (001) surface to reconstruct into (5xn) domains where the ‘5’ dimension is a hard dimension while the ‘n’ is a soft dimension ranging between 15 and 21.

Hard andsoft interacting dimensions: Differential effects of dual context on classification

In this article, we extend Garner's speeded classification procedure to investigate processes underlying the interaction of the auditory dimensions pitch, loudness, and timbre. In the experiments reported here, subjects classified attributes on these three auditory dimensions. Our extended procedure, called multiclass, is based conceptually on our model of how such dimensions interact; the model explains the perception of attributes from an attended dimension through the action of contextual constraints created by variation along an unattended dimension. Two forms of context are present simultaneously in each multiclass task: intraclass context, variation along the unattended dimension that interferes with the classification of attributes, and redundant context, variation along the unattended dimension that enhances classification. We find that such dual-context situations reliably distinguish two kinds of interacting dimensions. Subjects classifying hard dimensions, here pitch and timbre, resist the ill effects of intraclass context and reap gains from redundant context. Subjects classifying soft dimensions, here loudness, show interference because the attributes are veiled perceptually in dual context. These findings, we argue, demonstrate the power of the multiclass procedure and fit well our view that dimensional interaction entails processing both at the level of the stimulus whole and at the level of stimulus attributes.

Effect of language and sex on universal phonetic symbolism.

Data from 48 four-year-old nursery school pupils supported the hypothesis that subjects could discriminate between categorical word dimensions in different languages. The subjects were presented with words in four word dimensions (loud, soft, large, small) in Hawaiian, French, Spanish, and English. Response choices of (1) small-black, (2) large-black, (3) small-white, and (4) large-white tokens indicated cultural and/or genetic sex differences. Males preferred black in association with soft and large word category dimensions and vice versa for females. Although white tokens were associated with small and soft words, results were reversed for Hawaiian. It was suggested that the Malayo-Polynesian (Austronesian) language family origin of Hawaiian, as compared to the Indo-European origin of English, French, and Spanish, could account for this difference in phonological symbolism.