Perception

The covers for Perception and for i-Perception display enigmatic portraits. That for Perception carries a face, the origins of which remain mysterious whereas i-Perception contains a portrait of Gustav Theodor Fechner which hovers around the threshold for detection.

Subsecond temporal processing is crucial for activities requiring precise timing. Here, we investigated perceptual learning of crossmodal (auditory–visual or visual–auditory) temporal interval discrimination (TID) and its impacts on unimodal (visual or auditory) TID performance. The research purpose was to test whether learning is based on a more abstract and conceptual representation of subsecond time, which would predict crossmodal to unimodal learning transfer. The experiments revealed that learning to discriminate a 200-ms crossmodal temporal interval, defined by a pair of visual and auditory stimuli, significantly reduced crossmodal TID thresholds. Moreover, the crossmodal TID training also minimized unimodal TID thresholds with a pair of visual or auditory stimuli at the same interval, even if crossmodal TID thresholds are multiple times higher than unimodal TID thresholds. Subsequent training on unimodal TID failed to reduce unimodal TID thresholds further. These results indicate that learning of high-threshold crossmodal TID tasks can benefit low-threshold unimodal temporal processing, which may be achieved through training-induced improvement of a conceptual representation of subsecond time in the brain.

Much of our visual experience of faces, including our own, is mediated by technology, for example when a digital photo depicts a mirror reversal of reality. How does this difference in visual experience affect judgments about appearance? Here, we asked participants to view their likeness in photographs that were reversed (as when viewed in a mirror) or not reversed (as when viewed directly). Observers also perceptually adapted (or not) to the reversed or non-reversed images in a 2 × 2 design. Observers then rated how much each photograph resembled them and how much they liked their appearance in the photograph, later repeating the procedure for images of close friends. We found that non-reversed images are perceived as more “unlike” one's self and less pleasant than reversed images; the pattern disappears when evaluating close friends, where the non-reversed image is the more familiar, with adaptation having asymmetric effects. Experiment 1A was fully replicated seven years later. These results are likely driven by a strong, albeit malleable, visual representation of self, born of technology mediated experience and activated when an unfamiliar perspective exposes facial asymmetries. We conclude by considering the downstream effects of these preferences on consumer and social behavior.

In recent years, increased attention has been devoted to visual word recognition under a perceptual expertise framework. Because the information required to identify words is distributed across the word, a holistic attentional strategy is optimal and develops with experience. It is, however, an open question the extent to which other information embedded in a word may contribute to word holistic processing, namely sublexical word properties. In the present research, we therefore explore the role of sublexical properties—specifically bigram transition probabilities—in this processing strategy. We used a common task in the holistic processing literature (i.e., composite task) and four-letter disyllabic words, where two of the bigrams reinforce the cohesiveness of each syllable and one of the bigrams reinforces the cohesiveness between the syllables. We found preliminary evidence of a role of these sublexical properties in word holistic processing.

First impressions based on facial appearance affect our behaviour towards others. Since the same face will appear different across images, over time, and so on, our impressions may not be equally weighted across exposures but are instead disproportionately influenced by earlier or later instances. Here, we followed up on previous work which identified an anchoring effect, whereby higher attractiveness ratings were given to a person after viewing naturally varying images of their face presented in descending (high-to-low), rather than ascending (low-to-high), order of attractiveness of these images. In Experiment 1 (n = 301), we compared these ‘descending’ and ‘ascending’ conditions for unfamiliar identities by presenting six-image sequences. Although we found higher attractiveness ratings for the ‘descending’ condition, this small effect equated to only 0.22 points on a 1–7 response scale. In Experiment 2 (n = 307), we presented these six-image sequences in a random order and found no difference in attractiveness ratings given to these randomly ordered sequences when compared with those resulting from both our ‘descending’ and ‘ascending’ conditions. Further, we failed to detect an influence of the earlier images in these random sequences on attractiveness ratings. Taken together, we found no compelling evidence that anchoring could have an effect on real-world impression formation.

Previous studies have shown that the spatial frequency (SF) of visual stimuli alters the perceived timing of subjective simultaneity. However, these studies have been limited to the effects of a single SF component. In this study, I measured and compared the points of subjective simultaneity (PSS) for audiovisual stimuli among low, high, and composited SF components. This experiment comprised a dual-presentation timing task and a ternary response format to eliminate response bias. The results indicated that the PSS value of the composition-SF stimuli was more toward visual-lead timing than the low-SF stimuli and did not differ significantly from that of the high-SF stimuli. The correlation coefficients showed that the PSS in composition-SF stimuli marginally approximated that of high-SF stimuli higher than that of low-SF stimuli. Future studies are needed to confirm these findings using visual stimuli with a wider range of SF components and with a modulated contrast.

We report a novel visual illusion that is present in the natural environment. In attempting to cut a banana in half, many people make the side adjacent to the stem shorter, because they see it as longer than it is. This study tested the presence of the banana bisection illusion with outline drawings and a 3D realistic-looking plastic banana. According to Gibson (1966) illusions are the consequence of artificial and impoverished stimuli, such as line drawings. However, the banana bisection illusion was found with naturalistic-looking 3D stimuli. A second experiment with solid 3D plastic bananas found the illusion with and without the stem, but the illusion was larger with the stem present.

The Ames room illusion is one of the best-known geometrical illusions but its geometrical properties are often misunderstood. This study discusses the differences in the geometrical properties between the original Ames room and what have been often referred to as “Ames rooms” in recent studies.