Understanding the dynamics of how separate features combine to form holistic object representations is a central problem in visual cognition. Feature attribution (also known as feature transposition and feature inheritance) refers to the later of two stimuli expressing the features belonging to the earlier one. Both visual masking and apparent motion are implicated in feature attribution. We found that when apparent motion occurs without masking, it correlates positively with feature attribution. Moreover, when apparent motion occurs with masking, feature attribution remains positively correlated with apparent motion after the contribution of masking is factored out, but does not correlate with masking after the contribution of apparent motion is similarly factored out. Hence, motion processes on their own provide the effective medium for feature attribution. Our results clarify the dynamics of feature binding in the formation of integral and unitary object representations in human vision.
In three studies, we explored the existence of an evolved sensitivity to the peak that would be consistent with the evolutionary origins of many basic human preferences. Activating the evolved motive of mating activates related adaptive mechanisms, including a general sensitivity to cues of growth and decay associated with determining mate value in human courtship. These studies show that priming the mating goal also activates an evaluative bias that influences how people evaluate cues of growth. Specifically, living kinds that are immature or past their prime are devalued, whereas living kinds that are at their peak become increasingly valued. Study 1 establishes this goal-driven effect for human stimuli indirectly related to the mating goal. Studies 2 and 3 establish that the evaluative bias produced by the activated mating goal extends to living kinds, but not artifacts.
Grapheme-color synaesthesia is an unusual condition in which letters and digits generate involuntary experiences of color. In this article, we show that grapheme-color synaesthetes make nonrandom associations that are best described by an understanding of color language, and that different measures of such associations converge to illustrate a nonarbitrary relationship for all people between color names and color space. We focus on a recent study (Beeli, Esslen, & Jancke, 2007) that presented the ostensibly novel finding of a relationship between the colors that synaesthetes associate with graphemes and the frequencies of those graphemes. However, in a study published 2 years earlier (Simner et al., 2005), but not cited by Beeli et al., we had already established that grapheme frequencies are important. We showed that high-frequency graphemes tend to be paired with high-frequency color names (e.g., ared) in verbal reports of synaesthetic associations. Beeli et al. measured the hue, saturation, and luminance (HSL) of synaesthetic colors and showed inter alia) that grapheme frequency was correlated with the colors' saturation. In this Commentary, we compare data from our previous study with those of Beeli et al. and empirically demonstrate that synaesthetic colors are best accounted for by color naming; we also suggest that the similarity across the two studies may be indicative of an independent relationship between color naming and color space for all people. We reanalyzed the data from Beeli et al. in order to demonstrate three facts: that, as we predicted (Simner et al., 2005), their synaesthetes shared certain grapheme-color associations (e.g., a was associated with red more often than predicted by chance); that, also as we predicted, these grapheme-color combinations reflect a positive correlation between grapheme frequency and color-name frequency; and finally, that certain aspects of the HSL color space (upon which Beeli et al. based their conclusions) may be predicted from color naming. We converted the synaesthetic color choices from the graphemecolor synaesthetes tested by Beeli et al. (their Fig. 1) into the 11 irreducible color terms from Berlin and Kay (1969; i.e., black, white, red, yellow, green, blue, brown, orange, purple, pink, and gray). Our coding was performed by two independent assessors, with any disagreements resolved by a third coder. We then performed upper-tail binomial analyses, which showed that certain grapheme-color combinations occurred significantly more often than would be predicted by chance. For example, Figure 1 illustrates the distribution of blue and white color associations
We examined the possibility of an in-group advantage in detecting intergroup anxiety. Specifically, we videotaped White and Black participants while they engaged in same-race or interrace interactions. Then we asked White and Black observers to view these videotapes (unaware of the racial context) and provide their impressions of participants' anxiety. Two results pointed to an in-group advantage in detecting intergroup anxiety. First, only same-race observers perceived a modulation of participants' anxious behavior as a function of racial context. This held true not only for relatively subjective perceptions of global anxiety, but also for perceptions of single, discrete behaviors tied to anxiety. Second, we found that only same-race observers provided descriptions of anxiety that tracked reliably with participants' cortisol changes during the task. These results suggest that White and Black Americans may have difficulty developing a sense of shared emotional experience.
Previous research has disagreed about whether a difficult cognitive skill is best learned by beginning with easy or difficult examples. Two experiments that clarify this debate are reported. Participants in both experiments received one of three types of training on a difficult perceptual categorization task. In one condition, participants began with easy examples, then moved to examples of intermediate difficulty, and finished with the most difficult examples. In a second condition, this order was reversed, and in a third condition, participants saw examples in a random order. The results depended on the type of categories that participants were learning. When the categories could be learned via explicit reasoning (a rule-based task), the three training procedures were equally effective. However, when the categorization rule was difficult to describe verbally (an information-integration task), participants who began with the most difficult items performed much better than participants in the other two conditions.
Theories of animal defensive behavior postulate that imminent, predictable threat elicits highly focused attention toward the threat source, whereas remote, unpredictable threat elicits distributed attention to the overall environment. We used threat of shock combined with measurement of prepulse inhibition of the startle reflex to test these claims in humans. Twenty-seven participants experienced periods of threat and safety. Threat and safe periods were short or long, with the short threat periods conveying relatively predictable, imminent shocks and the long threat periods conveying unpredictable shocks. Startle reflexes were elicited with equal numbers of acoustic probes presented alone, preceded by a tactile prepulse, or preceded by an auditory prepulse. We observed enhanced tactile relative to auditory prepulse inhibition during short threat periods only. This finding supports the notion that imminent threat, but not remote threat, elicits attention focused toward the relevant modality, potentially reflecting preparatory activity to minimize the impact of the noxious stimulus.
When the perceptual system uses color to facilitate object recognition, it must solve the color-constancy problem: The light an object reflects to an observer's eyes confounds properties of the source of the illumination with the surface reflectance of the object. Information from the visual scene (bottom-up information) is insufficient to solve this problem. We show that observers use world knowledge about objects and their prototypical colors as a source of top-down information to improve color constancy. Specifically, observers use world knowledge to recalibrate their color categories. Our results also suggest that similar effects previously observed in language perception are the consequence of a general perceptual process.
Bimodal bilinguals, fluent in a signed and a spoken language, provide unique insight into the nature of syntactic integration and language control. We investigated whether bimodal bilinguals who are conversing with English monolinguals produce American Sign Language (ASL) grammatical facial expressions to accompany parallel syntactic structures in spoken English. In ASL, raised eyebrows mark conditionals, and furrowed eyebrows mark wh-questions; the grammatical brow movement is synchronized with the manual onset of the clause. Bimodal bilinguals produced more ASL-appropriate facial expressions than did nonsigners and synchronized their expressions with the onset of the corresponding English clauses. This result provides evidence for a dual-language architecture in which grammatical information can be integrated up to the level of phonological implementation. Overall, participants produced more raised brows than furrowed brows, which can convey negative affect. Bimodal bilinguals suppressed but did not completely inhibit ASL facial grammar when it conflicted with conventional facial gestures. We conclude that morphosyntactic elements from two languages can be articulated simultaneously and that complete inhibition of the nonselected language is difficult.
To clarify the role of labels in early induction, we compared 16-month-old infants' (n=114) generalization of target properties to test objects when objects were introduced by the experimenter in one of the following ways: (a) with a general attentional phrase, (b) highlighted with a flashlight and a general attentional phrase, (c) via a recorded voice that labeled the objects using a naming phrase, (d) with a label consisting of a count noun embedded within a naming phrase, (e) with a label consisting of a single word that was not marked as belonging to a particular grammatical form class, and (f) with a label consisting of an adjective. Infants relied on object labels to guide their inductive inferences only when the labels were presented referentially, embedded within an intentional naming phrase, and marked as count nouns. These results suggest that infants do not view labels as attributes of objects; rather, infants understand that count-noun labels are intentional markers denoting category membership.
This study examined the associations between older adults' daily physical symptoms (e.g., chest pain or difficulty breathing) and 2-year changes in chronic health problems (e.g., cardiovascular disease or cancer) and in functional problems (e.g., difficulty dressing or moving around at home). We reasoned that these associations depend on a person's active control processes aimed at counteracting physical health problems (i.e., health-engagement control strategies, or HECS). In particular, we hypothesized that high levels of HECS buffer the adverse effect of daily physical symptoms on increases in chronic and functional health problems. We found that daily physical symptoms were associated with declines in chronic and functional health among older adults who were not engaged in addressing their health problems, but not among their counterparts who reported high levels of HECS. These findings suggest that active control strategies play an important role in the maintenance of older adults' physical health.