Object-based attention: A General Recognition Theory approach

Abstract

A multidimensional signal detection model of object-based attention

Full text

Proceedings of the
29th Annual Meeting of the International Society for Psychophysics
Fechner Day 2013
Freiburg i. Br., Germany
21 – 25 October 2013

Reference
Jiˇr´ı Wackermann, Marc Wittmann, Wolfgang Skrandies (Eds.) Fec h ner Day 20 1 3 –
Proceedings of the 29th Annual Meeting of the International Society for Psychophysics.
International Society for Psychophysics, Freiburg, Germany, 2013.
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ii

International Society for Psychophysics
Founded in Cassis, France, 22 October 1985.
Executive Committee 2012–2013
President Martha Teghtsoonian (Smith College, Northampton, USA)
Vice President Rosana M. Trist˜ao (University of Brasilia, Brazil)
Tre a su re r Wo l f gang E l l er meie r (Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany)
Secretary Elisabet Borg (University of Stockholm, Sweden)
Organizer Jiˇr´ı Wackermann (Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology, Freiburg, Germany)
Advisors to the Executive Committee
Mark A. Elliott (National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland)
Lawrence M. Ward (University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada)
Program Committee
Fechner Day 2013
Jiˇr´ı Wackermann (Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology, Freiburg, Germany)
Marc Wittmann (Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology, Freiburg, Germany)
Wolf g a ng Skr a n dies (Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen, Germany)
iii

Past Annual Meetings
Ye a r Ve n u e O r g a n i z er ( s )
1985 Marseille, France G. Can`evet and B. Scharf
1986 Cassis, France A. M. Bonnet, G. Can `evet, C. A. Possama¨ı, B. Scharf,
B. Berglund, and R. Teghtsoonian
1987 Durham (NH), USA M. Teghtsoonian and R. Teghtsoonian
1988 Stirling, UK H. Ross, R. MacDonald, C.A. Possama¨ı, R. Teghtsoonian,
M. Treisman, and R. Warren
1989 Cassis, France A. M. Bonnet, G. Can `evet, C. A. Possama¨ı, and B. Scharf
1990 W¨urzburg, Germany F. M¨uller
1991 Durham (NC), USA G. R. Lockhead
1992 Stockholm, Sweden G. Borg, ˚
A. Hellstr¨om, and G. Neely
1993 Mallorca, Spain A. Garriga-Trillo, P.R. Mi˜n ´on, C. Garc´ıa-Gallego,
P. L u b i n, J . M . M e ri n o, M . J . R u bi o - G ´o me z , an d
A. Villarino
1994 Vancouver, Canada L. M. Ward
1995 Cassis, France C. A. Possama¨ı, H. Ross, B. Scharf, R. Teghtsoonian, and
L. M. Ward
1996 Padua, Italy S. C. Masin
1997 Pozna´n, Poland A. Gotebiewsky, E. Hojan, T. Hornowsky,P.Kokowsky,
A. Majchrzak, P. Miecznik, M. Labowski, P. Pekala,
A. Preis, E. Skrzodka, E. Wichlinska, and A. Wicher
1998 Qu´ebec, Canada S. Grondin, Y. Lacouture, and R. Rousseau
1999 Tempe (AZ), USA P. R. Killeen and W. R. Uttal
2000 Strasbourg, France C. Bonnet
2001 Leipzig, Germany E. Sommerfeld, T. Lachmann, and R. Kompass
2002 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil J. A. da Silva, E.H. Matsushima, and N.P. Ribero-Philo
2003 Larnaca, Cyprus B. Berglund and E. Borg
2004 Coimbra, Portugal A. M. Oliveira, M. Teixeira, G. Borgess, and M. J. Ferro
2005 Traverse City (MI), USA J. S. Monahan, S. M. Sheffert, andJ.T.Townsend
2006 St. Albans, UK D. E. Kornbrot, R. M. Msefti, and A. W. MacRae
2007 Tokyo, Japan S. Mori, T. Miyaoka, and W. Wong
2008 Toronto, Canada B. A. Schneider, B.M. Ben-David, S. Parker, and
W. Wo n g
2009 Galway, Ireland M. A. Elliott, S. Antonijevi´c, P.Berthand, P. Mulcahy,
C. Martyn, B. Bargery, and H. Schmidt
2010 Padua, Italy A. Bastianelli and G. Vidotto
2011 Ra’anana, Israel D. Algom, D. Zakay, E. Chajut, S. Shaki,Y.Mama,and
V. S h a k u f
2012 Ottawa, Canada S. R. Carroll, E. Gallitto, C. Leth-Steensen, W.M. Petrusic,
J. R. Schoenherr, and D. A. Verger
iv

Contents
Preface ...............................................................................1
Invited lectures .......................................................................3
G. Borg: Psychophysics and intersubjectivity .............................................4
G. Hatfield: Why does perceptual realism matter? ......................................... 5
Theme session 1 .......................................................................7
M. Wittmann: Effects of movement, emotion, and embodiment on the perception of time .......8
D. Zakay, G. Mioni: Movement and speed associated with a stimulus affect the
estimation of its duration ............................................................... 9
Zh. Shi: From eye to h a n d: I mpli c it en a ctio n exp a nds su bjec tive t actile duration ............ 10
J. L. O. Bueno, F. C. Nather: Aspects of emotional contents and movement perception
on subjective time experience .......................................................... 11
A. Giersch, C. Duval, R. L. Capa: Tem p o ral o r d er j u d gm e n ts a re i mpa i re d i n p a t ien t s
with schizophrenia: A link with emotional withdrawal? ...................................12
Theme session 2 ......................................................................13
W. Sk r and i es : Pe rcep t i o n , co g ni t i on , a nd bra in ac ti v i t y: I n t ro d u c t o ry remarks ...............14
J. Kornmeier, M. Bach: EEG correlates of multistable perception .......................... 15
W. Sk r and i es : Electrophysiological studies on perception and learning .....................16
Th. Koenig et al.:Agency and ownership are independent components of auditory-
verbal self-monitoring .................................................................17
H. Witte: Methodological aspects of connectivity analyses of the neuromatrix o f p ain ........18
Theme session 3 ......................................................................19
H. Atmanspacher: Complementarity in cognition .........................................20
H. Atmanspacher: Order effects in sequential measurements of non-commuting
psychological observables .............................................................21
J. Busemeyer: Quantum models of cognition and decision .................................22
P. be im G ra be n : Complementarity in cognition entailed by bounded rationality ..............23
Th. Filk: The relevance of Bell-type inequalities for mental systems ........................24
Theme session 4 ......................................................................25
D. Oberfeld: Estimating the sensitivity in discrimination tasks: Recentchallenges
and advances .........................................................................26
R. Ulrich, D. Vorberg: Estimation of discrimination performance in 2AFC tasks:
Pitfalls and improved estimators........................................................27
˚
A. Hellstr¨om, Th. H. Rammsayer: Web e r Fr a c tio n s and Ti me -O rd e r Erro rs fo r l ong
and short durations: Implications for modeling .......................................... 28
R. Balk, F. Kl¨ockner, D. Oberfeld: Anewlookon“ordereffects”andsensitivityin
two-interval discrimination tasks: Decisions weights and internal noise ....................29
O. Dyjas, K.M. Bausenhart: Mechanisms of stimulus discrimination: Evidence from
the Type B effect ......................................................................30
M. A. Garc´ıa-P´erez, E. Peli: An “I can’t tell” response option prevents artifactual
overestimation of the difference limen in bisection tasks ...................................31
R. Alcal´a-Quintana, M. A. Garc´ıa-P´erez: Effects of criterion changes on estimates
of the difference limen .................................................................32
v

Theme session 5 ......................................................................33
D. Kleinb¨ohl: Introduction: System identification in the psychophysical assessment
of nociception ........................................................................34
D. Kleinb¨ohl: On the road to system identification: Psychophysical assessment of
nociceptive mechanisms ...............................................................35
J. R. Buitenweg, H. G. E. Meijer: PaIN S I G H T: E v a l u at i on o f noc i c e p t i ve f u n ct i o n
from a system theory perspective .......................................................36
R.J. Doll, H. G. E. Meijer, J. R. Buitenweg: Multiple threshold tracking methods for
improved observation of nociceptive function ............................................37
H. Yang, H. G. E. Meijer, J. R. Buitenweg: System identification of the nociceptive function ...38
J. L. Hay, G. J. Groeneveld: The evaluation of nociceptive function during early
clinical drug development .... ..................... ..................... ............... 39
Free talks 1 ..........................................................................41
Y. N a k a j i m a et al.:Perc e p t ua l p ro c e s s i n g o f p ai r s o f a c o us t i ca l l y ma r k e d t i m e intervals:
Correspondence between psychophysical and electrophysiological data .................... 42
T. Ki s h i d a,Y. Nakajima, K. Ueda: Effects of elimination of power-fluctuation factors
from critical-band noise-vocoded speech ................................................ 43
J. R. Schoenherr, J. Logan: Attention and working memory as determinants of
identification thresholds for non-native speech sounds ....................................44
L. Fostick, H. Babkoff: Individual differences in auditory spectral temporal order
judgments ............................................................................45
Free talks 2 ..........................................................................47
J. Townsend, K. Salibayeva: Let’s face it: Attempted incipient unification of differential
geometric and dynamic concepts of facial expressions ....................................48
W. Eh m , J . Wac k e rm a nn: Hyperbolic geometry of Ehrenstein–Orbison type illusions .........49
H. Colonius, E. N. Dzhafarov: Ultrametric Fechnerian scaling .............................50
E. N. Dzhafarov, H. Colonius: G. Th. Fechner: Correcting historical misrepresentations ......51
Free talks 3 ..........................................................................53
S. Link: The circle of similarity .........................................................54
V. S h a k u f , D . A l g o m : Who neglects base rate, perceivers or investigators: The effect
of base rate on Stroop and Garner effects................................................55
T. L. Hubbard: Is the flash-lag effect a special case of representational momentum? ..........56
M. A. Elliott et al.:Golden Section effects in visual cognition: A signature for complex-
system organization? ..................................................................57
Free talks 4 ..........................................................................59
B. Estner, Th. Lachmann: Spatial representations of numerical and non-numerical
quantities in the auditory domain: Pitch and number ..................................... 60
Th. Schmidt: Measuring unconscious cognition without unconscious stimuli: Beyond
the zero-awareness criterion ...........................................................61
P. Ha n n a n, E . G a la n te r : Apsychophysicalapproachtoearlyhumandevelopment............ 62
V. S a r r i s : The relational psychophysics paradigm: “Task switching” and data variability
in co mparative-developmental studies ...................................................63
Free talks 5 ..........................................................................65
F. M ¨u ll er et al.:Quantifying mental strain required to carry out everyday activities:
German, Japanese and Canadia n students ...............................................66
T. Ja u h i a inen, D. Schaff r a t h : Yrj¨
oReenp
¨
a¨
aandpsychophysics.............................67
vi

R. Luccio: The ‘alley problem’: A neglected debate on size–distance invariance in
the XVII and XVIII centuries ...........................................................68
H. E. Ross, G. L. J. Sch ¨onbeck: The excursions of Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) into
the moon illusion ..................................................................... 69
Poster session 1 ......................................................................71
R. B˚a ˚ath, G. R. Patching: Separating predictive responses from reactive responses in
isochronous finger tapping .............................................................72
J. Birkenbusch, W. Ellermeier, F. Kattner: Octuplicate this interval! ........................ 73
N. Borter, S. Troche, Th. H. Rammsayer: Afixed-linksmodelingapproachtoelucidate
measurement impurity in reaction time data ............................................. 74
J. L. O. Bueno, A. Parreira: Effects of syntactic and semantic information in music
composition on subjective perception of time.............................................75
A. Calderon et al.:Birds of a feather who flock together still don’t assimilate................76
E.A. Firmino, J. L. O. Bueno: Musical tonal modulation between minor keys and
subjective time ........................................................................77
D. Fitousi: Object-based attention: A General Recognition Theory approach ................78
L. Fostick: Short-term learning effect in different psychoacoustic measures .................79
P. Ha n n a n: Acasestudyoftimeperceptioninthehighlevelgymnast.......................80
E. Hasuo et al.:The filled duration illusion with the method of adjustment when filled
vs. empty comparison intervals are used.................................................81
G. Mioni, F. Stablum, S. Grondin: Spatial compatibility in duration discrimination with
manual and vocal responses ...........................................................82
N. Nunberg, D. Algom: Stand by your Stroop: The Stroop effect decreases in a standing
position ..............................................................................83
S. Parker et al.:Context effects in estimates on objective scales: Scale distortion? ........... 84
G. R. Patching, R. B˚a ˚ath: Assessing response times and peak force of responses to visual
size and brightness ....................................................................85
P. Po n c e le t , A . Gi e rs c h: Implicit coding of the temporal structure of events ..................86
Th. H. Rammsayer, M. Verner: On the effect of nontemporal stimulus magnitude on
perceived duration as assessed by the method of temporal reprodu ction ....................87
B. Schneider, M. A. Reich, M. Mozuraitis: Detecting and measuring auditory-cognitive
interactions in speech comprehension ...................................................88
V. S h a k u f , F . K u t z n e r, K . F i e d l e r : Afreshlookatanoldconcept:Selectiveattentionto
aspects of a stimulus ..................................................................89
D. B. Terhune, S. Russo, R. C. Kadosh: Vi s u a l c o r tex GABA p redicts p e rceiv e d du ration ......90
K. Ueda, Y. Nakajima, T. Fujioka: Fa c t o r a n a l yses of power fluct u a t i o n s in spoken
sentences of eight languages: Analyses of individual data .................................91
A. Vallesi et al.:Cultural modulations of space-time compatibility effects ...................92
K. M. Varadarajan: Anti-mirror neuron system model for affordance based k-TR
Common Coding Theory ...............................................................93
M. Verner, Th. H. Rammsayer: Does perceived duration depend on physical and
numerical stimulus magnitudes?........................................................94
Poster session 2 ......................................................................95
R. Actis-Grosso, P. Ricciardelli: Static faces, dynamic bodies: The recognition of
emotions in typically-developed individuals and high-functioning autistic adults.............96
E. Borg, G. Borg: How well does the Wong–Baker FACES scale identify the variation
of pain? ..............................................................................97
vii

E. Borg: Perc e p t i on o f blackness a s a t ra i n i n g ma t er i a l fo r the Bo rg CR100 Scale R
⃝......... 98
J. C. Gonc¸alves et al.:AFunctionalMeasurementapproachtotheChildAnxietyand
Pain Fa ce S ca l e .......................................................................99
T. Gu r, L . N iv, D. Algom: Losing ground: The perception of height is affected by
the makeup of the ground beneath .....................................................100
T. L. Hubbard, S . E . R u p p e l : Effects of contrast and background on visual represen-
tational momentum ..................................................................101
E. A. Marsja et al.:Maintenance of the distractive effect of deviating vibrotactile
stimuli in a cross-modal oddball paradigm .............................................102
I. C. Martins, A. M. Oliveira, B. Steenbergen: Motion extrapolation in people with
motor constraints: Evidence for embodiment ...........................................103
I. C. Martins, A. M. Oliveira, B. Steenbergen: Representational momentum in people
with cerebral palsy: Effects of response format and delay imposed on the response .........104
T. Mi y a o k a : Measurements of distinguishing abilities of clothed buttocks ..................105
J. S. Monahan: Intermediate effects of spatial training women’s Mental Rotation Test
scores ..............................................................................106
A. M. Oliveira et al.:Metric effects of taking tears out of the Wong–Baker Faces Pain
scale ...............................................................................107
J. Schlittenlacher, A. Kern, W. Ellermeier: Extracting salient perceptual features of
machinery noise using triadic comparisons .............................................108
J. R. Schoenherr: The centrality of psychophysics to psychology: A Hephaestian
paradigm ...........................................................................109
V. M . S h e n d y a p i n : Computational modeling of correct responses proportion among
confident ones in ‘greater–lesser’ task .................................................110
N.G. Shpagonova, V.A. Sadov, D.L. Petrovich: Storage: The standard features in memory ...111
A. C. Silva, A. M. Oliveira: Fac e s c o n t extuali z e d b y faces: T h e s i m ilarity ef f e c t in
face–context integration ..............................................................112
I. G. Skotnikova: Vi s u al d iscrim i n a t i o n a symmetry : D ecision makin g c r i t erion, time
order error ..........................................................................113
R. M. Trist˜ao et al.:Habituation vs. sensitization to pain in newborns ..................... 114
M. Vicovaro et al.:Randomly interleaved staircases and ‘acceptance tresholds’
in computer graphics experiments .....................................................115
M. Wagner, T. Elbaum: Haptic sensation elicited by visual stimulation: The “feeling
by seeing” procedure.................................................................116
Special symposium “Ernst Mach’s legacy: Psychophysics and beyond” ................117
K. Thoma: Ernst Mach – examples of his scientific work in the area of applied
physics and measurement techniques...................................................118
M. Heidelberger: Mach on Helmholtz on acoustics ......................................119
E. C. Banks: Mach on ‘monocular stereoscopy’ .........................................120
J. Wackermann: Mach’s concept of phenomenological science, and its relevance for
psychophysics .......................................................................121
B. Henning: Mach and Schlick on simplicity in science .................................. 122
K. H. Siemsen: Mach at younger ages, his research on psychophysics, his subsequent
world view and his contribution to education ...........................................123
H. Siemsen: Psychophysics as world view: Ernst Mach’s sensualism, gestalt and
erkenntnis-theory ....................................................................124
Autho rs index ......................................................................125
viii

Preface
It is pleasure and honor to host this year’s Annual Meeting of the International Society for
Psychophysics, Fe chner Day 2013,inFreiburg. Wefeelthatitisawell-deservedhonorfor
Freiburg. Indeed, in spite of its somewhat eccentric geographic location, Freiburg occupies an
important place in the map of Germany’s academic and intellectual life. Freiburg University has
alongrecordoffamousnamesandsignificantcontributionstoscholarshipandscienceofnot
only German, but truly international dimensions.
Let us mention, first of all, Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology,adirectionofthoughtthat
profoundly influenced European philosophy, but also adjacent fields of study such as psychology,
anthropology, aesthetics, and finds a comeback in merging with cognitive science and conscious-
ness studies. Freiburg has its place in the history of mathematics, with Ernst Zermelo and his
significant contributions to the foundations of the set theory, and in natural sciences—e. g. in
physics with Gustav Mie, known for his works in optics and fundamental theory of matter and
gravitation; and in chemistry with Georg von H´ev´esy, the founding father of nuclear medicine.
Again on the side of humanities, we should also name the late Friedrich von Hayek, who is
known mostly for his economical and philosophical writings,butwhoseoriginalcontributionto
theoretical psychology, The Sensory Order,shouldnotremainunmentioned.
Closer to and more specifically for the fields of psychophysicsandsensoryphysiology,at
least two names should be mentioned, those of Hugo M¨unsterberg and Johannes von Kries.
Hugo M¨
unsterberg (1863–1916), after his studies with Wundt in Leipzig, and then in Heidel-
berg, spent four years in Freiburg before he moved (by invitation of William James) to Harvard
University, USA, where he stayed until his untimely death. His Freiburg years were filled with
creative research in experimental psychology and psychophysiology, as he built up his own labo-
ratory which, at that time, was only the fourth experimental psychology laboratory in Germany1.
If E. G. Boring named M¨unsterberg the “founder of applied psychology”2,itmayseemalittlebit
high-pitched, but not unjustly exaggerated.
Johannes von Kries (1853–1928), who studied physiology and medicine at severaluniver-
sities in Germany and Switzerland, and spent a year with Helmholtz in Berlin, had a chair for
physiology in Freiburg since 1880 for the rest of his life. He worked not only in his own fields
of specialisation, muscle physiology and physiology of color vision; being a person of broad
intellectual and philosophical interests, he was occupied with foundational problems of natural
sciences, including theory of measurement and probability theory. On the same basis, von Kries
had to become one of the most severe critics of Fechner’s concept of “measurement of sensa-
tions.”3
Surely the list of illustrious names could be continued—omissions do not imply less impor-
tance!—but let us turn from historical dimensions to actual present.
***
Thematic diversity is a constant feature of Fechner Day conferences, and this is true for this
year’s Fechner Day again. We envisage a rich program, consisting of about fifty oral and more
than forty poster presentations—experimental reports, theoretical developments, and philosophi-
cal or historical investigations—, authored and co-authored by no less than 160 colleagues from
eighteen countries world-wide. The topics of five theme sessions range from novel treatments of
traditional psychophysical problems up to recently openingfieldsofresearch.Wearepleasedto
see contributions from the fields of applied and clinical psychophysics, and strengthening links to
related disciplines of psychophysiology, neurophysiology, and c ognitive n euroscie nce.
1

This rich scientific program is highlighted by two invited lectures: by Professor Gunnar Borg
(University of Stockholm), discussing methodological problems of measurement of subjective ex-
perience, and by Professor Gary Hatfield (University of Pennsylvania), presenting philosophical
perspective on sensory experience and problems of perception in general.
Aspecialsymposiumisdedicatedtotheintellectuallegacyof Ernst Mach, the Austrian physi-
cist, to commemorate the 175th anniversary of his birth (1838). Mach’s contributions to psycho-
physics are well-known, but there is more. The aim of the symposium is not only to remember
Mach’s experimental research in optics and acoustics, and his discoveries in the field of sensory
physiology, but also to acknowledge his impact on philosophyofscienceandtoevaluatehis
influence on other fields, such as Gestalt psychology, pedagogy, and didactics of science.
***
We wis h t o t ha nk all t h o se w ho h elpe d u s i n co ncep t u al iz in g an dorganizingthisconference:
members of the Executive Committee of the ISP (p. iii) for their ideas and suggestions, and also
organizers of earlier Fechner Days for sharing their experience with us. Special thanks to our
assistants for their help: Oksana Gutina, Hanna Lehnen, AnnaSarikaya,andJakobPacer. Also,
afinancialdonationandadministrative-technicalsupportfrom the Institute for Frontier Areas of
Psychology and Mental Health in Freiburg are to be thankfullyacknowledged.
We wis h a l l p a r ti ci pa nts an int e r es ti ng m ee ti ng, tho u g ht-p rovoking discussions, inspiring ex-
change of ideas, and enjoyable social events. Welcome to Freiburg!
Program committee Fech n e r D a y 20 1 3 :
Jiˇr´ı Wackermann, Marc Wittmann, and Wolfgang Skrandies
References and notes
1J.Fahrenberg,in:E.Wirbelauer(ed.)Die Freiburger Philosophische Fakult¨at 1920–1960. Freiburger
Beitr¨age zur Wissenschafts- und Universit¨atsgeschichte. (Alber, Freiburg, 2006), pp. 468–476.
2E.G.Boring,Ahistoryofexperimentalpsychology(Appleton, New York, 1950), p. 428.
3RegardingvonKries’criticismofFechner’spsychophysics, see M. Heidelberger, Nature from within.
G. Th. Fechner and his psychophysical worldview (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 2004),
pp. 224–229.
2

Invited lectures
3

Psychophysics and intersubjectivity
Gunnar Borg∗
Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Sweden
Psychophysics has always focused on methods. Identificationhasdealtwith“objectidentifi-
cation” and scaling with determinations of S–R-functions. However, identification must also deal
with “magnitude identification” as a part of scaling.
Intersubjectivity deals with problems about interindividual agreements of experiences. What
are the similarities between people that we can use to formulate laws about how we perceive
the world? The philosopher Quine used to emphasize the importance of sensory evidence. His
demands for intersubjectivity were: similarities of sensory organs and observation sentences. In
his last book1he omits, unfortunately, the demand on similarities of sensory organs.
In psychophysics we can agree upon simple relations and the meaning of numbers, making
it possible to determine S–R-functions. But there are great individual differences in magnitude
estimations.
We ca n a ls o a gree u p on t h e mea n i ng o f many v e r ba l ex pr essio n s ,suchas‘Weak’and’Strong’.
(According to Wittgenstein a private language cannot exist). Words function well for level iden-
tifications but not for S–R-functions, since words only are rank ordered. A psychophysical scale
that shall function in most situations, and for estimation and production, has to combine the ad-
vantages of numbers with the advantages of words (using our inner “mental yardstick”). “Level
Anchored Ratio Scales” are very useful! Our general scales must also be applicable to inner stim-
uli and “interoceptors”. – We then find that we must include twoextraparametersinthepower
function.2
For scale construction it is important to know the size of the dynamic range and the position
of anchors. Many scales have only anchors in the beginning andtheend,e.g.‘Nothingatall’
followed by ‘Extremely Weak’ and then at max., ‘Highest imaginable’. It is very important that
the last anchor has a great intersubjective validity, since it will function as a main reference level,
a“fixedpoint”andunitofmeasurement. ‘Highestimaginable’isnotagoodanchorsinceitis
not a schematized conception. Much better is ‘Maximal’ referring to a sensation that most people
have experienced, e. g. a maximal heaviness. There are very few such schematized conceptions
since most perceptions are influenced by pain at extremely high intensities. There have also to be
anchors, in congruence with numbers, between the end points,e.g.forrecommendationsofjust
right intensities, and then possibilities to give ratings above ‘Max’ if an experience is higher than
expected.
References
1W.V.Quine,Pursuit of Truth (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1990).
2G.Borg,Borg’s Perceived Exertion and Pain Scales (Champaign, IL:HK, 1998).
∗E-mail:
borgperception@telia.com
4

Why does perceptual realism matter?
Gary Hatfield∗
Department of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Philosophy has long debated perceptual realism. 1As a philosophical position, perceptual re-
alism asserts that perception has as its object (whether immediate or mediate) something mind
independent. Within this boundary, various perceptual realisms have arisen. Some standard types
include: (1) naive direct realism,accordingtowhichexternalobjectsaredirectlyavailableto
consciousness without phenomenal, representational, or subjective mediation2;(2)representa-
tive realism,whichholdsthatweseeorapprehendrepresentationsthathave the properties they
(allegedly) seem to have, such as elliptical brown patches inrelationtopenniesandtrapezoidally
shaped color patches for tables, and that we infer (or otherwise cognitively affirm) actually exist-
ing material objects from these phenomenally immediate representations 3;(3)content physical-
ism,whichproposesthatweseeexternalobjectsinvirtueofhaving visual representations with
information content that represents their physical properties accurately, avoiding any subjective
aspect or subjectively qualified mediating content4;and(4)critical direct realism,accordingto
which actually existing material objects are presented to usthroughtheirappearances,allowingus
to perceive those objects directly through the mediating appearances or representations of them.5
Considered philosophically, these positions have reasonably well-known benefits and prob-
lems, concerning their metaphysical, epistemological, andphenomenalplausibility. Theyalso
have implications for the psychology of perception, concerning the immediate object of percep-
tion and the psychological processes that yield perception.Forexample,naiverealismasserts
that the conscious mind directly confronts a distal materialobject,withoutsubjectiveaspect. It
has difficulty accounting for the effects of viewpoint and thephenomenalcharacterofperceived
color (even if phenomenally located in surfaces). Representative realism posits actually existing
color patches as the immediate object of perception. These may be non-mental items, as in the
original sense-data positions3,ormentalitems.
6This position entails that such items are direct
objects of acquaintance, available to consciousness, and are the basis for a cognitive process,
whether inferential or merely habitual, that yields the mediate perception of an external object.
Content physicalism asserts that perceivers are aware of external objects by being aware of their
physical properties (as described by the science of physics or, for spatial properties, as charac-
terized in a macro-level physical description of the spatiallayout). Itproposesaspecificview
of the metaphysics of color, that the color property reduces to surface spectral reflectance. Con-
tent physicalism also has difficulty explaining any subjective aspects of spatial perception beyond
point of view. Critical direct realism proposes that phenomenal contents and cognitive affirma-
tions yield direct perceptions of external objects. Psychological questions may arise about the
status of this phenomenal content and cognitive affirmation,andalsoaboutthesignificanceof
considering perception to be “direct” in this manner.
Such implications form a basis for finding one or another position preferable, theoretically
or empirically. Conversely, initial preference for one or another position may influence theoret-
ical conceptions and influence the direction of empirical research. As an example of the latter,
aphysical-contentviewofcolorasasurfacepropertyyieldsaconceptionaccordingtowhich
metameric matching entails a loss of information and renderssomecolorsimperceptibleorelse
subject to constant illusion. (If each surface spectral reflectance is a distinct chromatic color, then,
∗Address for correspondence: Philosophy, Cohen 433, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6304, USA.
E-mail:
hatfield@sas.upenn.edu
5

if two appear the same, one is illusory and the “real” color of that surface spectral reflectance goes
unperceived.) This attitude toward what color is leads to specific types of modeling, and to spe-
cific conceptions of what counts as successful color perception. As an example of the former,
the difficulty that naive-realist, representative-realist, and content-physicalist positions have with
explaining certain global facts about space perception may count against those positions and in
favor of critical direct realism. Such facts include the convergence of railway tracks or road-
ways with distance. The amount of such convergence is not specified by geometrical optics or
by physical or object facts alone (against naive realism and content physicalism). The amount of
convergence must be accounted for subjectively, but does notcoincidewiththetraditionalsense
data of representative realism, which usually took the initial object of perception to be equivalent
to a perspective projection.
Perceptual realism matters for its implications concerninghowtheobjectofperceptionis
conceived and how it enters into a perceptual relation between perceiver and world.
References and notes
1J.W.Yolton,Perc e ptual a c q uaint a n c e f rom Desca r t e s t o R e i d (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapo-
lis, 1984); G. Hatfield in: E. Reck (ed.), Historical turn in analytic philosophy (Macmillan, London,
2013), pp. 171–200; G. Hatfield in: M. Beaney (ed.), Oxford handbook of the history of analytical philos-
ophy (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013), pp. 948–974.
2B.Brewer,Pe rc e p tion and it s o bject s (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011).
3B.Russell,Problems of philosophy (Williams and Norgate, London, 1912).
4M.Tye,No ˆus 36,137–151(2002).Thispositiongoesunderothernames,including intentionalism, rep-
resentationalism (not to be confused with representative theories), and pure information theory.
5R.W.Sellarsin:D.Drake(ed.),Essays in critical realism (Macmillan, London, 1920), pp. 187–219;
R. W. Sellars, Phil. Phen. Res. 22,1–15(1961).
6F.Jackson,Pe rcep t i o n : A represent a t i v e t h e o ry (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1977).
6

Theme session 1
7

Effects of movement, emotion, and embodiment on the
perception of time
Marc Wittmann∗
Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health, Freiburg, Germany
Subjective time is tied to the mental status of the beholder: it reflects one’s cognitive, bodily
and emotional state. Body anatomy and bodily processes have an intrinsic role in shaping faculties
of the mind such as emotion, cognition, and self-awareness. Related to several attempts to directly
relate rhythms of the body with temporal processes in perception and action, embodied concepts
of time perception have recently been proposed suggesting that the experience of time is related
to emotional and visceral processes as they share common neural systems 1.
An early proposal linked to one of the first psychophysical laboratories situated in Freiburg
was formulated in 1889 by Hugo M ¨unsterberg 2.Hereportedthatwhentemporalintervalsranging
in duration between 6 and 60 s had to be reproduced, the accuracy in temporal reproduction
was higher when the onset and the offset of the intervals coincided with the onset of breathing
in. Temporal reproduction was less accurate when temporal intervals started at other points in
time not systematically related to the breathing cycle. M ¨unsterberg therefore concluded that the
sense of time relies on the sensation of tension in different organs which are caused by muscle
contractions.
This session touches some aspects of these issues by showing how conceptual knowledge of
movement and speed3as well as the actual experience of movement 4influence the perception of
duration. Furthermore, it will be shown how emotional content affects time estimates as affec-
tive reactions lead to an overestimation of duration5.Inaddition,clinicalworkwillbepresented
showing how the impairment in temporal-order judgment is correlated with emotional withdrawal
in schizophrenic patients 6.Thecontributionsofthissessionhighlightevidenceofhowtheexpe-
rience of time is related to the dynamics of the environment and to embodied temporal processes
of the beholder.
References
1A.D.Craig,Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 364,1933–1942(2009);M.Wittmann,Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 364,
1955–1967 (2009).
2H.M¨unsterberg,Beitr¨age zur experimentellen Psychologie, Heft 1. (Mohr, Freiburg, 1889).
3D.Zakay,G.Mioni,thisvolume,p.9
4Z.Shi,thisvolume,p.10
5J.L.Bueno,F.Nather,thisvolume,p.11
6A.Giersch,C.Z.Duval,R.L.Capa,thisvolume,p.12
∗Address for correspondence: Institute for Frontier Areas ofPsychologyandMentalHealth,Wilhelmstr.3a,79098
Freiburg, Germany. E-mail:
wittmann@igpp.de
8

Movement and speed associated with a stimulus affect
the estimation of its duration
Dan Zakay∗aand Giovanna Mionib
aInterdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Israel
bUniversity of Padova, Italy
Participants belonging to different age groups ranging from6to30yearswerepresentedwith
stimuli and were asked prospectively to estimate the exposure duration of each stimuli. Expo-
sure durations were either 3 or 8 seconds and duration estimation was done via the reproduction
method. The target stimulus was presented and participants were asked to stop it when they felt
that the original exposure duration was over. This method enabled young children to overcome
the language barrier. The stimuli which were presented were asportcaroratruck,abicycleor
amotorbike. Eachstimuluswaspresentedaseitherastaticorasamovingone. Thesizesof
all the stimuli were matched so that each had the same projection area on the retina. Exposure
durations and movement rate were the same in all respective conditions. The findings obtained
revealed that children estimations were influenced by whether or not the stimulus was static or
moving and by the type of the stimulus. Exposure durations of static stimuli were estimated to
be longer than that of moving ones and exposure durations of fast stimuli (i.e., a sport car and
amotorbike)wereestimatedtobeshorterthanthoseofrespective slow stimuli (i. e., a bicycle
and a truck). As for adults, exposure durations were not influenced by these factors. The findings
suggest that duration estimation is not dependent on a cognitive-perceptual process only. It seems
that children are influenced by the knowledge they have about stimuli and they estimate durations
by referring to the relations between time, speed and distance, because they can’t refer to time by
itself. Being able to handle time as an abstract concept by itself demands some cognitive matu-
ration. The implications of the findings for understanding duration judgment and the impact of
embodiment on it are discussed.
∗E-mail:
zakay.dan@idc.ac.il
9

From eye to hand: implicit enaction expands subjective
tactile duration
Zhuanghua Shi⇤a
aMultisensory Perception Lab, Department of Psychology, LMU Munich, Germany
One notion central to the ‘embodied’ and ‘enactive’ views is that perceptual and cognitive
processes are subject to the constrains of action, or intended action 1. So is time perception2,3 .
For instance, most of us would have experienced ‘chronostasis’, an illusion of time in which a
clock’s second hand appears to stand still when one directs gaze from elsewhere onto it4. The
evidence of action influencing time perception suggests that subjective time is not a pure percep-
tual phenomenon, but can only be appropriately understood by taking the larger context of the
perception-action loop into consideration. Here we tested whether action context, including ac-
tion and (explicitly or implicitly) intended action, influences time perception of sensory events in
a wide sensorimotor loop, not limiting to the timing of action or the duration of an event relating
to the action goals.
To this end, we induced implicit action context in participants by using a near-body moving
object, a ‘ball’, and measured participants’ tactile temporal bisection performance. We found
participants overestimated the tactile duration when the ball was approaching or moving laterally,
with the overestimation being more marked for the approaching movement. The results suggest
that the near-body ball movement spontaneously activates action preparation, with processes of
action planning distorting the subjective time of sensory events taking place in the sensorimotor
loop. It should be noted, action contexts or types of visual movements (e.g., looming vs. receding)
may also cause an increase in arousal, which could potentially contribute to the duration distor-
tion5,6. However, these accounts were ruled out by a further comparison between approaching
and receding movements on subjective tactile duration judgments.
To further support our ‘embodied view’ of subjective duration expansion, we examined whether
the subjective time expansion would be diminished when the activation of an embodied re-
action is inhibited. We presented participants with approaching movements while they held
two lightweight objects in their hands, and compared their tactile duration judgments under this
hands-occupied condition to their judgments in the hands-free approaching-movement and the
static baseline conditions. The overestimation was diminished in the hands-occupied approach-
ing condition. The findings are consistent with recent ‘embodiment’ views on perception and
action7,8, according to which embodied reactions increase the speed of sensory processing, and,
consequently, expand subjective time in the sensorimotor loop.
References
1 A. K. Engel, et al., Trends Cogn. Sci. 17(5) 1–8 (2013).
2 Z. Shi, S. Ganzenm¨
uller., and H. J. M¨
uller, PLOS One 8(4), e62065 (2013).
3 Z. Shi, R. Church, and W. Meck, Trends Cogn. Sci 17(11), 556–64 (2013).
4 K. Yarrow, et al., Nature 414, 302–5 (2001).
5 S. Droit-Volet, and S. Gil, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 364, 1943–53 (2009).
6 M. Wittmann, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 364, 1955–67 (2009).
7 D. Effron et al., Emotion 6(1), 1–9 ( 2006).
8 Z. Shi, L. Jia, and H. J. M¨
uller, Front. Int. Neuro. 6, 1–9 (2012).
⇤Address for correspondence: Department of Psychology, LMU Munich, Germany . E-mail: shi@lmu.de

Aspects of emotional contents and movement
perception on subjective time experience
Jos´
eL.O.Bueno
∗and Francisco C. Nather
University of S˜
ao Paulo, Ribeir˜
ao Preto, Brazil
Artwork compositions can be studied according to different criteria involving hedonic effects,
compositional elements and emotional contents. Implied movement in abstract and figurative
artworks has been discussed in the scientific literature1–4 and are related to time perception. Ab-
stract and figurative paintings representing human beings implying more movement have been
estimated longer than those implying less movement. Photographs of ballerina sculptures by the
impressionist Edgar Degas in different ballet postures, implying movements of distinct intensi-
ties, modulate time perception 5.Anotherstudy
6examined embodiment mechanisms associated
with time distortions. Temporal bisection task data showed that the duration was judged longer
for Degas’ ballerinas requiring more movement (high-arousal body posture) than for the balleri-
nas requiring less movement (low-arousal body posture). However, the magnitude of the time
distortions was relatively greater for the shorter (0.4–1.6s) than for the longer (2–8s) duration
of stimuli exposures. These data suggest that the lengthening effect was mediated by an arousal
effect of limited duration on the speed of the internal clock system. The effects of movement per-
ception on subjective time related to arousal levels were also examined with individuals exposed
to artwork from different artistic schools 7.Impressionistandcubistartworkswereexposedfor
different duration and participants were asked to reproducethetimeexposuresintheprospec-
tive paradigm. Time distortions, related to higher arousal and implied movement, were obtained
when 20 abstract paintings were exposed for 3 s (Experiment 1). However, only cubist paintings
representing human forms caused time distortions. Experiment 2 further verified if these time
distortions were related to the movement perception or arousal levels exposing only these cubist
paintings for 3 and 9s as the arousal effects were transient upper than 3 s. Overestimation were
observed in the painting with greater arousal and movement scores only when it was exposed for
9s. The results showed that implied movement in abstract human figures oversized the effects
of arousal levels and there is an interaction of paintings pictorial characteristics to time percep-
tion. The conclusion is that the aesthetic experience of art is not limited to visual perception that
causes different levels of arousal (emotions) in the individuals. Embodiment mechanisms were
also important to explain different aspects of work-spectator relation by activating different brain
areas which represent the observed movement.
References
1O.Braddick,in:O.Braddick(ed.)The artful eye (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995), pp. 205–231.
2J.E.Cutting,Perc eptio n 31,165–193(2002).
3F.C.Nather,J.L.O.Bueno,Psicologia: Reflex˜ao & Cr´ıtica 19,217–224(2006)
4C.Y.Kim,R.Blake,Spatial Vision 20,545–560(2007).
5F.C.Nather,J.L.O.Bueno,Pe rc e p t. M otor Skills 113,157–170(2011).
6F.C.Natheret al.,PLoS One,6,e19818(2011).
7F.C.Nather,P.A.M.Fernandes,J.L.O.Bueno,Exp. Brain Res. (submitted).
∗E-mail:
jldobuen@usp.br, f.nather@hotmail.com
11

Temporal order judgements are impaired in patients with
schizophrenia: A link with emotional withdrawal?
Anne Giersch∗,C
´
eline Z. Duval, and R ´
emi L. Capa
INSERM U1114, Department of Psychiatry, University Hospital of Strasbourg, France
The sense of time continuity and of present time are both impaired in patients with schizophre-
nia, and question the mechanisms of timing. Several studies have shown that these patients are
impaired in discriminating between simultaneous and asynchronous events, leading to enlarged
windows of temporal simultaneity 1.Weshowedthatpatientsmayalsobeimpairedatamore
elementary level. During the tasks, subjects decide whethertwosquaresaredisplayedsimulta-
neously or asynchronously, and give their response by hitting a left or right response key. We
repeatedly showed that when stimuli are asynchronous and displayed on opposite sides, manual
responses are biased to the side of either the first or second stimulus2.Suchabiasallowedus
to show that patients distinguish events in time at an implicit level even when explicitly judging
such events to be synchronous. In addition, their implicit responses differ qualitatively from those
observed in controls. For asynchronies eliciting ‘simultaneous’ judgements, patients’ responses
are biased to the side of the 1st square whereas controls’ responses are biased to the side of the
2nd square. We proposed that in controls, elementary predictive mechanisms allow anticipation
of upcoming events, whereas patients process squares as if isolated rather than following each
other. This leads us to question how patients judge temporal order. What we already know is that
patients are able to discriminate between simultaneous and asynchronous stimuli when the Stim-
ulus Onset Asynchrony (SOA) is large enough. However, it is possible to detect an asynchrony
between two events without being able to tell about their temporal order3.Herewedirectly
compare the temporal order judgments and simultaneity/asynchrony discrimination in the same
patients.
Two squ a r e s w e re d i s p la y ed o n t he s c re e n e it h e r si m ul t an e o usly or with an asynchrony of
24 to 96 ms. In one session 18 patients and 18 controls made a temporal order judgement and
in the other they discriminated between simultaneous or asynchronous stimuli. Controls reached
similar performance in the two tasks at asynchronies above 50ms, whereas patients showed a
large impairment in temporal order judgment selectively. Moreover the impairment in temporal
order judgment was correlated with emotional withdrawal in patients.
The results confirm that patients with schizophrenia have a difficulty to determine temporal
order, even for SOAs leading to a clear perceptionof asynchrony. The link with clinical symptoms
suggests this impairment might mediate the loss of ‘vital dynamism’ reported in early descrip-
tions of schizophrenia. Patients would not follow events automatically (possibly underlying the
disruption of the sense of time continuity), and would be impaired in structuring events in time at
aconsciouslevel.
References
1A.Gierschet al.,Schizophr. Bull. 35,816–825(2009);H.Schmidtet al.,J. A bnorm. Psychol. 120,476–
482 (2011).
2L.Lalanne,M.VanAssche,A.Giersch,Schizophr. Bull. 38,506–513(2012);L.Lalanneet al.,Neuropsy-
chologia 50,2736–2744(2012);reviewinA.Gierschet al.,Fro nt. Psy ch ol .4,281(2013).
3M.Wittmann,Fro nt . Integr. Ne urosci . 5,66(2011).
∗E-mail:
giersch@unistra.fr
12

Theme session 2
13

Perception, cognition, and brain activity: Introductory
remarks
Wolfgang Skrandies∗
Institute of Physiology, Justus-Liebig University, Giessen, Germany
Human sensory and higher information processing can be studied by non-invasive measure-
ments of electrical brain activity that reflects mass activity originating from many neurons simul-
taneously. Commonly we use scalp recordings in healthy volunteers and patients in order to find
neural correlates of perceptual or cognitive processing.
Electrophysiological recording is related to other methods: with modern imaging techniques
(CT, structural or functional MRI, PET), the determination of anatomical brain structures or of
hemodynamical responses to different processing demands isavailableathighspatialresolution,
but typically has to rely on longer integration times in ordertoderivesignificantsignalsthatre-
flect changes in metabolic responses. However, different from metabolic brain imaging methods
like fMRI or PET, non-invasive electrophysiological measurements (or measurements of the ac-
companying magnetic fields, MEG) possess high temporal resolution in the order of milliseconds.
Thus, techniques to quantify electrical brain activity are unsurpassed when functional validity is
required in order to characterize central nervous processing in man1.
One successful example of this approach is a series of psychophysical and electrophysiolog-
ical studies on the differences of visual information processing when the upper and lower halves
of the human retina are compared. Behavioral data on criticalflickerfusion,contrastsensitivity,
pattern discrimination or double-flash discrimination havedirectneurophysiologicalcorrelates
revealed by non-invasive recordings of electroretinogramsandvisualevokedbrainactivity2.
In this theme session we show how perception and cognition arerelatedtoelectricalbrain
activity measured in healthy subjects as well as in patients.Non-invasivemeasurementofhuman
brain activity offers the possibility to monitor brain processes in real time which may complement
behavior measures of perception and cognitive processes.
The contributions to this session illustrate the fundamentals of analyzing human electrophys-
iological brain activity, and relate behavioral data ranging from basic perceptual mechanisms (vi-
sion, hearing, pain) to higher information processing like learning and language to human brain
processes3–6 .
References
1W.Skrandies,Acta Neurologica Taiwanica 14,164–178(2005).
2W.Skrandies,Progress in Sensory Physiology 8,1–93(1987).
3W.Skrandies,thisvolume,p.16.
4J.Kornmeier,thisvolume,p.15
5T.Koenig,thisvolume,p.17.
6H.Witte,thisvolume,p.18.
∗Address for correspondence: Institute of Physiology, Justus-Liebig University, Aulweg 129, 35392 Giessen, Ger-
many. E-mail:
wolfgang.skrandies@physiologie.med.uni-giessen.de
14

EEG correlates of multistable perception
J¨urgen Kornmeier∗a,band Michael Bachb
aInstitute for Frontiers Areas of Psychology and Mental Health, Freiburg, Germany
bUniversity Eye-Hospital, Freiburg, Germany
When we look at an ambiguous figure, our perception is unstableandalternatesspontaneously
between different interpretations1.Studyingthemechanismsunderlyingthisphenomenonisdif-
ficult because the time instant of the endogenous alternationmustbeknownandobserverskey
press is too imprecise (±100 ms)2for this purpose.
We h a v e d e v e l op ed the “O n s et -P a ra digm ” t o c i rc umve n t t his
problem: Participants viewed in different experiments either
ambiguous Necker lattices (Fig. 1A) or unambiguous lattices
(Fig. 1B/C) and compared the 3D perspective of successively
presented stimuli. In separate experimental conditions they in-
dicated in a go/nogo task either a perceived perspective reversal
(Fig 1A/B) or perceived stability (Fig 1A/C) across successive
stimulus presentations by key press in the inter-stimulus inter-
val (ISI) after the respective perceptual event.
The Onset-Paradigm successfully locked endogenous perceptual reversals of ambiguous fig-
ures to the stimulus onset with a precision of about ±30 ms, revealing a chain of EEG com-
ponents. This chain turned out to be closely similar to a chainofEEGsignatures,relatedto
exogenously induced reversals of unambiguous stimulus variants, with three exceptions: (1) An
occipital “Reversal Positivity” 130 ms after stimulus onsetand(2)aconcurrentlystartingleft-
hemispheric occipital to frontopolar decrease in alpha-band activity, lasting for about 60 ms, are
restricted to endogenous reversals. (3) All subsequent signatures are delayed with endogenous
compared to exogenously induced reversals. The smallest delay of 40 ms is visible in the earliest
component occurring with both types of reversals, the occipital/parietal “Reversal Negativity”,
starting at 260 ms (Necker lattice) an d at 220 ms (unambiguouslattices). And (4),mostremark-
ably, endogenous perceptual reversals are anticipated by right-central modulations in the gamma
frequency band in the ISI 200ms before an endogenous perceptual reversal2.
Our results have been replicated by others (for a review see Ref. 2). We interpret them as
follows: The gamma band modulations anteceding a perceptualreversalmayindicateabrain
state of maximal instability that occurs at the transition from one perceptually stable brain state
to the other. The subsequent Reversal Positivity then may reflect a conflict arising from the
ambiguity of the visual information at a relatively early processing step within the visual cortex.
This putative conflict lasts about 40 ms and may involve posterior visual but also more anterior
cognitive brain areas, as reflected by the alpha-band decrease. A late parietal positivity may then
indicate awareness of the resulting perceptual reversal. Further studies have to relate our results
to reversals during continuous observation.
References
1G.M.Long,T.C.Toppino,Psychol. Bull. 130,748–768(2004).
2J.Kornmeier,M.Bach,Front. H um. Neuros ci. 6,1–23(2012).
∗E-mail:
kornmeier@igpp.de
15

Electrophysiological studies on perception and learning
Wolfgang Skrandies∗
Institute of Physiology, Justus-Liebig University, Giessen, Germany
In this contribution we report on various different and independent studies on perceptual learn-
ing and on learning of meaningful material. We investigated perceptual learning in 85 healthy
adults with stereoscopic information contained in dynamic random dot stimuli or with vernier
targets (hyperacuity targets). Stimuli were flashed simultaneously at 8 locations at different ec-
centricities, and subjects had to detect a target in an 8AlternativeForcedChoicetask. When
training at a given eccentricity, stimuli at the other eccentricity served as a no training control
condition. Viewing of visual targets for about 20 minutes resulted in a significant increase of dis-
crimination performance only for the trained stimuli (significant interaction between training and
time). Thus, learning is position specific: improved performance can be demonstrated only when
test and training stimuli are presented to the same retinal areas (or have similar physical features
like stimulus orientation). In combination with our electrophysiological results on significant
changes of brain activity induced by perceptual training with hyperacuity targets and with 3D
stimuli, such data illustrate how perceptual training induces stimulus and visual field specific neu-
ral plasticity in adult subjects. These data complement our results on perceptual learning where
both psychophysical and electrophysiological changes wereobservedafterperceptualtraining1–3.
In other experiments we studied human semantic learning in three groups of healthy German
adults. Forty Kanji characters were presented visually in random order before and after a learning
session of 20 minutes duration. In the learning period subjects acquired the meaning of 20 of the
stimuli while the other stimuli served as unlearned control condition. Learning performance was
tested at the end of the experiment. All subjects learned stimulus meaning with a recall rate of
more than 90%. The analysis of stimulus-related electrical brain activity revealed that learning
was accompanied by significant changes of the pattern of activation over primary visual areas.
Since the physical characteristics of the visual stimuli were identical before and after learning,
our results represent neurophysiological changes that wereinducedexclusivelybyhigher-order,
semantic learning. Similar to the results on perceptual learning described above, also learning of
semantic meaning occurs very rapidly within 20 minutes4.Weperformedadditionalexperiments
on a group of Japanese adults who had to learn German words. These data resulted in very similar
effects (high recall rates; electrophysiological changes at short latencies).
Our results on semantic learning are congruent with previousreportsonhumanperceptual
learning. With simple, meaningless visual stimuli, brain activity occurring at early processing
times changed during a visual discrimination tasks with withstereoscopic
1or with hyperacuity2, 3
stimuli. The electrophysiological data indicate that learning processes are reflected by systematic
changes of electrical brain activity originating presumably in primary visual areas.
References
1W.Skrandies,A.Jedynak,Neuroreport 10,249–253(1999).
2H.Shoji,W.Skrandies,Int. J. Psychophysiol. 61,179–187(2006).
3W.Skrandies,Clin. Neurophysiol. 59(Suppl.), 81–87 (2006).
4H.Shinoda,W.Skrandies,Neuroreport 24,555–559(2013).
∗Address for correspondence: Institute of Physiology, Justus-Liebig University, Aulweg 129, 35392 Giessen, Ger-
many. E-mail:
wolfgang.skrandies@physiologie.med.uni-giessen.de
16

Agency and ownership are independent components of
auditory-verbal self-monitoring
Thomas Koenig∗,RahelSchneider,MaraKottlow,JochenKindler,WernerStrik,
Thomas Dierks, and Daniela Hubl
Department of Psychiatric Neurophysiology, University Hospital of Psychiatry, University of Bern,
Switzerland
‘Sensing the self’ requires a subject to be able to distinguish self-generated from self–inde-
pendent events. In psychiatric conditions such as psychosis, this sense of self is frequently im-
paired. Already Helmholtz1suggested that the comparison of an efferent copy of motor actions
with afferent sensory information allows a reliable sense ofbeingornotbeingthecauseofa
sensory event. However, apart from such causal elements, other functions such as memory-based
recognition may also play an important role.
The presented experiment was designed to separate the normalneurobiologicalfingerprints
of feelings of agency (that implies causality) and ownership(thatimpliesmemory)usingevoked
potentials. During the experiment, 13 healthy subject read visually presented neutral single words,
while auditory feedback was delivered through a headphone. This feedback was hearing the same
word either in the subjects own voice or spoken by a foreign voice of the same sex, which altered
the presence of ownership of the auditory input. Additionally, subjects heard self- and foreign
spoken words without reading, which removed the presence of agency in the percept. A reading
without hearing condition served to control for speech related artifacts. Average ERPs were
computed for all conditions and topographically compared following a 2×2(withvs.without
agency by with vs. without ownership) design.
In the N100 period (86–172 ms), we found significant topographic ERP effects of agency and
ownership. The configuration of the ERP fields of the two effects suggested that they are nearly
orthogonal. In a later time window (174–400 ms) there were also main effects of agency and
ownership, but this time with a strong topographic similarity, suggesting that both effects were
additive in this time period and shared a largely common mechanism.
This finding may be relevant for the understanding of the neurobiology of schizophrenia: In
schizophrenia, a cluster of symptoms is partly characterized by a deficient sense of self (e.g.
verbal hallucinations, ego-disturbances such as thought insertion and withdrawal, or feelings of
being made). We suggest that loss of agency alone may lead to symptoms of ego-disturbances.
Additionally, if ownership is affected, hallucination-type symptoms may result.
Reference
1H.vonHelmholtz,Handbuch der physiologischen Optik (Leopold Voss, Leipzig, 1867).
∗Address for correspondence: Department of Psychiatric Neurophysiology, University Hospital of Psychiatry, Univer-
sity of Bern, Bolligenstrasse 111, 3000 Bern 60, Switzerland. E-mail:
thomas.koenig@puk.unibe.ch
17

Methodological aspects of connectivity analyses of the
neuromatrix of pain
Herbert Witte∗
Institute of Medical Statistics, Computer Science and Documentation, Jena University Hospital,
Friedrich-Schiller University, Jena, Germany
Pain is a subjective phenomenon, produced by the interactions of a complex and dynamic
network of brain structures termed the brain’s neuromatrix of pain (BNMP), and composed of
different cortical and subcortical brain areas. Although EEG/MEG and fMRI allow measurement
and localization of brain activity on different spatial and temporal scales, interactions between
activated brain areas cannot be directly measured. Their study requires sophisticated analysis
tools and modelling that use measured brain activity as inputdata.
The concept of Granger Causality (GC) and the Partial Directed Coherence (PDC) enable such
an interaction analysis by using EEG/MEG or fMRI. GC works in the time domain whereas PDC
is frequency-selective. Both time-variant GC and PDC are based on a time-variant, multivariate
autoregressive (AR) modelling of the brain activity to be analysed. The extraction of parameters
and their statistical testing allows the detection of significant interactions between electrode (sen-
sor) and/or source activities. The resulting interaction networks are complex and in particular the
time evolution of interaction networks is difficult to quantify and to interpret. Graph theoretical
methods have been successfully applied for analysis of interaction networks. Motif detection is
one of these approaches.
Two e x pe r im e nt s are p r e s e nt e d w h i ch a n a ly z e t h e BN M P b a se d o nevokedpotentials(EPs).
In the first experiment the spatio-temporal dynamic of pain processing caused by repetitive pain
stimulation (heat pulse stimulation, laser beam) was investigated by means of time-variant in-
teraction analysis. The time-variant Granger Causality Index (GCI) was computed by using the
general linear Kalman filter approach to compute networks of directed interactions between the
electrodes. For the base-line segment the analysis reveals anetworkwhichcontainssourcesin
the parietal regions (spatial attention) and sinks in the prefrontal regions (involvement of working
memory, attentional processes) which are more pronounced onthesitecontralateraltostimula-
tion. For the subsequent N2 and P2 segments, interaction patterns were found that involve the
somatosensory and other additional regions (serial/parallel processing of somatosensory and af-
fective dimensions of pain). The interaction network found for the P3 segment might contribute
to the generation of the intensity rating of stimuli requested from the subjects.
In a second experiment the differencesin pain processing between patients with major depres-
sion (MD) and healthy subjects were studied. Stimuli consisted of a bipolar rectangular current
pulse. and the EEG before and after stimulation (EP) was analyzed. The time-invariant gener-
alized PDC in the frequency range 1–13Hz was used to constructinteractionnetworks. Itwas
observed that the interactions of the MD patients showed fewer changes in comparison to the
controls. This finding might explain why the MD patients show increased thresholds to external
stimuli. Additionally, the PDC differed according to which side was stimulated (relationship be-
tween left- and right-hemispheric processing might be altered in MD). The interaction networks
were analyzed by motif detection approaches and the results confirm previous findings.
∗E-mail:
herbert.witte@mti.uni-jena.de
18

Theme session 3
19

Complementarity in cognition
Harald Atmanspacher∗
Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health, Freiburg i. Br., Germany
It has been an old idea by Bohr that central conceptual features of quantum theory, such as
complementarity, are also of pivotal significance far exceeding the domain of physics. In fact,
Bohr became familiar with the idea through the psychologist Edgar Rubin and, more indirectly,
William James, an d immediately saw its poten tial for quantumphysics. AlthoughBohrwas
always convinced of the extraphysical relevance of complementarity, he never elaborated this
idea in concrete detail, and for a long time after him no one else did so either. This situation
has changed: there are now a number of research programs generalizing key notions of quantum
theory in a way that makes them applicable beyond physics.
Of particular interest are approaches that have been developed in order to pick up Bohr’s
proposal with respect to psychology and cognitive science. The first steps in this direction were
made by the group of Aerts in the early 1990s1,usingnon-distributivepropositionallatticesto
address quantum-like behavior in non-quantum systems. Alternative approaches have been initi-
ated by Atmanspacher et al. 2,outlininganalgebraicframeworkwithnon-commutingoperations,
and Khrennikov3,focusingonnon-classicalprobabilities. Arecentmonograph by Busemeyer
and Bruza4provides a good overview of the present state of the art, and a brandnew special issue
of Top ic s in C og ni ti ve Sc ie nc e 5sketches novel developments.
Intuitively, it is quite straightforward to understand why non-commuting operations or non-
Boolean logic should be relevant, even inevitable, for mental systems that have nothing to do
with quantum physics. Simply speaking, the non-commutativity of operations means nothing
else than that the sequence, in which operations are applied,mattersforthefinalresult. And
non-Boolean logic refers to propositions that may have unsharp truth values beyond yes or no,
shades of plausibility or credibility as it were. Both versions obviously abound in psychology and
cognitive science (and in everyday life as well).
Several kinds of quantum-based concepts have been applied inpsychologysofar. Twoof
them are the non-commutativity of operations and the non-Boolean nature of propositional cal-
culi. A third key idea derives from so-called Bell inequalities whose empirical violation can
indicate effects of non-separability or non-locality. And last but not least, combining incompati-
ble measurements can entail that classical probability, andBayestheorem,becomeinapplicable.
The presentations in this theme session will discuss examples for all these features.
References
1D.Aertset al.,Int. J. Theor. Phys. 32,489–498(1993).
2H.Atmanspacher,H.R¨omer,H.Walach,Fo u nd . P h y s . 32,379–406(2002).
3A.Khrennikov,Ubiquitous quantum structures (Springer, Berlin, 2010).
4J.R.Busemeyer,P.D.Bruza,Quantum models of cognition and decision (Cambridge University Press,
2012).
5Top i cs i n C o g n i t i v e Sc i e n c e 5(in press).
∗Address for correspondence: IGPP, Wilhelmstr. 3a, D-79098 Freiburg, Germany. E-mail:
haa@igpp.de
20

Order effects in sequential measurements of
non-commuting psychological observables
Harald Atmanspacher∗
Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health, Freiburg i. Br., Germany
One of the pioneers of research on sequential measurements inpsychologystated: “Oneof
the factors that inhibited our progress in understanding order effects has been the lack of a theo-
retical structure within which to investigate the mechanisms by which they might occur.”1This
contribution presents an attempt toward such a theoretical basis.
Sequential measurements of non-commuting observables produce order effects that are well-
known in quantum physics. But their conceptual basis, a significant measurement interaction, is
relevant for far more general situations in which the sequence in which measurement operations
act upon the state of a system makes a difference for the results obtained. One reason is that a
measurement operation changes the state of the measured system such that a subsequent mea-
surement operation effectively acts on another state. Related to this, a measurement is not simply
the registration of a pre-existing fact, but also establishes the fact that is registered.
We a r gu e tha t no n - co mmu t a t iv i ty i s u b i q uito u s in p sych o l ogywherealmosteveryinterac-
tion with a mental system changes that system in an uncontrollable fashion. Psychological order
effects for sequential measurements are therefore to be expected as a rule, although states, observ-
ables and their dynamics have nothing to do with quantum physics. The mathematical feature of
non-commuting observables and its ramifications can be fruitfully applied to model psychological
situations where order effects abound.
In this contribution we focus on the theoretical basis of sucheffects.Weclassifyseveralfam-
ilies of order effects which focus on shifted mean values of measurement distributions and relate
them to psychological observations 2–4.Moreover,wepredictadditionaleffectsyettobediscov-
ered empirically, which are related to Heisenberg-type uncertainties and correlational effects.
References
1N.N.Bradburnin:N.Schwarz,S.Sudman(eds.)Context effects in social and psychological research
(Springer, Berlin, 1992), pp. 315–323.
2H.Schumann,S.Presser,Questions and answers in attitude surveys: Experiments on question form,
wording and content. (Academic Press, New York, 1981).
3D.W.Moore,Public Opinion Quarterly 66,80–91(2002).
4Z.Wang,J.R.Busemeyer,To p i c s i n C o g n i t i v e Sc i e n c e 5(in press).
∗Address for correspondence: IGPP, Wilhelmstr. 3a, D-79098 Freiburg, Germany. E-mail:
haa@igpp.de
21

Quantum models of cognition and decision
Jerome R. Busemeyer∗
Indiana University, Bloomington, USA
Quantum cognition concerns the application of the mathematical principles from quantum
theory to human judgment and decision making behavior. At first sight it may seem rather far
fetched to draw connections between human cognition on the one hand, and quantum mechanics
on the other. Yet there are good scientific reasons for doing so, which is leading a growing
number of researchers to examine quantum theory as a way to understand perplexing findings
and stubborn problems within their own fields—hence this new field. Given the nascent state of
this field, some words of justification are warranted. The research just mentioned is not concerned
with modeling the brain using quantum mechanics, nor is it directly concerned with the idea of the
brain as a quantum computer. Instead it turns to quantum theory as a fresh conceptual framework
for explaining empirical puzzles, as well as a rich new sourceofalternativeformaltools.
There are two aspects of quantum theory which open the door to addressing problems facing
cognition and decision in a totally new light. The first is known as “contextuality” of judgments
and decisions which is captured in quantum theory by the idea of “interference.” The context gen-
erated by making a first judgment or decision interferes with subsequent judgments or decisions to
produce order effects, so that judgments and decisions are non-commutative. The second aspect
relates to “quantum entanglement.” Entanglement is a phenomenon whereby making an observa-
tion on one part of the system affects the state in another partofthesystem,eveniftherespective
systems are supposed to be cognitively separate. The crucialpointaboutentanglementrelevant
to cognition is that entangled systems cannot be validly decomposed and modeled as separate
subsystems. This opens the door to developing quantum-like models of cognitive phenomena
which are not decompositional in nature. Quantum cognition provides a unified and powerful ex-
planation for a wide variety of paradoxes found in human cognition and decision ranging across
findings from attitudes, inference, causal reasoning, decision making, conceptual combinations,
memory recognition, and associative memory.
∗E-mail:
jbusemey@indiana.edu
22

Complementarity in cognition entailed by bounded
rationality
Peter beim Graben∗aand Reinhard Blutnerb
aDepartment of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universit¨
at zu Berlin, Germany
bILLC, Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Recent research has revealed intriguing parallels between quantum physics and cognitive sci-
ences dealing with concepts, vagueness, and prototypicality1.Theseparallelsbecomeobvious
when one of the key features of quantum theory is considered: the concept of complementarity.
Two o bs e r va b l e s a r e called co m p l e me n ta r y wh e n a p u re s t a t e cannot be a common eigenstate
of both observables, which is not possible in classical physics where pure states are identified
with points in a phase space that are common eigenstates of every observable. The situation
is different, however, if one also takes statistical states,namelydispersiveprobabilitymeasures
upon phase space, into account. Then, the concept of a quantummechanicaleigenstateapplies
straightforwardly to an operationally restricted state space resulting from a phase space coarse-
graining into epistemic equivalence classes. This ‘epistemic quantization’ of classical dynamical
systems introduced by beim Graben et al. 2is nicely illustrated by Foulis’ firefly box 3where an
observer is only able to tell the glowing firefly’s position either as to the right or to the left with
respect to the front window or to the front or to the bottom withrespecttothesidewindow.
Here, we suggest to regard this operational constraint, preventing the simultaneous assessment
of two complementary perspectives, being caused by limited resources as in bounded rationality4.
Considering the origin of complementary in cognition as a kind of bounded rationality leads to
orthomodular lattices by pasting together two (or more) partial Boolean algebras as demonstrated
with Foulis’ firefly box3,5.
However, Foulis’ example only presents a static picture for the emergence of quantum-like de-
scriptions from coarse-grained classical systems. If the firefly were exploring a chaotic itinerary,
the dynamics would have to be taken into account as well. As beim Graben et al. 2have demon-
strated, a chaotic itinerary yields a dynamic refinement of the original coarse-graining that con-
verges towards single points in phase space through the limitofcontinuousobservations.Butfor
general, arbitrary coarse-grainings the residual grains are not common eigenstates of any observ-
able. Then, the Boolean partition algebras of the finest refinements of two (or more) arbitrary
observables can again be pasted together along their overlaps into an orthomodular lattice5thus
entailing the canonical Hilbert space representation exploited in quantum cognition1.
References
1E.M.Pothos,J.R.Busemeyer,Behav. Brain Sci. 36,255–274(2013).
2P.beimGraben,H.Atmanspacher,in:H.Atmanspacher,H.Primas (eds.) Recasting reality. Wolfgang
Pau l i ’s ph i l o sophi c a l i d e as and co ntemp o r ary scien c e (Springer, Berlin, 2009), pp. 99–113.
3D.J.Foulis,in:D.Aerts(ed.)Quantum structures and the nature of reality (Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1999),
p. 1–36.
4H.A.Simon,Models of bounded rationality: Empirically grounded economic reason,vol.3(MITPress,
1982).
5A.Dvureˇcenskij,S.Pulmannov´a,K.Svozil,Helv. Phys. Acta 68,407–428(1995).
∗Address for correspondence: Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universit¨at zu Berlin, Unter
den Linden 6, 10099 Berlin, Germany. E-mail:
peter.beim.graben@hu-berlin.de
23

The relevance of Bell-type inequalities for mental
systems
Thomas Filk∗
Department of Physics, University of Freiburg, Germany
Bell inequalities are inequalities for correlations between properties observed on two systems.
They are derived from purely logical considerations like thetransitivitylaw: ifa=band b=c
then a=c.Thisimpliesthatthenumberofcaseswherea̸=cis smaller than the sum of the
number of cases where a̸=band/or b̸=c.1One major assumption in the derivation is that
the two measurements are performed on separate systems without any causal influence onto one
another. For quantum systems, these inequalities are violated if the systems are entangled.2
In recent years it has been proposed that similar inequalities can be violated for mental sys-
tems. Some models, e. g. for the perception of ambiguous stimuli, have been formulated which
indicate the possibility that temporal versions of Bell inequalitites can be violated.3In this case
the measurements are performed on the same system but temporally separated. The essential
assumption for the inequalities to hold is that measurementsare “non-invasive”: Theresultof
the second observation should not be causally influenced by the first observation. This non-
invasiveness (related to “selective influence” 4)isdifficulttoachieve,andithasbeenspeculated
whether the corresponding loophole can be avoided by “adroit” measurements 5.
Several groups have recently reported violations of Bell-type inequalities in language process-
ing, decision making, or reasoning. In all these examples, the observations have been performed
on the same subject and the measurements are not necessarily non-invasive. However, one can
argue that in such cases a violation of Bell-type inequalities is due to “contextual conditions.”
Thus, the degree of violation may be used as a measure for contextuality. It can also be shown
that violations of Bell-type inequalities can be due to a “non-locality” of the meaning of a given
concept in conceptual spaces.
References
1B.d’Espagnat,Sci. Am. 241,158–181(1979).
2A.Aspect,J.Dalibard,G.Roger,Phys. Rev. Lett. 49,1804–1807(1982).
3H.Atmanspacher,T.Filk,J. Math. Psychol . 54,314–321(2010).
4E.N.Dzhafarov,Psychometrika 68,7–25(2003).
5M.M.Wilde,A.Mizel,Fo u n d . P h y s . 42,256–265(2012).
∗Address for correspondence: Dept. of Physics, University ofFreiburg,Hermann-Herder-Str.3,79104Freiburg,Ger-
many. E-mail:
thomas.filk@physik.uni-freiburg.de
24

Theme session 4
25

Estimating the sensitivity in discrimination tasks:
Recent challenges and advances
Daniel Oberfeld∗
Department of Psychology, Johannes-Gutenberg-Universit¨
at, Mainz, Germany
Afundamentalquestioninpsychophysicsishowsensitivesubjects are in discriminating two
stimuli on a given sensory dimension (e. g. auditory intensity, visual contrast, duration). Impor-
tantly, the sensitivity estimates should be uncontaminatedbyinfluenceslikeresponsebiases. For
many researchers, the preferred method for measuring difference limens (DLs) is the two-interval,
two-alternatives forced-choice task. A main reason for its popularity is the assumption that in this
task response biases play virtually no role. However, several studies indicate that this assump-
tion is not always valid. Subjects sometimes prefer one interval over the other (“Type A order
effect”), resulting in a non-zero constant error in Fechner’s te rms . 1Additionally, the sensitivity
in a discrimination task was recently reported to depend on the presentation order of standard
and comparison.2,3 This “Type B order effect” presents a serious challenge for current models of
discrimination performance and traditional procedures forcomputingDLestimates.
In the present theme session, data from psychophysical experiments and simulation studies
are presented. After introducing a theoretical framework for describing Type A and Type B order
effects,4empirical evidence for non-sensory influences on discrimination performance in differ-
ent modalities, sensory dimensions, and psychophysical procedures is presented5–7 .Improved
psychophysical procedures and data analysis techniques forestimatingthesensitivityindiscrim-
ination tasks are presented that take order effects and otherfactorsnotrelatedtosensitivityinto
account or avoid them to some extent. 4,6,8 Potential mechanisms responsible for the observed
biases are proposed5– 7 ,andeffectsofcriterionchangesarediscussed.
9
References
1˚
A. Hellstr¨om, Psychol. Bull. 97(1), 35–61 (1985).
2J.Nachmias,Vision R e s . 46(15), 2456–2464 (2006).
3Y.Yeshurun,M.Carrasco,L.T.Maloney,Visio n R e s . 48(17), 1837–1851 (2008).
4R.Ulrich,D.Vorberg,thisvolume,p.27
5˚
A. Hellstr¨om, Th. H. Rammsayer, this volume, p. 28
6R.Balk,F.Kl¨ockner,D.Oberfeld,thisvolume,p.29
7O.Dyjas,K.M.Bausenhart,thisvolume,p.30
8M.A.Garc´ıa-P´erez,E.Peli,thisvolume,p.31
9R.Alcal´a-Quintana,M.A.Garc´ıa-P´erez,thisvolume,p.32
∗E-mail:
oberfeld@uni-mainz.de
26

Estimation of discrimination performance in 2AFC tasks
Rolf Ulrich∗aand Dirk Vorbergb
aDepartment of Psychology, University of T¨ubingen, Germany
bDepartment of Psychology, University of M¨unster, Germany
Afundamentalconceptinpsychophysicsisthedifferencelimen (DL), which quantifies the
discrimination sensitivity of a participant. A common experimental procedure to estimate the DL
is the two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) task. On each trial of this task, a standard, s,with
constant magnitude, and a comparison, c,withvariablemagnitudearepresentedoneafterthe
other. The two possible temporal orders ⟨sc⟩and ⟨cs⟩of sand cvary randomly from trial to
trial. After each trial the participant indicates the temporal position of the larger stimulus (e.g., in
adurationdiscriminationtask,thestimuluswiththelongerduration). Therelativefrequencyof
judging clarger than sis usually plotted against the value of c.Thisfrequencytypicallyincreases
from zero (for relatively small values of c)toone(forrelativelylargevaluesofc). The DL and,
sometimes, the point of subjective equality (PSE )arecomputedfromthis2AFCpsychometric
function F(c,s).
There are two potential problems with this approach. First, the DL estimate may be contami-
nated by perceptual and decisional biases. Second, the PSE is not a meaningful measure because
the constant error derived from F(c,s)necessarily equals zero. It has been shown1that these
two problems arise because F(c,s)represents the average function of two underlying conditional
psychometric functions, one for each order of sand c,
F(c,s)=F(c,s|⟨sc⟩)+F(c,s|⟨cs⟩)
2,(1)
where F(c,s|⟨sc⟩)and F(c,s|⟨cs⟩)denote the order-conditional psychometric function for stim-
ulus order ⟨sc⟩and ⟨cs⟩,respectively.
Importantly, perceptual and decisional biases may affect these functions in opposite ways.
To av o i d t h es e p ro b le m s, i t i s n e c es s a r y to a n al y z e th e c o n di tional psychometric functions sepa-
rately under a constraint that follows from Equation 1. This constraint implies that the average
psychometric function F(c,s)passes through the point (s,0.5)assuming that sand cdiffer in the
critical physical dimension (e.g., duration) only and thus are physically identical for c=s.This
restriction applies to the majority of cases when the 2AFC task is employed; for exceptions see
the work of Garc´ıa-P´erez and Alcal´a-Quintana 2.
Computer programs in MATLAB R
⃝and R have been developed3,4 for maximum likelihood
estimation of DL and PSE from 2AFC discrimination data. These estimates are not contami-
nated by perceptual and decisional biases. The programs alsoallowtheestimationoflapserates;
lapses may affect the asymptotic behavior of psychometric functions and thus also contaminate
the estimation of DL.
References and notes
1R.Ulrich,D.Vorberg,Atten. Percept. Psychophys. 71,1219–1227(2009).
2M.A.Garc´ıa-P´erez,R.Alcal´a-Quintana,Front. Ps yc ho l.2,Article2(2011).
3K.M.Bausenhartet al.,Behav. Res. Methods 44,1157–1174(2012).
4ThisresearchwassupportedbytheDeutscheForschungsgemeinschaft (UL 116/13-1).
∗Address for correspondence: Universit¨at T ¨ubingen, Fachbereich Psychologie, Schleichstr. 4, 72076 T¨ubingen, Ger-
many. E-mail:
ulrich@uni-tuebingen.de
27

Weber Fractions and Time-Order Errors for long and
short durations: Implications for modeling
˚
Ake Hellstr¨
om∗aand Thomas H. Rammsayerb
aStockholm University, Sweden
bUniversity of Bern, Switzerland
Often, discrimination sensitivity is studied by a 2AFC method, keeping one stimulus as a
standard and letting the other vary around it. According to the commonly assumed Difference
Model for comparison, it should not matter whether the first stimulus is fixed and the second
varied (Standard-Comparison, St-Co), or vice versa (Comparison-Standard, Co-St). The aim of
this study was to study Weber Fractions (WFs) and Time-Order Errors (TOEs) as a function of
interval duration and presentation order of St and Co for fourdifferenttypesofintervals.
Using a weighted up-down procedure, in each of eight conditions 28 participants compared
successve interval durations with an ISI of 900 ms: St was 100 or 1000 ms (blocked). In each
block, orders St-Co and Co-St were intermixed. Thus block types for each St were [St<Co,
Co>St] and [St>Co, Co<St]. Interval types (blocked) were auditory (noise bursts) or visual
(LED flashes); filled, or unfilled with 3-ms markers (between-groups); with or without correct-
ness feedback (between-groups). Upper and lower thresholds(for75%correct)wereusedto
determine JND and PSE, and thereby WF = JND/St and TOE = ±(PSE−St).
For all interval types, TOEs were negative for St = 1000 ms, andpositiveforSt=100ms.
Feedback lowered WFs by 15–20 %, but all interactions with Feedback were nonsignificant. For
auditory-unfilled (AU; only 100 ms used) WF did not differ between orders. For visual-filled
(VF), WFs were significantly higher with Co-St than with St-Co; thus varying the 1st stimulus
had a lesser impact on the response than varying the 2nd stimulus. In analogy with the definition
of the TOE, also called Type-A effect (negative when the 1st stimulus is perceived as being of
lower magnitude than an identical 2nd stimulus), this Type-Beffectshouldbecallednegative.
Positive Type-B effects were obtained as well: For visual-unfilled (VU) and auditory-filled (AF),
WFs were highest with Co-St for 1000 ms, but with St-Co for 100 ms. The interactions of Order ×
Duration were highly significant. The effects refute the Difference Model, and suggest a flexible
impact ratio of the 1st and the 2nd stimulus.
For AF intervals, the TOE and WF data confirm earlier results 1.ForTOEs,theresultsdemon-
strate the common effect of stimulus level – negative TOE for long, but positive TOE for short
durations. These effects refute an explanation by simple response bias. The results confirm that
WFs are affected by whether the 1st or the 2nd stimulus is varied, but refute the generalization
that WFs are always lower with St-Co than with Co-St. For AF andVU,varyingthefirststimulus
(order Co-St) has a higher impact on the response, as shown by smaller WFs, than varying the
second (order St-Co). The Sensation Weighting Model 2,3 can account for these effects, and also
for positive as well as negative TOEs.
References
1˚
A. Hellstr¨om, T. H. Rammsayer, Acta Psychol. 116,1–20(2004).
2˚
A. Hellstr¨om, J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Perc. Perf. 5,460–477(1979).
3˚
A. Hellstr¨om, Pe rcep t . P s y cho p h y s. 65,1161–1177(2003).
∗Address for correspondence: Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden.
E-mail:
hellst@psychology.su.se
28

Anewlookon“ordereffects”andsensitivityintwo-
interval discrimination tasks: Decisions weights and
internal noise
Rosemarie Balk, Felicitas Kl¨
ockner, and Daniel Oberfeld∗
Department of Psychology, Johannes Gutenberg-Universit¨
at, Mainz, Germany
In a multiple observation task like a two-interval (2I) discrimination task, the performance
is limited due to two potential causes: (1) a limitation in theprecisionoftherepresentationof
the stimuli (e.g. due to neuronal variability in the sensory system), which is usually modeled
as internal noise,and(2)sub-optimalintegrationofinformationfrommultiple sources (i. e.,
observation intervals).1This can be formalized in an observer model where the probability of
selecting the stimulus presented in the second interval as having the higher value on the dimension
of interest (e.g. louder or longer) is a function of a value Xon the internal continuum,
X=w2(x2+
ε
2)−w1(x1+
ε
1),(1)
where x1and x2are the stimulus values (e. g., sound pressure level, duration) presented in interval
1andinterval2,respectively,w1and w2are the decision weights assigned to the first and sec-
ond stimulus, respectively, and
ε
1and
ε
2are additive internal noise components assumed to be
independent of each other and normally distributed with mean0andstandarddeviation
σ
I.The
participant is assumed to respond that the more intense stimulus had been presented in interval 2
if Xexceeds a criterion k.Independentestimatesofthedecisionweightsandtheinternal noise
variance can be obtained using methods of molecular psychophysics. 2Recent studies suggested
that in a 2I task the slope of the psychometric function (PMF) depends on the presentation order
of standard and comparison.3It can be shown that the corresponding decision model is a special
case of Eq. (1). In particular, the ratio of the slopes of the order-dependent PMFs is identical to
the decision weight ratio. We propose the standard deviationofthe(Gaussian)internalnoise(
σ
I)
as a measure of sensitivity in the discrimination task. Unlike the slopes of the order-dependent
psychometric functions,
σ
Iis independent of the decision weights. The model was appliedtodata
from an experiment in which auditory duration and intensity discrimination were studied using
four different 2I procedures plus a 1I procedure. Importantly, the decision weight ratio did not
differ between procedures presenting a standard (i. e., stimulus with fixed value) and a procedure
in which no standard was presented, where by definition no effects of the order of standard and
comparison could occur. This illustrates that the so-called“TypeBordereffect”
3can be viewed
as a special case of unequal decision weights assigned to interval 1 and 2. The internal noise vari-
ance estimated for the 2I procedures was highly correlated totheestimatedinternalnoiseinthe
1I procedure, corroboratingour proposal that
σ
Iis a useful measure of sensitivity in a two-interval
task.
References
1J.A.Swetset al.,J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 31(4), 514–521 (1959).
2B.G.Berg,J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 86(5), 1743–1746 (1989).
3R.Ulrich,D.Vorberg,Atten. Percept. Psychophys. 71(6), 1219–1227 (2009).
∗E-mail:
oberfeld@uni-mainz.de
29

Mechanisms of stimulus discrimination: Evidence from
the Type B effect
Oliver Dyjas∗and Karin M. Bausenhart
Department of Psychology, University of T¨ubingen, Germany
When participants are asked to discriminate between a constant standard stimulus sand a
variable comparison stimulus c,discriminationsensitivitydependsonthetemporalorderof these
stimuli and is usually higher for stimulus order ⟨sc⟩than for stimulus order ⟨cs⟩(Type B effect).
This effect is hard to reconcile with classical models of stimulus discrimination such as Thursto-
nian difference models or Signal Detection Theory1,4 .
We pr o p ose ano t h er a c co unt, w h i ch i s base d o n th e id ea tha t p a rticipants rely on an internal
reference that is dynamically updated from trial to trial rather than just on the stimuli presented
on a given experimental trial. This notion is formalized in the Internal Reference Model (IRM).
According to IRM, the internal reference Inon the present trial nis a weighted sum of the internal
reference In−1from the previous trial n−1andtheinternalrepresentationofthefirststimulus
X1,non the present trial,
In=g·In−1+(1−g)·X1,1(1)
with constant weight g,0≤g<1. IRM predicts a Type B effect and this effect should increase
with increasing weight g.Inaddition,theIRMalsoaccountsforsequentialeffectsonperceived
magnitude in two-interval discrimination paradigms. Both predictions were confirmed in a recent
series of experiments employing blocked and randomly intermixed stimulus orders1,4 .
An important question is whether the mechanism underlying the Type B effect is automatic
or under participants’ cognitive control. Therefore, we conducted a series of cueing experiments,
in which a symbolic cue either validly indicated the temporalpositionofthecomparisonstimulus
or it was neutral with respect to comparison position2,4 .Asexpected,withaneutralcue,a
pronounced Type B effect was observed. However, with a valid cue, this effect was considerably
reduced. Thus, the mechanism underlying the Type B effect seems to be under flexible attentional
control. Within IRM this may be represented as a modulation ofweightg.
Finally, evidence for a dynamically updated internal reference was also found in a duration
reproduction task3,4.Specifically,astandardandacomparisonintervalwerepresented either in
order ⟨sc⟩or ⟨cs⟩and participants were asked to reproduce the first or second interval duration.
In line with IRM’s predictions, reproductions were shifted toward the mean of the comparison
distribution for order ⟨cs⟩but not for order ⟨sc⟩.Inparticular,longdurationswereunderestimated
and short durations were overestimated for stimulus order ⟨cs⟩.Hence,IRMalsoprovidesanovel
account of the Vierordt effect. Furthermore, the presence ofsequentialeffectsagainsupported
the dynamic nature of the process underlying the formation oftheinternalreference.
References and notes
1O.Dyjaset al.,Atten. Percept. Psychophys. 74,1819–1841(2012).
2O.Dyjaset al.,J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform.,Onlinepubl.(2013),doi:10.1037/a0033611
3K.M.Bausenhartet al.,Acta Psychol.,Onlinepubl.(2013),doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2013.06.011
4ThisresearchwassupportedbytheDeutscheForschungsgemeinschaft (UL 116/13-1).
∗Address for correspondence: University of T¨ubingen, Department of Psychology, Schleichstr. 4, 72076 T¨ubingen,
Germany. E-mail:
oliver.dyjas@uni-tuebingen.de
30

An “I can’t tell” response option prevents artifactual
overestimation of the difference limen in bisection tasks
Miguel A. Garc´ıa-P´
erez∗aand Eli Pelib
aDepartamento de Metodolog´ıa, Facultad de Psicolog´ıa, Universidad Complutense, Madrid,
Spain
bSchepens Eye Research Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
Spatial and temporal bisection tasks are instances of the single-presentation method: Ob-
servers categorize the single stimulus that is presented on each trial. Thus, observers are asked to
give “short” or “long” responses (in temporal bisection) or “left” or “right” responses (in spatial
bisection). In a same–different variant of spatial bisection, observers are instead asked to give
“center” or “off-center” responses. Surprisingly, and despite the fact that the stimulus set is iden-
tical in both variants and the only difference is which question observers respond to, both tasks
give different results as regards estimates of the bisectionpoint(BP)andthedifferencelimen
(DL). This may be because the conventional form of the bisection task assumes that observers
can always make informed “left” or “right” judgments, while “center” responses in the same–
different variant of the task prove this assumption wrong: Ifobserversalwaysmadeeithera“left”
or a “right” judgment, they would never respond “center”. What this suggests is that “center”
judgments are also made in the conventional form of the task, but they end up reported as “left”
or “right” responses (by guessing) only because the responseformatdoesnotallowotherwise.In
other words, the conventional form of the bisection task renders “left” and “right” responses that
are an inextricable mixture of authentic judgments and mere guesses.
Amodelhasbeenputforwardwhichseparatessensoryprocesses (assumed identical in both
variants of the task) from response processes (which differ across variants) and explains the ob-
served discrepancies across tasks as well as some characteristics of data collected under the con-
ventional form of the bisection task. 1Aformalanalysisofthemodelsuggestedtheutilityof
athree-responseformatinwhichanadditionalresponseoption (namely, “I can’t tell”) is allowed
besides the conventional “left” and “right” response options. The model posits that the same
sensory parameters govern judgments under both response formats (left–right vs. three-response)
whereas task-specific decision/response parameters differacrossformats. Themodelalsopre-
dicts larger estimates of the DL in the simple left–right format than in the three-response format.
To test th e s e p r ed ic t i o ns , d a t a wer e c o l l e ct e d i n an e x pe r im ent in which 15 observers carried out
aspatialbisectiontaskunderbothresponseformats.Thepredictions were borne out by the data:
Performance on both variants of the task could be accounted for through common sensory param-
eters and task-specific decision/response parameters, and DL estimates from the simple left–right
format were significantly larger than estimates from the three-response format.
Reference
1M.A.Garc´ıa-P´erez,R.Alcal´a-Quintana,Q. J. Exp. Psychol. 66(2), 319–337 (2013).
∗E-mail:
miguel@psi.ucm.es
31

Effects of criterion changes on estimates of the
difference limen
Roc´ıo Alcal ´
a-Quintana∗and Miguel A. Garc´ıa-P´
erez
Departamento de Metodolog´ıa, Facultad de Psicolog´ıa, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain
Performance on psychophysical tasks involves a sensory component to capture the stimulus
and a decisional component to produce a response. The output of the sensory component depends
on the stimulus in the trial, whereas the decisional component involves a criterion assumed to
be independent of the stimulus and invariant across trials. Consider a single-presentation method
such as a spatial bisection task. Classical Signal DetectionTheory(SDT)modelsassumeabound-
ary criterion,
δ
,suchthattheobserverresponds“left”wheneverthe(random) sensory effect, S,
of the stimulus satisfies S<
δ
and responds “right” otherwise. This assumption has been proved
wrong, as observers are sometimes undecided and respond “left” or “right” by guessing and not
because they judged the stimulus to be left or right. SDT models have been extended to incor-
porate Fechner’s interval of uncertainty to account for undecided cases.1This indecision model
includes two boundaries such that the observer judges (and responds) “left” when S<
δ
1,judges
(and responds) “right” when S>
δ
2,andisundecidedwhen
δ
1<S<
δ
2.Inthelattercasethe
observer must guess, potentially with some bias towards one of the options. It was shown theoret-
ically and empirically that a far better option is to use a three-response format in which undecided
cases are separately recorded through, e. g. an additional “Idontknow”responseoption. The-
oretical and empirical results have also shown that removingguesses(whichproduceType-A
order effects in 2AFC tasks) via the ternary format also prevents overestimation of the difference
limen (DL).
The results just mentioned were obtained under the assumption that the decision boundaries
are fixed across trials. Concerns have been recently raised about the possibility that decision
criteria vary across trials.2This paper investigates the effect of such variations on estimates of the
DL under the standard binary and the ternary response formats. For simplicity, results are reported
for the case of a symmetric interval of uncertainty (i.e.,
δ
1=−
δ
2)andasingle-presentationtask,
although results for 2AFC tasks were analogous and only included additional features from order
effects. The indecision model with known parameter values was used to simulate data under two
tasks: the standard binary task (in which undecided cases prompt guesses) and the ternary task
that allows separate recording of undecided cases. Under each task, the decision boundaries were
either fixed or varied across trials. The results show that variation in the decision boundaries
across trials has little (and often negligible) effects on estimates of the DL under the ternary
format, although they have large effects under the binary format. The robustness of DL estimates
from the ternary format arises from the fact that undecided responses permit separating out the
contaminating influence of the width of the interval of uncertainty.
References
1M.A.Garc´ıa-P´erez,R.Alcal´a-Quintana,Q. J. Exp. Psychol. 66(2), 319–337 (2013).
2S.T.Mueller,C.T.Weidemann,Psychon. Bull. Rev. 15(3), 465–494 (2008).
∗E-mail:
ralcala@psi.ucm.es
32

Theme session 5
33

Introduction: System identification in the psycho-
physical assessment of nociception
Dieter Kleinb¨
ohl∗
Otto-Selz-Institute for Applied Psychology, University ofMannheim,Germany
Pain is shown to be a complex perceptual phenomenon emerging from neuronal activity in
several neuronal parts of the so-called nociceptive system.Aspecifictypeofreceptor,thenoci-
ceptor, codes for intensive thermal, mechanical or chemicalstimuliwhichmightbenoxious,that
is, potentially destroying tissue. Several characteristics of nociception and pain distinguish this
perceptual system from other senses.
First, nociception and pain may arise from a set of versatile receptor classes assigned to small
nerve-fibersoperating in parallel andwith different stimulus-response properties (e. g. A-delta and
C-fibers). Second, these receptor systems can be positioned somewhere between the exteroceptive
and interoceptive senses, because they are distributed not only on the body surface but also in large
numbers within intestines, muscles and vascular systems of the whole body. Third, the principle
of parallel processing is also found in the spinal transmission pathways, including a lateral and a
medial system of nociception, named according to the target nuclei of the thalamus where these
afferent signals converge. Fourth, there is no specific pain center in the brain, but several areas
responsible for the different perceptual and behavioral aspects of perceived pain. Finally, pain
perception is consequently described as a multidimensionalphenomenon,comprisingattheleast
sensory and affective, but also motivational components, introduced by the cerebral network of
processing centers termed the “pain matrix”.
It is therefore easy to conceive that the psychophysical assessment of pain perception bears a
whole lot of complications that are introduced by the above mentioned special characteristics of
peripheral and central stimulus processing. This is still aggravated by the consequences of mal-
functioning in the nociceptive system, leading to sensitization, hyperalgesia, reduced habituation
and/or endogenous analgesia. Neuronal plasticity is one of the core processes changing nocicep-
tive transmission which might result in persistent pain syndromes and probably lead to chronic
pain.
This starting point from neurophysiology will be presented in a short overview to give a com-
prehensible idea why systems theory and systems identification provide quite naturally a founda-
tion for the basic research field of psychophysical pain assessment. This scenario implies, that
systems theory and the methodology of system identification can provide an appropriate way to
characterize the properties of the nociceptive system on several stages of processing, peripheral
and centrally. This requires specific adaptations of classical psychophysical procedures, which
have to be combined with the systems identification methodology. The aim of this session is
therefore to elaborate on the idea of combining systems identification with psychophysical meth-
ods, and to present first examples for the expected rich avenues we hope would emerge from a
combination of both methodological strategies. The contributors of this theme session hope that
psychophysical research may take advantage from such ideas as well.
∗Address for correspondence: University of Mannheim, Otto-Selz-Institute for Applied Psychology, D-68131
Mannheim, Germany. E-mail:
kleinboehl@osi.uni-mannheim.de
34

On the road to system identification: Psychophysical
assessment of nociceptive mechanisms
Dieter Kleinb¨
ohl∗
Otto-Selz-Institute for Applied Psychology, University ofMannheim,Germany
Pain perception is a complex phenomenon which is constitutedbyacascadeofoverlapping
mechanisms located on processing stages leading from the peripheral nervous system on to the
spinal cord, and finally to several areas of the brain. Psychophysical procedures based on experi-
mental pain paradigms are currently used in clinical and basic research to specify the parameters
of the mechanisms underlying pain perception. This mechanism oriented research fits the model
of systems theory quite well, with circumscribed neuronal mechanisms representing subsystems
in the processing line, each one characterized by its specifictransferfunction. Theuseofsys-
tem identification methods in the assessment of pain processing depends on the methodology and
specificity of the psychophysical procedures applied, to achieve a dissection of subsystem mecha-
nisms and their parameterization. Three examples from pain research, applying contact heat pain
stimuli, are presented to illustrate the specific problems related with that task:
Pain sens i t i z a t i o n is a typical property in processing of repetitive phasic or tonic pain stimula-
tion which has clinical validity as a feature of chronic pain syndromes1.Theperceivedstimulus
intensity of such stimulus patterns increases over time, providing several measures of dynamic
change in pain perception2,3 .
Supra-threshold sensitivity in processing of experimental pain is assessed in terms of stim-
ulus response functions measured by magnitude estimation according to Stevens. The resulting
functions are characterized by level and slope (Stevens coefficien t) 2.
Endogenous analgesia elicited by tonic counter stimulation is a mechanism triggered by het-
erotopical nociceptive stimulation and counter-acting pain from another body site. There is a neu-
ronal mechanism termed Diffuse Noxious Inhibitory Controls(DNIC)associatedwithit,whichis
well known from animal experiments. The study presented hereillustratesthedifficultiescaused
by the assessment of concurrent, and in consequence, confounded processes, like habituation,
which cause an overlay in perception that has to be dissected from the mechanism of interest.
Finally, a proposal for a unified framework of psychophysicalproceduresandsystemstheory
methodology is presented and illustrated by real and conceived examples from pain research.
References
1D.Kleinb¨ohl,R.G¨ortelmeyer,H.Bender,R.H¨olzl,Anesth. Analg. 102,840–847(2006)
2D.Kleinb¨ohl,J.Trojan,R.H¨olzl,in:B.Berglund,G.B.Rossi , J. Townsend, L. Pendrill (eds.) Measure-
ments with persons. Theory, methods, and implementation areas (Psychology Press, New York & London,
2012), Chapter 12.
3D.Kleinb¨ohl,J.Trojan,C.Konrad,R.H¨olzl,Clin. Neurophysiol. 117,118–130(2006).
∗Address for correspondence: University of Mannheim, Otto-Selz-Institute for Applied Psychology, D-68131
Mannheim, Germany. E-mail:
kleinboehl@osi.uni-mannheim.de
35

PaINSIGHT: Evaluation of nociceptive function from
asystemtheoryperspective
J. R. Buitenweg∗and H. G. E. Meijer
MIRA Institute for Technical Medicine and Biomedical Technology, University of Twente,
The Netherlands
The PaINSIGHT project aims at parameter identification of thenociceptivesystemforassess-
ment of (mal)functioning during potential transition of acute pain into chronic pain states.
Activation of the nociceptive system, e. g., during surgicalinterventions,initiallycausere-
versible nociceptive changes (modulation) in both ascending and descending pathways. Maladap-
tive modulation processes may prevent a proper return to baseline functionality and finally result
in irreversible modifications of the nociceptive system: an often intractable chronic pain state.
These initial modulations are clinically observed as hyperalgesia and measured using subjective
pain reports and psychophysical testing, e. g. by determining electrical pain thresholds. However,
such measures do not reveal the characteristics of the ascending and descending subsystems and
their separate contribution to the hyperalgesia. This lack of specificity obstructs further research
on the development, maintaining factors and potential therapies of chronic pain states.
The challenge is therefore to overcome the limited observability of present psychophysical
threshold measurements and to permit a model based interpretation of improved measurements
towards the neurophysiological function of the nociceptivesubsystems. Thestrategyisbasedon
experimental observations that electrical perception thresholds vary with the temporal character-
istics of the stimuli (pulse width, number of pulses and inter-pulse interval). Series of thresholds
from different stimulus properties reveal dynamic properties of peripheral activation and central
processing mechanisms. When measured (tracked) during and after a nociceptive perturbation,
such as a cold-pressor task, also the relatively slow effectsofthedescendinginhibitioncanbe
studied. Furthermore, the effects of the stimulus properties on the threshold can be simulated by
asimplenonlinearmodelconsistingoftwocascadedWienersystems (4 parameters). Descending
control can be modelled as slow changes in the model parameters.
The identification of the system parameters was initially based on a general nonlinear fitting
procedure using experimentally estimated thresholds obtained with multiple stimulus properties.
However, these thresholds are estimated from series of stimulus-response pairs. The challenge
is therefore to develop an identification method which can deal more efficiently with the binary
nature of this data, if possible by direct estimation of system parameters from series of stimulus-
response pairs instead of estimated perception thresholds.Theresultingidentificationmethod
will provide insights for the design stimulus settings for clinical use.1
Note
1ThisresearchissupportedbytheDutchTechnologyFoundation STW, which is part of the Netherlands
Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and partly fundedbytheMinistryofEconomicAffairs,
Agriculture, and Innovation.
∗E-mail:
j.r.buitenweg@utwente.nl
36

Multiple thresholds tracking methods for improved
observation of nociceptive function
Robert J. Doll∗,H.G.E.Meijer,andJ.R.Buitenweg
MIRA Institue for Technical Medicine and Biomedical Technology, University of Twente,
The Netherlands
Estimating momentary perception thresholds cannot reveal dynamic properties of underlying
mechanisms. However, continuously estimating (or tracking) a threshold over time can. A mov-
ing window including a number of most recent stimulus-response pairs allows this observation.
While several psychophysical methods in the yes-no paradigm exist to obtain an estimate of the
momentary threshold, obtaining its dynamic properties is not so common.
The possibility of tracking thresholds was demonstrated in simulations and a human subject
experiment 1.There,combiningthesimplestaircaseandthemethodofconstant stimuli was pro-
posed to use in experimentswhere thresholds are nonstationary. While tracking, it was possible to
detect changes due to habituation as well as changes due to a conditioning stimulus. Extension of
this tracking method is necessary to allow simultaneous tracking of multiple thresholds in order
to identify nociceptive system specific parameters 2.Inpreliminaryresults,weobservedthates-
timation bandwidth decreases when more thresholds are tracked. Especially when large changes
for a brief period of time are expected, as few as possible thresholds should be tracked.
Var y in g st i mu l us p ar a me t er s ( i. e . , p ul s e- w id t h (P W ), n um b er of pulses (NoP), and inter-pulse
interval (IPI)) affect underlying mechanisms in different manners2,3.Therefore,inastudyinclud-
ing healthy subjects, four thresholds were tracked (varyingPW,NoP,andIPI)toobservetheeffect
of stimulus parameters on thresholds. Moreover, two thresholds were tracked (1 vs. 2 pulses) be-
fore, during, and after a two minute cold pressor test. Preliminary analysis showed an effect of
stimulus parameters as well as an effect of the cold pressor onthresholds.
Furthermore, a capsaicin defunctionalisation model was used to investigate its effect on four
thresholds. A cutaneous capsaicin patch (8%) was applied to the upper leg in 8 healthy subjects.
Thresholds were tracked on both the treated and adjacent untreated sites prior to application, and
on subsequent days 2, 7, 28, and 84. Preliminary results showed that the effect of capsaicin
was reflected in all thresholds, but was more sensitive on days2and7whenusingaonepulse
stimulus, and more sensitive on days 7 and 28 when using two pulses. 7
References and notes
1R.J.Dollet al.,Behav. Res. Methods,doi:10.3758/s13428-013-0368-4(2013).
2H.Yanget al.,in:B.Benyo(ed.)Biol. and Med. Sys.,(Budapest,Hungary,2012),pp.367–372.
3E.M.vanderHeide,et al.,J. Clin. Neurophysiol. 26(1), 54–60 (2009).
4ThisresearchissupportedbytheDutchTechnologyFoundation STW, which is part of the Netherlands
Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and partly fundedbytheMinistryofEconomicAffairs,
Agriculture, and Innovation.
∗E-mail:
r.j .do ll @ut wente .nl
37

System identification of the nociceptive function
H. Yang∗,H.G.E.Meijer,andJ.R.Buitenweg
MIRA Institute for Technical Medicine and Biomedical Technology, University of Twente,
The Netherlands
Pain is essential for survival but persistent pain reduces quality of life. One clinical symptom
is hyperalgesia which results in either a decrease in threshold or an increase in suprathreshold
response1.Hyperalgesiacanbeaconsequenceofperipheraland/orcentral sensitization. This
perturbs the nociceptive system that is then malfunctioning. Our goal is to identify the nociceptive
pathway and to characterize which parts are (mal)functioning. To this end, we adopt a system
identification approach by integrating input–output measurements for estimating the parameters
in a mathematical model of the ascending nociceptive pathway.
We c o n si de r data f r om a ( b in ar y) det e c ti on t as k wit h s ui ta blevariationinstimulusparameters.
This is achieved by application of electrocutaneous stimulation using an intra-epidermal needle
electrode. In each trial, current is delivered as a pulse train characterized by the amplitude and the
temporal combination of the number of pulses, the inter-pulse interval and the pulse width. Then,
the subject reports a binary response, perceived or not. Fromonetrialtothenext,theamplitudeof
the current is be adjusted using a staircase procedure 2.Thesetofstimulus–responsepairs(SRP)
is the input-output data for our identification method.
In a previous study, we constructed a mathematical model of the ascending nociceptive path-
way considering peripheral and central mechanisms. Analogous to the experimental paradigm,
one can define the perception threshold (PT) for the model: theamplitudesuchthatgiventhe
experimental temporal parameters and model parameters, half of the stimuli are detected 3.The
model reproduces PT variations similar as in experiments anddependsontheparametersofthe
model. Based on this we were able to estimate the model parameters given the PTs. We found,
however, that the addition of (measurement) noise in the PTs led to large estimation errors. In-
deed, a relative error of only 0.1% in the PTs resulted in a 10% relative error in the estimation. We
suspect this is due to losing information when transforming the SRP into a set of PTs. Therefore,
we aim to improve the estimation by using SRP directly.
The staircase procedures can be formulated as Markov models4.Thisdescribestheeventual
distribution of the amplitude of applied currents. For the staircase procedures we consider, the
Markov models are ergodic, hence, a single realization or measurement is informative if the num-
ber of trials is large enough. Based on the final asymptotic distribution and the SRP, we formulate
amaximumlikelihoodestimatorforidentificationofthemodel parameters. We show that on sim-
ulated data this direct approach with SRP outperforms the indirect method with PTs. We study
the effect of the number of trials and the choice of stimulus parameters,i. e., the pulse width and
the inter-pulse interval, on the estimation performance.
References
1J.Sandk¨uhler,Physiol. Rev. 89(2), 707–758 (2009).
2R.J.Dollet al.,Behav. Res. Methods,doi:10.3758/s13428-013-0368-4(2013).
3H.Yanget al. in: B. Benyo et al. (ed.) Biol. and Med. Sys. (Budapest, Hungary, 2012), pp. 367–372.
4G.B.Wetherillet al.,Biometrika 53(3–4), 439–454 (1966).
∗Address for correspondence: MIRA institute for Technical Medicine and Biomedical Technology, University of
Twe nte , D rie ner lol aan 5 , 7 522 N B , Ens c he d e, T h e Net her lan ds. E-mail:
h.yang-1@utwente.nl
38

The evaluation of nociceptive function during early
clinical drug development
Justin L. Hay∗and G. J. Groeneveld
Centre for Human Drug Research, Leiden, The Netherlands
Pharmaceutical science continues to search for suitable biomarkers that can assist in pre-
dicting the therapeutic potential of analgesic medication and, therefore, its efficacy in the target
population. Data intensive, early-phase studies provide a valuable opportunity that can offer this
translational information. A series of nociceptive pain tests early in drug development could
be used to bridge findings in the laboratory and those in the clinical situation, provide valuable
information in regard to the mechanism of action of a new drug,predictthemostapplicablepa-
tient population to be studied, and ascertain the most relevant nociceptive test for more intensive
pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) modelling.
The need to use a comprehensive battery of pain models is highlighted by studies whereby
only a single pain model, thought to relate to the clinical situation, demonstrates lack of efficacy.
No single experimental model can replicate the complex nature of clinical pain. Therefore, one
experimental pain model should not be used exclusively to screen the pharmacological mecha-
nism of action of analgesic compounds. Data obtained from early phase clinical studies can be
used to determine or confirm a drug’s mechanism of action, which is especially true for drugs
that are first-in-class. Furthermore, pharmacodynamic effects obtained from pain models may be
useful for the prediction of the efficacy of the drug in future clinical populations.
Well- s e le ct ed , mu l t i- mo dal, v a l i date d n oc ic eptive t e s t s that each assess a different pain mech-
anism, should be able to help establish whether a drug is working centrally or peripherally,
whether it is more suitable for a particular modality of pain (nociceptive, neuropathic or in-
flammatory), and what other effects contribute to its mode of action (sedation, tolerance, etc.).
Furthermore, when used in combination with PK parameters, these nociceptive tests should be
able to provide information regarding future dose selection. Particularly if used in combination
with PK/PD modelling techniques, the establishment of the potential threshold for the pharmaco-
logical activity (thereby implying a therapeutic effect) may be determined and therefore used for
dose prediction.
In this lecture several case examples are present and the human multi-modal pain test battery,
and its suitability for early drug development, is discussed.
∗E-mail:
JHay@chdr.nl
39

40

Free talks 1
41

Perceptual processing of pairs of acoustically marked
time intervals: Correspondence between psychophys-
ical and electrophysiological data
Yo s h i t a k a N a k a j i m a ∗a,HiroshigeTakeichi
b,TakakoMitsudo
c,andShozoTobimatsu
d
aFaculty of D esign, Kyushu Un iversit y, Fukuoka, Japa n bRIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-
Based Science, Wako, Japan cFa culty of Infor mation Science and El ectrical E ngineerin g,Kyushu
University, Fukuoka, Japan dFaculty of Medica l Sciences, Kyu shu U niversity, Fukuo ka, Japan
Event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by pairs of subsequent time intervals marked by sound
bursts were recorded in our previous study 1,andthedatawerereanalyzedutilizinganewmulti-
varia te m ethod 2.Subsequenttimeintervalst1and t2are often perceived as equal in duration when
t2is shorter than 300 ms and up to 50 ms shorter or up to 80 ms longerthant13;thesubjective
equality holds even if the physical difference is larger thanthejustnoticeabledifferenceobtained
for t1and t2separated in time. This phenomenon is called auditory temporal assimilation.ERPs
were registered in two types of sessions: J sessions, where the participants judged whether the
two intervals were subjectively equal or not, and NJ sessions, where no judgments were required.
Slow negative components occurred in brain activities in theJsessions,moreconspicuouswhen
inequality between t1and t2was perceived, in agreement with our earlier study4.
An experiment in which t2was fixed at 200 ms was chosen for the present analysis. For a
moving 100-ms time window, a correlation matrix across the 19electrodeswascalculatedfor
each temporal pattern, and the correlation matrix distance (CMD = Euclidean distance between
the respective correlation matrices) between each two patterns was evaluated. The patterns for
which subjective equality dominated were classified as equal(E)patterns,thoseforwhichsub-
jective inequality dominated as unequal (UE) patterns. There were four E patterns and three UE
patterns, but no patterns to be classified otherwise. A measure of separation of E vs. UE patterns
in terms of brain activities was calculated as the sum of squared CMDs between E and UE pat-
terns, and expressed as rela tive separa tion (proportionally to the total squared CMD). The relative
separation was a function of time, represented by the temporal midpoint of the moving window.
The relative separation in the J sessions showed a peak around70msaftert2,similarlyto
our earlier findings2.AprocessrelatedtoE-UEjudgmentisthuslikelytotakeplace within
100 ms after t2.Peakswithin100msaftert2were observed also in the NJ sessions, suggesting
that implicit judgments, although not required, may have occurred in a very early stage. The
perceptual separation between the E and the UE patterns can thus be related to dynamic aspects
of brain activities, critical factors of which we are trying to identify and locate.5
References and notes
1T.Mitsudoet al.,Proc. of 12th ICMPC and 8th ESCOM, Thessaloniki,677–681(2012).
2Y.Nakajima,H.Takeichi,Front. I nt egr. Neuros ci. 5,7,1–10(2011).
3Y.Nakajimaet al.,Pe rc e p t i on 33,1061–1079(2004);R.Miyauchi,Y.Nakajima,Hum. Mov. Sci. 26,
717–727, (2007).
4T.Mitsudoet al.,Neuroquantology 7,117–127,2009.
5SupportedbytheJSPS(25242002inFY2013and23653227inFYs2011-2013)andKyushuUniversity
(P&P, A type, in FYs 2012-2013).
∗E-mail:
nakajima@design.kyushu-u.ac.jp
42

Effects of elimination of power-fluctuation factors from
critical-band noise-vocoded speech
Tak uya K is h id a∗a,YoshitakaNakajima
b,andKazuoUeda
b
aGraduate School of Design, Kyushu University, Japan
bDept. of Human Science/Research Center for Applied Perceptual Science, Kyushu University,
Japan
Sounds are divided into several frequency regions when goingtoacentralauditorysystem
from a peripheral system. This mechanism can be modeled as bandpass filters between which
frequency ranges are different. These filters are called critical-band1filters.
Ueda et al.2reported that noise-vocoded speech3for which 20 critical-band filters were used
was reasonably intelligible; 20 power fluctuations seemed tocontainenoughinformationfor
speech communication, and thus were subjected to factor analyses. Three factors appeared in
astablemannerineightdifferentlanguages.
In the present study, we analyzed speech data of 3 languages (British English, Japanese, and
Mandarin). The procedure of factor analysis was improved so that the factor scores should be
zero when there was no sound, and this enabled us to resynthesize noise-vocoded speech based on
newly obtained factor scores without systematic distortion. The 3 factors appeared corresponding
to the previous studies, and accounted for 45.0–57.5 % of variances of 20 power fluctuations in
these speech stimuli.
The roles of the factors in speech perception were investigated by measuring the intelligibility
of noise-vocoded speech for which one of the factors was eliminated. Four Japanese-speaking
participants (2 males and 2 females) listened to the resynthesized speech, of which the original
was spoken by a Japanese male speaker, and wrote what they heard. Mora-identification ratios
were obtained, and it turned out that elimination of any of thefactorsmadetheresynthesized
speech less intelligible by 10–20 %. The differences in mora-identification ratio were small be-
tween the elimination conditions. No outstanding factor forspeechperceptionwasdetermined
but it was suggested that the types of incorrect answers mightbedifferentbetweenthecondi-
tions. Vowel errors were found often in the condition in whichthefactorlocatedinarangeof
about 550–1800 Hz was eliminated.
We sy n t he si ze d nois e - vo c od ed sp ee ch, f o r whic h 1 0 fil te rs of two critical-bandwidths were
used. The speech was reasonably intelligible. We are going toperformfactoranalyseswiththese
10 bandpass filters. If power-fluctuation factors as in our previous studies are obtained, it will be
possible to resynthesize speech from 3 or 4 fluctuating factors.
References
1H.Fletcher,Rev. Modern Phys. 12,47–65(1940).
2K.Ueda,Y.Nakajima,Y.Satsukawa,in:A.Bastianelli,G.Vidotto (eds.) Fech n e r D a y 2 010 (International
Society for Psychophysics, Padova, Italy, 2010), pp. 39–44.
3R.V.Shannonet al.,Science,270,303–304(1995).
∗Address for correspondence: c/o Prof. Yoshitaka Nakajima, Kyushu University, 4-9-1 S hiobaru, Minami-ku,
Fukuoka, 815-8540, Japan. E-mail:
kishida@kyudai.jp
43

Attention and working memory as determinants of
identification thresholds for non-native speech sounds
Jordan R. Schoenherr∗and John Logan
Department of Psychology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
Linguistic experience attenuates adult listeners attention, desensitizing them to phonetic dif-
ferences. The benefit is that within a listener’s native linguistic environment, communication is
facilitated by a reduction in the noise due to the associationofseveralphoneticvariantswitha
single phoneme. When language processing requires the use ofnon-nativespeechsoundslis-
teners must allocate their attention to previously unattended features of the continuum. Evidence
that listeners can successfully engage in psychophysical discrimination tasks using non-native lin-
guistic distinctions and graded response time distributions along continua1suggests that acoustic
properties are still available to listeners. How processingresourcesfacilitateorinhibittheidenti-
fication of native and non-native speech sounds has received limited attention. Studies that have
used psychophysical training tasks1have proven effective in increasing participants sensitivity to
regions along the acoustic continuum associated with non-native phonemes. We examine what
factors affect listeners ability to attend to acoustic properties of the speech sounds.
In the present study, listeners were presented we the attentional networks test (ANT 2)that
uses a visuo-spatial flanker task to measure the efficacy of attentional networks of orientation,
switching, and executive function as well as working memory tests that assessed reading span,
visual span, and auditory span3.Followingthesetasks,listenersperformedeithera2-or3-
category identification task with and without post-decisional confidence report. Subsequently,
listeners were then requested to provide typicality ratingsofthesamestimuli. Identification
accuracy, confidence reports, and typicality ratings were assessed conjointly to determine the
extent to which listeners had subjective awareness of their own performance.
The main findings of the present study pertain to a three-way interaction between attention
networks efficacy (ANE: high vs. low), working memory capacity (WMC: high vs. low), and
whether listeners responded to a 2- or 3-category task, F(1,50)=5.085,MSE =.77,p=.029,
η
2
p=
.09. The comparative low performance in the 3-category condition suggests that listener’s native
phonemes create interference during the processing of acoustic properties. Our results also sug-
gest that attentional resources are used to process both acoustic and phonemic stimulus proper-
ties whereas working memory resources play the largest role in phonemic processing, especially
when attentional resources are limited. Specifically, WMC was an important determinant of per-
formance for participants with low ANE. Listeners in the highWMCgroupachievedahighlevel
of performance in the 2-category condition whereas listeners with low WMC group performed
worse in this condition relative to listeners who learned thenon-nativelinguisticdistinctions.
References
1D.B.Pisoniet al.,J. Exp. Psychol.: Hum. Percept. Perform. 8,297–314(1982).
2J.Fanet al.,J. Cognitive Neurosci. 14,340–347(2002).
3R.W.Engleet al.,J. Exp. Psychol.: General 128,309–331(1999).
∗E-mail:
jordan.schoenherr@carleton.ca
44

Individual differences in auditory spectral temporal
order judgments
Leah Fostick∗aand Harvey Babkoffb
aDepartment of Communication Disorders, Ariel University Center, Israel
bDepartment of Psychology, Ashkelon Academic College, Israel
Auditory spectral temporal order judgments (TOJ) thresholds measure the ability to perceive
the order of two tones of different frequency in a pair. Hirsh1,andHirshandSherrick
2showed
that the threshold for this task was 17 ms regardless of the stimuli characteristics, although later
studies did not replicate their findings. In a series of studies carried out on 461 different partici-
pants we identified three patterns of response to spectral TOJ: very low thresholds (VLT, <5ms,
50% of participants); mid-rage thresholds (MRT, 5–120ms, 23% of participants), and very high
thresholds (VHT, >120 ms, 27% of participants). We studied how these response patterns are
affected by different parameters, as follows:
1. Methodology and stimulus characteristics. Short tone duration (5 ms) resulted in lower
prevalence of VLTs (29%,
χ
2
(2)=11.768, p<.01), while longer tone duration (40 ms) resulted
in significantly higher prevalence of VLTs (75%,
χ
2
(2)=7.014, p<.05). Using low frequency
tones (300 and 600 Hz) resulted in higher prevalence of VLTs (88% of participants,
χ
2
(2)=4.833,
p<.05), while using high frequency tones (1 and 3.5 kHz) resultedinlowerprevalenceofthe
VLTs (29% of participants,
χ
2
(2)=11.786, p<.01). Using adaptive or constant stimuli methods
did not significantly affect the response patterns (
χ
2
(2)=0.145 and 0.463, p>.05).
2. Group differences. Dyslexic readers had lower prevalence of VLTs (38%) and high preva-
lence of VHTs (46%,
χ
2
(2)=23.681, p<.001). Aging adults had half of young adults’ prevalence
of VLTs (24%) and double prevalence of VHTs (55%,
χ
2
(2)=12.471, p<.01). Interestingly, a
group of 15 aging adults who currently engage in non-professional music activity had all VLTs.
However, young adults with prior musical experience, but notcurrentlyengagedinmusicalactiv-
ity, had the same thresholds distribution as found for the general sample.
3. Cognitive ability. Performance on digit span was comparable for all three threshold groups,
but those with VHTs had lower score on WAIS-III matrices sub-test (mean =12) as compared
with VLT and MRT groups (mean =14.41 and 14.50, respectively, p<.05).
4. Auditory processing. Mean hearing level did not differ between the three thresholdgroups,
nor did thresholds in frequency discrimination, gap detection, duration discrimination, dichotic
TOJ, inter-aural time differences, inter-aural level differences, and intensity discrimination tasks.
5. Linguistic characteristics. Speech perception of words and non-words in SNR of 0 and
(−5) did not differ between threshold groups, nor was performance in speech perception with
background speech noise, white noise, and 60% time-compressed speech. Reading non-words
was significantly better for VLTs (mean =69.86, as opposed to 60.50 and 63.67 for MRTs and
VHTs). Accuracy in the Pig Latin task was lower for VHTs (mean =3.92, as opposed to 5.17
and 5.50 for VLTs and MRTs).
References
1I.J.Hirsh.J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 31,759–767(1959).
2I.J.Hirsh,C.E.Sherrick,J. Exp. Psychol.62(5), 423–433 (1961).
∗E-mail:
Leah.Fostick@ariel.ac.il
45

46

Free talks 2
47

Let’s face it: Attempted incipient unification of
differential geometric and dynamic concepts of
facial expressions
James T. Townsend∗and Kamilya Salibayeva
Indiana University, Bloomington, USA
This study continues our program of representationof faces in terms of modern geometric and
topological mathematics 1.Beforeattemptingapsychologicalandneurologicaltaxonomy and
theory, it would seem prudent to outline a reasonable mathematical framework for an idealized
vision of the face-stimulus space. We will henceforth confineourselvestothatarenaanddrop
continual reference to the “stimulus space”. To that end, we propose the following:
I. Face space is an uncountably infinite dimensional manifold M.
II. Gender related characteristics are embedded in Min such a way as there is a smooth tran-
sition from, say, more extreme masculine faces to the epicene, eventually to the extreme
feminine faces. We view the “points” in Mas containing all the geometric information
about the physiognomy of the individual face but not skin tint, hair distribution, etc. There-
fore, physiognomy information thought to relate to, say, ethnicity is retained.
III. Similar to (II), subspaces representing ethnicity “move” continuously into one another with
no clear boundary. Mathematically (II) and (III) imply that the pertinent subspaces are open
in the F-topology.
IV. Each face point in Mis taken in Cartesian product with many other manifolds. Someof
these are: A,Age;E,EmotionalExpression;H,Hairstyle. Thus,wemaydesignatethe
face fibre bundle related to Mas the 4-tuple F=[M;{A,E,H}].Observethatournotation
treats Mdifferently than the other manifolds—this is primarily a convention.
Now, when discussing facial expressions, we adhere to the following: each face is viewed as
a2-D,connectedandsmoothmanifold(i.e.,asurfacein3-D).Anexpressionisgeneratedbya
vector field on this manifold. Expressions from the Sender areevokedbythedynamicsofafinite
collection of muscle groups. The basic expressions are generated by a canonical set of specified
muscle groups. Each basic expression is produced by a certainvectorfieldwhichisassociated
with an infinite dimensional set of ordinary differential equations on the face-manifold. The
Receiver is endowed, through years of learning, with a long-term memory of faces. We suspect
that this memory is composed of, to a first approximation, an infinite dimensional vector space of
all the faces ever seen. The magnitude of a face vector is a monotonic function of the number of
times previously seen, attended to, and its novelty. Note that this construction need not assume
that the addition or average of two faces is a face although that is possible. The system is noisy.
The complete face space is a Cartesian product of faces, by contemporary gender, by emotional
expression, and by age: F×G×E×A×T.
Reference
1J.T.Townsend,B.Solomon,J.S.Smith,Computational, geometric, and process perspectives of facial
cognition: Contexts and challenges (Psychology Press, 2001), pp. 39–82.
∗E-mail:
jtownsen@indiana.edu
48

Hyperbolic geometry of Ehrenstein–Orbison type
illusions
Werner Ehm∗and Jiˇ
r´ı Wackermann
Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health, Freiburg i. Br., Germany
Alargeclassofgeometric-opticalillusions(GOI)resultsfrom superposition of simple geo-
metric figures (‘target’) with a pattern of other lines (‘context’), due to which the target appears
slightly distorted. In contrast to cognitive or neurophysiological theories of GOIs, our approach
is based on a purely geometrical representation of the phenomena. In our earlier study 1concern-
ing Hering type illusions, the target element was a straight line. Here we deal with the case of a
circular target, giving rise to phenomena (Fig. 1a) known as Ehrenstein or Orbison illusions.2
The idea is the same in both cases. We start from the observation that (segments of) straight
lines and circles are geodesics (i. e., paths of shortest length between two points) in their respective
‘base’ geometries, namely, Euclidean and hyperbolic. The context is assumed to induce a slight
perturbation of the base geometry, hence of the corresponding geodesics. A geodesic w. r. t. the
perturbed geometry then serves as a ‘prediction’ for the actual, distorted percept of the target,
τ
.
The metric tensor, H
α
,oftheperturbedhyperbolicgeometrydependsonthecontextand
on a real parameter
α
measuring strength of the distortion. An approximation of the form
τ
+
ασ
is derived for geodesics in the H
α
-geometry, where
σ
stands for the (computable!) shape
of the perceived distortion, and
α
is to be determined experimentally. We use the method of
compensatory measurement: the observer is presented a series of stimuli of the form
τ
−
ασ
with
varying
α
,andaskedtoselecttheonethatappearsmostsimilartoacircle. As seen in Fig. 1, for
some
α
>0thisadjustmentremovestheapparentdeformationattheleft-hand side of the circle
(Fig. 1a) while maintaining the largely circular appearanceelsewhere.
a) b)
Figure 1. Perceptual distortions induced by an
array of contextual curves: (a) Geometrically
exact circle appears as an oval form; (b) counter-
distorted (
α
=0.02) circle appears circular.
In a pilot experiment toward estimation of
α
,fourdifferentcontextswereused,intheoriginal
position or rotated by 90◦,tworepetitionseach(persubject). Asacontrolcondition,elliptic
deformations of the target circle on a blank background (no context) were presented in five trials.
The results obtained with eight subjects show a clear predominance of positive
α
s. There is no
evidence for the existence of a general horizontal–verticalbias.
References
1W.Ehm,J.Wackermann,J. Math. Psychol. 56,404–416(2012).
2W.Ehrenstein,Z. Psychol. 96,305–352(1925);W.D.Orbison,Am. J. Psychol. 52,31–45(1939).
∗E-mail:
wernehm@web.de
49

Ultrametric Fechnerian Scaling
Hans Colonius∗aand Ehtibar N. Dzhafarovb
aCarl von Ossietzky University, Oldenburg, Germany
bPurdue University, West Lafayette, USA
Universal Fechnerian Scaling (UFS) is a principled approach to computing subjective dis-
tances among objects from their pairwise discrimination probabilities. It is based on the general
concept of ‘dissimilarity function’ leading to a locally symmetric quasimetric in the context of
Dissimilarity Cumulation (DC) theory developed by Dzhafarov and Colonius 1and Dzhafarov 2,3.
For a finite set of objects, a ‘dissimilarity’ is a function that assigns to every pair of points a
nonnegativenumber vanishing if and only if the two points areidentical. Adissimilarityneednot
be symmetric and need not satisfy the triangle inequality. A dissimilarity satisfying the triangle
inequality is called a quasimetric.AquasimetricGis induced by a dissimilarity Dthrough the
dissimilarity cumulation procedure: for each ordered pair of points (a,b),adissimilarityD(a,b)
is replaced by the minimum of the sums of dissimilarity valuesacrossallfinitechainsofpoints
from ato b.Dzhafarov
4has shown that the procedure of computing quasimetric distances from
dissimilarities can also be described in terms of a series of recursive corrections of the dissimilar-
ity values for violations of the triangle inequality.
Here we show that the replacement of dissimilarity cumulation by a dissimilarity maximiza-
tion procedure, i. e., replacing D(a,b)by the minimum of the maximum value of the dissimilar-
ities across all finite chains of points from ato b,resultsinaquasimetricsatisfyingthequasi-
ultrametric inequality. In analogy to the triangle inequality, it can be shown that a series of
recursive corrections on the dissimilarity values for violations of the ultrametric inequality yields
the induced quasi-ultrametric distances, which is a basic requirement underlying many cluster-
analytic procedures for embedding subjective distances in ahierarchicaltreestructure.Properties
and limitations of this new procedure in the context of UFS have been discussed in Colonius
and Dzhafarov5.HereapplicationsofUltrametricFechnerianScalingwillbe illustrated with
empirical data sets.
References
1E.N.Dzhafarov,H.Colonius,J. Math. Psychol. 51(5), 290–304 (2007).
2E.N.Dzhafarov,J. Math. Psychol. 52,73–92(2008).
3E.N.Dzhafarov,J. Math. Psychol. 52,93–115(2008).
4E.N.Dzhafarov,J. Math. Psychol. 54,284–287(2010).
5H.Colonius,E.N.Dzhafarov,in:M.Deza,M.Petitjean,K.Markov (eds.) The mathematics of distances
and applications (ITHEA, Sofia, Bulgaria, 2012), pp. 129–132. [ISBN 978-954-16-0063-4]
∗Address for correspondence: Department of Psychology, Universit¨at Oldenburg, Ammerl¨ander Heerstraße 114–118,
26129 Oldenburg, Germany. E-mail:
hans.colonius@uni-oldenburg.de
50

G.Th. Fechner: Correcting historical misrepresentations
Ehtibar N. Dzhafarov∗aand Hans Coloniusb
aPurdue University, West Lafayette, USA
bCarl von Ossietzky University, Oldenburg, Germany
Fechner has been criticized for faulty mathematical derivations. This is misunderstanding,
even if largely due to Fechner’s own expository shortcomings. Fechner derives his logarithmic
law in two ways, neither of which uses the notion of JNDs or Weber’s Law in its traditional un-
derstanding. Instead they make use of the following postulate, which we will call “W-principle”:
Subjective dissimilarity between stimuli with physical magnitudes a and b (provided o ≤a≤b,
where o is absolute threshold) is determined by the ratio of these magnitudes, b/a. Fechner
uses the term “Weber’s Law” for both Weber’s Law and the W-principle, creating thereby lasting
confusion. Stated rigorously, the W-principle says that
D(a,b)=F(b/a),(1)
where Fis some function, and the subjective dissimilarity D(a,b)has the properties of unidi-
mensional distance: D(a,b)=0ifandonlyifa=b;otherwiseitispositiveandD(a,c)=
D(a,b)+D(b,c).This additivity property is central for Fechner’s theory, asherepeatedlystates
when discussing the notion of measurement.
Equation 1 implies
F(c/b)+F(b/a)=F(c/a).(2)
By trivially transforming this equation into the Cauchy functional equation on positive reals,
its only regular (in particular, nonnegative) solution is D(a,b)=Klog b
a,where Kis a positive
constant. Except for some unexplicated assumptions, this isFechner’sderivationpresentedin
Ch. 17 of his Elements 1.Thisvery“modern-looking”derivationwasoverlookedbyall Fechner’s
critics.
Ch. 16 of Elements contains another derivation, this one well-known but still misunderstood.
It reduces Eq. 1 to a differential equation. Assuming that F(x)is differentiable at x=1,
D(a,a+da)=dD(o,a)=Kda
a,(3)
where K=F′(1).ThisisFechner’sFundamentalformel,whosesolutionisthelogarithmicfunc-
tion. The derivation is sound, the much-derided “expedient principle” mentioned by Fechner
being merely his inept way of pointing at a trivially true property of differentiation.
If, in addition to the W-principle, Weber’s Law happens to hold too, together they imply the
“Fechner’s postulate” D(a,a′)=const,wherea′is the stimulus just-noticeably greater than a.
Fechner correctly tells us that if this constant is sufficiently small, then D(a,b)is approximately
proportional to the number of just-noticeable differences that fit between aand b.2
References and notes
1G.Th.Fechner,Elemente der Psychophysik.(Breitkopf&H¨artel,Leipzig,1860)
2ForadetailedanalysisofFechner’stheoryanditsrelationtoFechner’sthresholdmeasurements, see:
E. N. Dzhafarov, H. Colonius, Am. J. Psychol. 124,127–140(2011).
∗E-mail:
ehtibar@purdue.edu
51

52

Free talks 3
53

The circle of similarity
Stephen Link
University of California, San Diego, USA
Previous models of similarity rested on assumptions about the dimensionality of stimuli, the
distance between stimuli, or non-metric relations among stimuli. In particular Ekman (1954) in
“Dimensions of Color Vision” factor-analyzed similarity judgments of various wavelength pairs
and extracted five factors to account for the results. Later Shepard, using a distance approach,
needed only two dimensions to account for the results. In thispresentationIwillshowhowto
account for the results without assuming any underlying psychological dimensions, and account
for the similarities without estimating any parameters fromthesimilaritymeasures.
∗E-mail:
slink@mail.ucsd.edu
54

Who neglects base rate, perceivers or investigators:
The effect of base rate on Stroop and Garner effects
Vered Sh a k uf∗a,band Daniel Algoma
aSchool of Psychological Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, Israel
bSchool of Psychology, Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Israel
Stroop and Garner effects are psychology’s classic measuresoftheselectivityofattention
(indeed its failure) to a particular aspect of a multidimensional stimulus. Both effects have been
shown sensitive to a wealth of contextual factors revealed byAlgomandhiscolleagues
1–3.In
particular, the effect of color–word correlation has been the subject of much current research.
However, virtually all Stroop and Garner studies to date employed equal base rates of colors and
words, which may not reflect real-life probabilities. The neglect of base rate in Stroop and Garner
research is all the more puzzling given its proved role in the expected likelihood of events and,
consequently, on the pertinent behavior 4.
In a series of Stroop and Garner experiments with the dimensions of word and color and shape
and color, we manipulated dimensional correlation and the marginal base rate of the various col-
ors, words, or shapes. In the Stroop experiments, absolute reaction times (RT) remained invariant
across different values of correlation and levels of base rate. Selective attention assayed the Stroop
effect however did change: It increased with the number of congruent stimuli and uneven base
rate favoring such stimuli. In sharp contrast, in the Garner experiments absolute RT changed as a
function of correlation and base rate. Performance improvedwithdimensionalcorrelationandthe
magnitude of imbalance in base rate. These results reveal theinfluenceofbaserateonspeeded
measures of selectivity.
The results further highlight the structural differences between Stroop and Garner measures.
Finally, the results suggests the possibility of differences in the action of base rate when it is
applied to non-speeded measures of prediction and its application to speeded measures, particular
that of Stroop, which entails semantic relations between thetesteddimensions.
References
1R.D.Melara,D.Algom,Psychol. Rev. 110,422–471(2003).
2M.Sabriet al.,J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 27,515(2001).
3M.Dishon-Berkovits,D.Algom,Mem. Cogn. 28,1437–1449(2000).
4Y.Kareevet al.,J. Exp. Psychol: L MC 35,371–380(2009).
∗E-mail:
vshakuf@idc.ac.il
55

Is the flash-lag effect a special case of representational
momentum?
Timothy L. Hubbard∗
Texa s C hr ist i an U n ive r si t y, Fo r t W or th , U S A
The represented position of a moving target is often displaced in the direction of motion. If
the represented target position is assessed relative to the location of another (and usually briefly-
presented) stimulus, this displacement is referred to as a flash-lag effect (FLE)1,whereasifthe
represented target position is assessed relative to the actual target location, this displacement
is referred to as representational momen tum (RM) 2.Surprisingly,therehavebeenfewdirect
comparisons of these two types of displacement 1,3,4 .
Effects of several variables on the FLE and on RM are considered. Variables that have sim-
ilar effects on the FLE and on RM include target velocity, visual field, presence of a landmark
or reference point, target modality, presence of crossmodalinformation,attentionandcueing,
conceptual knowledge of target identity, control and movement planning, attributions regarding
source of target motion, frame of reference, and potential neural mechanisms. Variables that
have different effects on the FLE and on RM include oculomotorbehavior,useofenvironmental-
or object-centered coordinates, location of the target within the trajectory, level of processing,
predictability of the target, and expertise of the observer.
The majority of variables that were considered had similar influences on the FLE and on RM,
and this is consistent with a hypothesis of similar or overlapping mechanisms for the FLE and
for RM. In cases in which a variable had different influences ontheFLEandonRM,anaccount
reconciling those data with a hypothesis of similar or overlapping mechanisms for the FLE and
for RM could usually be suggested.
It is proposed that forward displacement of the moving targetintheFLEandinRMresults
from similar or overlapping mechanisms. Indeed, the FLE might even be a special case of rep-
resentational momentum in which location of the target is assessed relative to the location of
another stimulus rather than relative to the actual target location. Such an explanation is preferred
on grounds of parsimony: RM is simpler than the FLE (e. g., RM involves one stimulus and the
FLE involves the relationship between two stimuli), and RM accounts for a wider range of find-
ings than does the FLE (e. g., RM accounts for data involving a single stimulus as well as data
involving the configuration of two stimuli). Such an explanation also suggests testable hypotheses
regarding effects of variables studied for either, but not both, the FLE and RM.3
References
1T.L.Hubbard,Psychol. Bull. (in press).
2T.L.Hubbard,Psychonom. Bull. Rev. 12,822–851(2005).
3T.L.Hubbard,Front. P sy ch ol . 4,290(2013);doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00290.
4M.P.Munger,T.R.Owens,Vis. C o g n. 11,81–103(2004).
∗E-mail:
timothyleehubbard@gmail.com
56

Golden Section effects in visual cognition: A signature
for complex-system organization?
Mark A. Elliott∗a,JoyKelly
a,JonasFriedel
b,JenniferBrodsky
c,andPaulMulcahy
a
aSchool of Psychology, NUI Galway, Galway, Republic of Ireland
bDepartment of Psychology, University of Salzburg, Austria
cDepartment of Psychology, Union College NY, USA
We r ep or te d 1aseriesofexperimentsinwhichdecisionreaction-time(RT)totheshading
(light or dark) of the smallest section of multi-sectioned displays was significantly slowed when
the ratio between larger to smaller sections was equivalent to 1.61803..., a ratio also known as the
Golden Section. However, we have failed to find any conclusiveevidencefrompairedcomparison
tasks that Golden Sectioned displays are preferred over displays otherwise sectioned. Neverthe-
less we replicated the RT effects on several occasions and have found the effect to generalize to
displays oriented 90◦(to control for the possibility of visual field effects) as well as displays po-
sitioned further ways and closer to the experimental participants (which changed the retinal size
of displays). Using a simulation of the circular on-off surround structure of neurons in the retina
we analyzed the spatial frequency structure of our display matrices. Unlike all of the other ratios
used (over the range 1.468–1.668)the Golden Sectioned displays failed to include any frequency
components in the range ∼3–8◦of visual angle. It might be that the additional time take to re-
spond reflects an additional step in processing, such as feedback from later neurons coding global
display structure to reinforce a weak bottom-up signal in visual and extra-striate visual cortex
where neurons possess receptive fields of size 3–8◦.Totestthishypothesis,weaddedvisual
noise to each display matrix, convoluting the existing spatial frequency structure with a uniform
distribution of visual signal across the displays. We reasoned this would be sufficient signal to
activate neurons in all visual areas and would thus reduce therequirementforfeedbackandso
reduce the extent to which RTs would be slowed to Golden Sectioned displays. Our findings
confirmed this hypothesis. We deliberately used matrix areasindifferentratiosbecauseareawill
be directly analogous to the numbers of neurons engaged, and synchronized into assemblies, and
this relates to EEG work which has identified an absence of synchronization between assemblies
synchronized at frequencies where the ratio of one to anotherfrequencyistheGoldenRatio
2.
This is strongly suggestive of a basis for Golden Sectioning in the dynamics of neural activity.
References and notes
1M.A.Elliottet al.,in: D.Algomet al. (eds.) Fe c hner D a y 2 0 11 (International Society for Psychophysics,
Ra’anana, Israel, 2011) pp. 137–142.
2B.Pletzer,H.Kerschbaum,W.Klimesch,Brain Res. 1335,91–102(2010).
3PresentationofthisworkissupportedbytheNUIGalwaymillennium travel fund.
∗E-mail:
mark.elliott@nuigalway.ie
57

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Free talks 4
59

Spatial representations of numerical and non-numerical
quantities in the auditory domain: Pitch and number
Barbara Estner∗and Thomas Lachmann
Center for Cognitive Science,University of Kaiserslautern, Germany
Spatial associations of magnitudes with response sides exist throughout a broad variety of
stimulus dimensions (e. g. length, numerical size, physicalsize,pitchheight). Thecommonun-
derlying theory of this stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) states that small magnitudes are
associated with left or lower responses while large magnitudes are associated with right or up-
per responses, resulting in higher speed and accuracy for compatible trials. These relations are
assumed to be caused by linear representations of magnitudes, e. g. the SNARC effect for num-
bers1results of an internal mental number line on which numbers areorderedascendingfrom
left to right. In contrast, the SPARC effect for pitch heights2is based on a vertical magnitude
representation, i. e., pitch is ordered on a scale from low to high.
In the past, relations between dimensions have been investigated. A well-known example
is the size congruity paradigm 3that examines the interaction of physical and numerical sizeof
single digits in the visual domain: When participants have todecidewhichisthenumerically
smaller or larger of two presented digits, responses are faster when physical and numerical size are
congruent. Recent research 4shows that this interaction takes place on the decision level(‘shared
decisions account’) rather than on the representational level of stimulus processing: Congruity
effects are only found when magnitude is relevant for the task. The authors predict that this
account should also hold true for other domains that can be categorized in terms of magnitude. 4
The present study investigated the relation between number and pitch in the auditory domain.
Similarly to the size congruity effect in the visual domain, we expected faster responses when
number magnitude and pitch height are congruent (e. g. a smallnumberpresentedinlowpitch).
To test this, p a rt i c ip a nt s h a d t o e i t h er p e r fo r m a ma g n i t ud e comparison or a parity judgment
task on numbers sung in different pitch heights for a horizontal and a vertical response setting.
While in the vertical setting congruency effects were indeedtaskdependentbutreversed,our
findings in the horizontal setting showed no congruency effect for both tasks, and the SPARC
effect completely disappeared when numerical magnitude wasnottaskrelevant.
Our findings in the auditory domain with pitch and number show that the congruity effects
predicted by the shared decisions account could not be replicated and were, if at all present,
reversed. The dependency of pitch-to-space associations ontaskpropertiesinthehorizontaldo-
main, however, goes in line with the assumption that the observed relation of pitch and number
originates on the decision level of stimulus processing. Altogether our results support the view of
acommonunderlyingprocessingarchitectureofpitchheightandnumbermagnitude,butfurther
research is needed to clarify the role of shared decisions.
References
1S.Dehaeneet al.,J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 122,371–396(1992).
2P.Lidjiet al.,J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 33,1189–1207(2007).
3A.Henik,J.Tzelgov,Mem. Cogn. 10,389–395(1982).
4S.Santens,T.Verguts,Cognition 118,94–110(2011).
∗E-mail:
barbara.estner@sowi.uni-kl.de
60

Measuring unconscious cognition without unconscious
stimuli: Beyond the zero-awareness criterion
Thomas Schmidt∗
University of Kaiserslautern, Germany
Idiscusstwodifferentlinesofattackforestablishingunconscious cognition. Traditionally,
unconscious perception is demonstrated by simple dissociations between direct measures (D)of
visual awareness and indirect measures (I)ofprocessingper se;itissaidtooccurwhenIhas
some nonzero value while Dis at chance level. In contrast, double dissociations occur when
some experimental manipulation has opposite effects on Iand D,forinstance,increasingpriming
effects despite decreasing prime identification performance. I will show that double dissociations
do not require unconscious stimuli to yield evidence for unconscious processing, and that they
work under much weaker measurement assumptions than does thetraditionalzero-awareness
criterion1,2 .Iwillgiveexamplesofdoubledissociationsfromdifferentresearchfields,including
masked priming and lightness illusions.
References
1T.Schmidt,D.Vorberg,Perc ept. Psy c h ophy s . 68,489–504(2006).
2T.Schmidtet al.,Front. Ps ychol. 2,169(2011).
∗E-mail:
thomas.schmidt@sowi.uni-kl.de
61

Apsychophysicalapproachtoearlyhuman
development
Patricia Hannan∗a,EugeneGalanter
b,andChristinaWight
a
aPlayWisely, LLC, Dallas (TX), USA
bPsychophysics Laboratory, Columbia University, New York (NY), USA
Viewin g h uman devel o pment throu g h the le n s of psych o physi c al principles reveals a clear
pattern and presents a new framework for observing, analyzing and developing human perfor-
mance abilities. Utilizing our knowledge of planes of space,axisofmotion,acenterofmass,
and the ‘what’ and ‘where’ streams of our motor, visual and auditory systems we can define
psychophysical metrics for human development. A new theoretical approach to human develop-
ment that incorporates psychophysical principles can enhance our ability to observe, analyze and
engage human performance through each stage of development.
This new framework is built upon the simple premise that gravity profoundly affects the form
and function of human performance. From how we move to how we learn, gravity determines
the way we navigate data within our body field and our visual field. There is nothing we do apart
from gravity. In fact, our bodies are equipped for data detection specifically as it relates to gravity
via our vestibular system and ‘where streams’ in each neurosensory pathway. Without gravity
the human form would not be symmetrical, sensory systems would not function properly and
there would be no universal platform (figure ground) for data detection, collection or continuity.
Gravity is the constant for the physics of movement as expressed through motion along and around
the body axis. It is the constant of gravity that brings directional form to the symbols and objects
we navigate within our visual field that give our world meaningandfamiliarity.
In the first year of life an average child masters control of Zaxis function before becoming
bipedal. A child learns to roll over (rotate), sit (balance) and crawl (translate) in the first year
of life before developing the ability to control Zaxis function in the vertical plane. All humans
have the capacity to translate on an axis once becoming bipedal without being taught. Enhancing
human performance by adding speed, flight and rotation require sophisticated coordination of
body parts and higher order problem solving to be acquired with proficiency.
This presentation shows a correlation between how we observeandanalyzemovementwith
how we experience movement.
Apsychophysicalapproachtoearlyhumandevelopmentprovides the opportunity to create
new interventions, technologies and programs for engaging human performance ability during
early development when intervention is most effective.
∗E-mail:
info@playwisely.com
62

The relational psychophysics paradigm: “Task switch-
ing” and data variability in comparative-developmental
studies
Viktor Sarris∗
Institute of Psychology, J.W. Goethe University, Frankfurt/M., Germany
The relational psychophysics paradigm has been mainly used and discussed in the light of
typical context-effect shifts. For instance, in previous research on the human’s and animal’s rela-
tional responding, several lawful transposition (TP)effects—i.e.,context-dependentshifts—were
found (mean data). Thereby, the comparative psychophysicaldataresultedfromtheapplication
of a training and generalization-testing methodology with atwo-alternativetwo-forcedchoice
procedure (2A2FC task)1,2.Notablythisparadigmimpliestheuseofa“taskswitching”method,
namely the immediate “switch” from the training phase to the testing phase thus resulting in
highly variable test responses.
In this paper, the nature of the comparative-developmental data variability is analyzed as a
task-switching phenomenon, thus taking into account the crucial inter- and intraindividual vari-
ability. This data variability was assessed from a reanalysis of several developmental studies with
children as well as comparative investigations with chickens3.Theresultsfromthesereanalyses
are mainly based on the systematic comparison of a within- versus between-design methodology,
with different human age groups and various infant-chicken groups tested for two psychophysical
dimensions (size, color), with an eye on the individual variability. Thereby the chicken’s inter-
and intraindividual variability turned out to be drastically higher than that for the young chil-
dren. Consequently, a data variability analysis rather thanthetypicalmean-changeapproachwas
studied here.
The present findings are interpreted in the light of a task-switching memory-load hypothesis.
Note that the human and animal subject’s “surprise,” due to the task switching from the training
to the test phases, is assumed to be responsible for the noisy statistical data of the perceptual
decisions needed for the respective TP findings. Naturally, the within-design data are much more
variable (“noisy”) than those resulting from the application of a between design methodology
(cognitive-load hypothesis).4
References and notes
1V.Sarris,Relational psychophysics in humans and animals: A comparative-developmental approach
(Psychology Press, London, 2006).
2P.Haufet al.,Behav. Processes 78,170–184(2008).
3V.Sarris,P.Hauf,in:A.Bastianelli,G.Vidotto(eds.),Fech n er D ay 201 0 (International Society for
Psychophysics, Padua, 2010), pp. 209–214.
4ThankstoPetraHaufandJeanneSchnehage-Pociforvariousjoint data analyses and discussions.
∗E-mail:
viktor.sarris@t-online.de
63

64

Free talks 5
65

Quantifying mental strain required to carry out everyday
activities by German, Japanese and Canadian students
Fri edr ich M ¨ul ler ∗a,NadineKakarot
a,ShujiMori
b,YukoSakaki
c,andLawrenceWard
d
aLeuphana University, L¨uneburg, Germany
bKyushu Unive rsity, Fukuoka, Japan
cChikushi Jogakuen University, Fukuoka, Japan
dUniversity of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
The International Organization for Standardization (EN ISO10075)definesmentalstressas
“the total of all assessable influences impinging upon humansfromexternalsources...”compared
to mental strain, which is defined as “the immediate effect of mental stress within the individual
... dependingon his/her individual habitual and actual preconditions. . . ”. While mental stress
is usually being evaluated using physical measures, Bartenwerfer 1proposed a category scale to
evaluate the perceived psychological tension (in German “Psychische Anspannung”) which is the
phenomenal component of general central activation and as such an indicator for mental strain. In
avoidance of unwanted context effects which might bias the given direct experience of strain, we
adopted the Category Partitioning procedure (CP)2as the method of choice for the quantitative
description of mental strain, expressed as degree of psychological tension associated with various
everyday activities. The CP promises a valid quantitative representation of perceived states, if the
related measurement instructions are considered3.
In order to verify proposed translations for the German term “Psychische Anspannung” and to
validate the suitability of the CP, students in Canada (CDN),Germany(D)andJapan(J),strictly
following the related measuring instructions, quantified the degree of “psychische Anspannung”
(D), resp. “sei-sin-te-ki kin-cho” (J) resp. “psychological tension” (CDN) which is required by
32 everyday situations, among them “watching the news in TV”,“uponawaking,realizingthat
one has overslept” and “fixing a defective electric main whilethewiresarelive”.
Taking the s m a l l n um be r o f s u bj e c ts i n to c o ns i d er a ti o n t h e o btained correlation coefficients
show almost perfect match between the data gained from students in Fukuoka, Vancouver and
L¨uneburg: r(n=10CDN/n=30D)=0.969, r(n=10CDN/n=30J)=0.975, r(n=30D/n=30J)=0.937. These
within an intercultural comparison obtained coefficients are in the order of comparisons between
comparable studies in Germany: r(n=18D/n=30D)=0.989 or a comparison between the female
and male participants in the Japanese study: r(n=12J,male/n=18J,female)=0.994, thereby confirming
that the mental strain required by well known activities can be reliably measured across cultural
borders. Beside of the general consensus the measured strainforafewsingleitemsmaydiffer
between nations. Japanese students experience higher strain while “getting stuck between two
floors in an elevator at night” but they are more relaxed when “looking for th e lottery ticket . . .
thinking to have won $250” than their German and Canadian counterparts.
References
1H.Bartenwerfer,Z. exp. angew. Psychol. 16(2), 195–222 (1969).
2O.Heller,in:L.Tent(ed.)Erkennen, Wollen, Handeln (Hogrefe, G¨ottingen, 1981), pp. 213–225.
3F.M¨uller,Advances in Occupational Ergonomics and Safety, Vol. II (ISOES, Cincinnati, 1996),
pp. 793–804.
∗E-mail:
f.mueller@leuphana.de
66

Yrj ¨
oReenp
¨
a¨
aandpsychophysics
Tap an i J au h ia i ne n∗and Dieter Schaffrath
Yrj¨
oReenp
¨
a¨
aSociety,Helsinki,Finland
Yrj¨o Reenp¨a¨a (1894–1976), the late professor of physiology at Helsinki University, was one
of the first in Finland to apply psychophysical methods in the research field of sensory physi-
ology. Reenp¨a ¨a obtained his scientific methodology mostlyfromGermany. Heregularlyvis-
ited colleagues at German universities, among others in Berlin, Freiburg, Heidelberg, Leipzig,
W¨urzburg, later also in Marburg (Herbert Hensel) and Erlangen (Wolf Dieter Keidel – visiting
professorship in 1964).
Reenp¨a¨a’s own experimental research in psychophysics started with studies of the taste sense,
and resulted in his academic dissertation in 1918. His further experimental studies concerned
vision, proprioception and muscular sense (Bewegungswahrnehmung), as well as audition. He
measured thresholds and discussed Weber–Fechner’s and Stevens’ laws as concepts for the phe-
nomenal quantity.
As Reenp¨a¨a very early realized that the psychophysical relation is basically an ontological and
epistemological one, he applied Immanuel Kant’s distinction between intuition (Anschauung)and
concept (Begriff)toformulatephenomenologyofsensoryperceptionastheprimary epistemolog-
ical step. He also found ideas of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Hans-Georg Gadameri,
of value for the interpretation of phenomenality in experimental observations, and for analyzing
the nature of the psychophysical problem from an eidetic point of view. He laid emphasis on the
sensory experience as the basis of all knowledge being given in noetic act of intuition, whereas
conceptuality as such is a product of interpretation of the noematic content as experienced. He
conceived phenomenality in terms of axioms, including axioms of simultaneity, quantity and in-
dependence, outlining the structure of the manifold of reduced sensory dimensions as a parallel
to that of conceptual orthogonality. In addition, the axiomsofdiscontinuity,andoflowerand
upper limits, characterize the primary sensory phenomenal space. Reenp¨a ¨a expounded his ideas
in numerous publications, mostly in German language.2–6
References
1H.Hensel,Allgemeine Sinnesphysiologie – Hautsinne, Geschmack, Geruch. (Springer, Frankfurt, 1966)
2Y.Reenp¨a¨a,Allgemeine Sinnesphysiologie. (Springer, Wien, 1936; Klostermann, Frankfurt, 1962)
3Y.Reenp¨a¨a,¨
Uber Wahrnehmen, Denken und messendes Versuchen. (Brill, Leiden, 1947)
4Y.Reenp¨a¨a,Aufbau der allgemeinen Sinnesphysiologie. Grundlegung einer Wissenschaft vom Beobach-
ten. (Klostermann, Frankfurt, 1959)
5Y.Reenp¨a¨a,Wa hr ne h me n, B eo ba ch t en , Ko n st it ui ere n – P h ¨a no me no log i e und Begriffsbildung der ersten
Erkenntnissakte. (Klostermann, Frankfurt, 1967)
6Y.Reenp¨a¨a,“
¨
Uber das K¨orper-Seele-Problem, neue philosophische Auffassungen”, in: H.-G. Gadamer,
P. Vog l er ( ed s . ) , Neue Anthropologie Vol. 5 (Thieme, Stuttgart, 1973), pp. 14–50.
7D.Schaffrath,Grenzfragen philosophischer und empirischer Bewußseinsbetrachtung. Das psychophysi-
sche Problem aus philosophischer Sicht unter besonderer Ber¨ucksichtigung der Sinnesphysiologie Yrj¨o
Reenp¨a ¨as (Akad. Diss., Rheinisch-Westf¨alisch-Technische Hochschule, Aachen, 1979).
8J.Tyrkk¨o,T.Jauhiainen,V.H¨akkinen,D.Schaffrath,Yrj¨o Reenp¨a¨a, Sinnesphysiologe und Philosoph
zwischen Finnland und Deutschland =Sitzungsber. Phys.-Med. Soz. zu Erlangen 10(1) (2006).
∗Address for correspondence: Yrj ¨o Reenp¨a¨a Seura c/o Tapani Jauhiainen, Uudenmaankatu 36 A 11, 00120 Helsinki,
Finland. E-mail:
Tap ani .Ja u hia ine n@w e lh o .co m
67

The ‘alley problem’: A neglected debate on size-distance
invariance in XVII and XVIII centuries
Riccardo Luccio∗
Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste, Italy
Aspecialproblemrelativetothesize–distanceinvarianceis the so-called ‘alley problem’,
which can be stated so: Looking from one end at a long alley having at the sides two parallel rows
of trees, these don’t appear parallel, but convergent. The problem consists in determining where
one must posit the trees, in order that they look parallel instead.
The first to afford the problem was the Belgian Jesuit Aguillon1who stated that the trees
had to stay along two opposite semi-hyperbolas. To demonstrate this, he showed that the trees
had to stay along two curves, obtained intersecting the visual cone with a plane, and obtaining
so the hyperbolas. The same was said by another Jesuit, Tacquet2,whogaveasimilar(buta
little clumsy) demonstration; and by a third Jesuit, Fabri 3(with no demonstrations). According
to Varignon4(again a Jesuit mathematician), which operated analytically, and not geometrically
as the previous ones, the general curve was a hyperbola only inoneparticularcase,andnotcor-
recting the data for the apparent distance of the trees. Doingso,however,wehaveaparadoxical
result: the lines where to posit the trees appear convergent,andthisispatentlyabsurd. Later,
Bouguer5showed that indeed Varignon had used in his demonstration therealdistances,andnot
the apparent ones. To obtain the apparent distances, one mustconsiderthatthefloorisperceived
as positively inclined in the distance; Bouguer gave an experimental measure of the apparent
slope, obtaining about 2◦to 4◦.Moreover,accordingtoBouguerthevisualspaceappearsas
asortoffunnel,ahalfcone,withraisededges. Withthesecorrections, we see that the trees
must go along two divergent straight lines. D’Alembert 6arrived at similar conclusions, but also
gave a number of possible experimental suggestions. According to D’Alembert, who claimed his
precedence on Bouguer, the experimental results of the latter must be checked carefully in several
environmental conditions—but neither D’Alembert nor otherresearchermadesuchacontrol.
After D’Alembert, the problem was largely debated in the French mathematical world (by
Montucla, Gergonne, Lehot, and others), till the beginningsofthe XIX century, however without
any new interesting result. Thereafter the issue was unfortunately completely forgotten, and this
is a pity, because many problems today debated in psychology of perception (for instance, the
problem of the so-called ‘visually perceived eye level’7)couldgainadeeperinsightinthelight
of this old debate.
References
1F.Aquilonius,Opticorum Libri Sex (Moreti, Antverplae, 1613).
2A.Tacquet,in:Opera mathematica (Meursium, Antverplae, 1669) pp. 135–157.
3H.Fabri,Synopsis Optica (Boissat & Remeus, Lugduni, 1667).
4P.Varignon,Hist. Acad. Roy. Sci.,M.,1717–1719,pp.88–122.
5P.Bouguer,Hist. Acad. Roy. Sci.,M.,1755–1761,pp.99–112.
6J.-B.D’Alembert,Opuscules math´ematiques I. (David, Paris, 1761).
7R.P.O’Shea,H.E.Ross,Per cept i o n 36,1168–1178(2007).
∗Address for correspondence: Department of Life Sciences, via Weiss 2 (Pad. Q), 34128 Trieste, Italy.
E-mail:
rluccio@units.it
68

The excursions of Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) into the
moon illusion
Helen E. Ross∗aand G. Loek J. Sch ¨
onbeck∗b
aDept. of Psychology, University of Stirling, FK9 4LA, Scotland
bAnjeliersstraat 62 A-I, 1015 NH Amsterdam-Binnenstad, Netherlands
The moon illusion is the apparent enlargement of the sun or moon when near the horizon
compared to higher in the sky. Many authors claimed that the image was optically enlarged by at-
mospheric refraction. Magnification does occur when lookingfromathintoadenseatmosphere,
but minification occurs when looking from a dense to a thin atmosphere. Several classical and
medieval authors were aware of this, and suggested alternative ex plan atio ns. 1Apopularpercep-
tual account was based on size–distance invariance: the moonappearslargerbecauseitappears
further away, and the brain scales the apparent size in proportion to the apparent distance.
Castelli 2claimed that Galileo supported the size-distance invariance account. However,
Galileo’s published works mostly support some version of atmospheric refraction. Galileo pub-
lished to that effect under the pseudonym of Mauri in 1606 3and under his own name in 16104
and 16235.The1610publicationisinterestingbecause,inadditiontodescribingtheegg-shaped
moon illusion, he also describes the apparent enlargement ofthemoonsofJupiterbyafactorof
two or more. He later discussed the raising of the sun or moon above the horizon by atmospheric
refraction: this occurs in a treatise mentioned in a letter in 1638, published posthumously6.There
he suggested experiments on raising the sun’s image above thehorizonthroughdifferentlengths
of atmosphere, and measuring the time it took to sink below thehorizon.Healsonotedthatlook-
ing through the atmosphere was not the same as looking from airintowater. Heshouldtherefore
have known that atmospheric refraction could not cause enlargement. Perhaps he became aware
of this, and refrained from writing about the moon illusion after 1623. He may have privately
accepted the size–distance invariance account in his discussions with his pupil Castelli, which
Castelli mentioned in 1639. It remains surprising that Galileo seems to have had little knowledge
of the available literature on refraction and the moon illusion, at least until late in his career.
References
1H.Ross,C.Plug,The mystery of the moon illusion (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002).
2B.Castelli,Discorso sopra la vista (1639). Transl. P. E. Ariotti, Annals of Science 30,1–30(1973).
3A.Mauri,Considerazione d’Alimberto Mauri sopra alcuni luoghi del discorso di Ludovico delle Colombe
intorno alla stella apparita nel 1604 (Caneo, Florence, 1606). Transl. S. Drake, Galileo against the
philosophers in his dialogue of Cecco di Ronchitti (1605) andConsiderationsofAlimbertoMauri(1606)
(Zeitlin and Ver Brugge, Los Angeles, 1976).
4G.Galilei,Siderius nuncius (1610) in: Galileo Galilei, Le opera di —;Vol.I–XX (Florence, Barb`era,
1968) (hereafter: GG) III,p.95.Transl.S.Drake,Discoveries and opinions of Galileo (Anchor Books,
New York, 1957).
5G.Galilei,Il saggiatore (1623) in: GG VI,p.354.The assayer,in: The controversy of the comets of 1618.
Transl. S. Drake and C. D. O’Malley. (Universit y of P hiladelphia Press, 1960).
6G.Galilei,Le Operazioni astronomiche,in:GGVIII,pp.462–463.
∗E-mail:
h.e.ross@stir.ac.uk; loek@lucinus.eu
69

70

Poster session 1
71

Separating predictive responses from reactive
responses in isochronous finger tapping
Rasmus B˚
a˚
ath∗and Geoffrey R. Patching
Lund University, Sweden
Finger tapping to isochronous pacing stimuli is a well established experimental paradigm
where the basic measure is the time difference between a participant’s predictive responses and
the pacing stimuli, the stimulus-to-response asynchronies. Two parameters of common interest
are timing variability and average offset from stimulus onset 1.Adifficultywhenestimatingthese
parameters is that at interstimulus intervals longer than 2 seconds participants regularly overshoot
the target interval and instead react to the pacing stimulus.Thesereactive responses result in a
left skewed, non-normal response distribution. See figure A for an example of the distribution
of asychronies for one participant at short (1200 ms) and long(2400ms)insterstimulusinter-
vals. Using the sample mean and standard deviation to estimate timing variability and average
offset is then not recommended as reactive responses may confound these estimates resulting in
considerable negative bias.
ABayesianhierarchicalmodelwasdevelopedthatmodelsasychronies as coming from a
right censored normal distribution. By setting the censoring limit, c,to100msitispossibleto
separate the reactive responses from the predictive responses resulting in parameter estimates that
are unbiased. After Kruschke 2,FigureBshowsadiagramofthemodelwhereyij is the ith timed
response from the jth participant. Comparing this model with classical moment estimators using
both simulated and experimental data3shows that the Bayesian model estimates timing variability
and average offset more accurately and with less bias compared to classical moment estimators.
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References and notes
1B.H.Repp,Psychon. Bull. Rev. 12,969–992(2005).
2J.K.Kruschke,Doing Bayesian data analysis (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 2010).
3TheexperimentaldatawasfromB.H.Repp,R.Doggett,Music Perc. 24,367–376(2007).
∗Address for correspondence: Lund University, Kungshuset, Lund, Sweden. E-mail:
rasmus.baath@lucs.lu.se
72

Octuplicate this interval!
Jana Birkenbusch∗,WolfgangEllermeier,andFlorianKattner
Tec hn is ch e Un iv e rs it ¨
at Darmstadt, Germany
Stevens’ direct psychophysical scaling methods 1rest on the assumption that subjects are ca-
pable of processing ratios of sensation magnitudes. This assumption became empirically testable
when Narens2stated necessary conditions of commutativity and multiplicativity to be satisfied by
the data. Their validity can be tested by magnitude or ratio production experiments3,inwhichthe
participant is instructed to adjust the magnitude of a comparison stimulus in a ratio por qto the
magnitude of the standard stimulus. The monotonicity axiom,whichisevenmorefundamental,
can be tested by determining whether presenting different numerals pproduces corresponding
ordered adjustments, i.e., whether representation of magnitudes occurs on a sensory continuum.
If different successive ratio productions are commutative (i.e., exchanging their order does not
affect the outcome), it can be assumed that the participant represents sensation magnitudes on
aratioscale. Inaddition,themultiplicativityaxiomcanbetestedtoshowthatsuccessiveratio
productions result in the same outcome as the single adjustments of their mathematical products.
If the latter property holds, the participants use the numerals like scientific numbers.
To test wh e t h e r th e se a x i o ms h o ld f o r du ra t io n p e r ce p ti o n, N=10 participants were asked
to adjust the duration of a comparison tone to specific ratios of two different standard durations.
In each trial, the standard interval (indicated by tones, presented via headphones) was followed
by a comparison interval of random duration. The comparison interval had to be adjusted to a
pmultiple of the standard (p∈{1,2,3,4,6,8}). In addition, there were five types of successive
adjustments (per standard), required for the commutativityandmultiplicativitytests, inwhich
participants had to extend a previously adjusted comparisoninterval(e.g.,ptimes as long as the
standard) by another ratio production factor q.Eachparticipantproducedtwelveadjustmentsof
each type, resulting in a total 264 of adjustments.
In line with previous findings obtained for other sensory continua such as area 4,pitch
5,or
loudness 6,monotonicityheldforthedurationadjustmentsofallparticipants. Significant viola-
tions of commutativity were found in 12.5 % of all pertinent tests, whereas multiplicativity was
violated in 32% of the tests. These results demonstrate that participants are quite capable of pro-
cessing duration on a ratio scale level, but that the numbers used to describe perceived duration
cannot be taken at face value. Thus, the fundamental assumption of Stevens’ direct scaling meth-
ods is of restricted validity for the perception of duration:evenifaratioscaleofdurationmaybe
assumed, the overt responses cannot be interpreted as directly reflecting that internal scale.
References
1S.S.Stevens,Am. J. Psychol. 49,308–319(1956).
2L.Narens,J. Math. Psychol. 40,109–129(1996).
3R.Luce,Psychol. Rev. 109,520–532(2002).
4T.Augustin,K.Maier,Acta Psychol. 129,208–216(2008).
5F.Kattner,W.Ellermeierin:C.Leth-Steensenet al. (eds.) Fech n e r D ay 2012 (International Society for
Psychophysics, Ottawa, 2012), pp. 244–249.
6K.Zimmer,Pe rc e p t . P sych o p hys. 67,569–579(2005).
∗Address for correspondence: Technische Universit¨at Darmstadt, Alexanderstrasse 10, D-64283 Darmstadt, Germany.
E-mail:
birkenbusch@psychologie.tu-darmstadt.de
73

Afixed-linksmodelingapproachtoelucidate
measurement impurity in reaction time data
Natalie Borter∗,StefanJ.Troche,andThomasH.Rammsayer
University of Bern, Switzerland
In traditional structural-equation modelling, a homogenous set of manifest variables are seen
as equivalent indicators of the investigated latent variable. Performance measures obtained from
cognitive tasks, however, may represent not only the conceptofinterestbutcanalsobeconsidered
an outcome of various underlying processes and, thus, resultinso-calledimpuremeasurements.
To quan t i f y a n d d is s o c ia t e v a r i a nc e d u e to t h e co n ce p t of i n t erest from variance from other pro-
cesses, the fixed-links modelling approach was introduced 1.Forexample,reactiontime(RT)on
tasks with increasing task complexity may involve common variance due to basic aspects of infor-
mation processing as well as variance caused by the experimental manipulation of task complex-
ity. In contrast to traditional structural-equation models, in fixed-links models, the links relating
the latent variables to the manifest variables are fixed according to theoretical expectations.
In the present study, this approach was used to model data obtained by the Hick reaction-time
paradigm. According to Hick‘s law, there is a linear increaseinRTwiththebinarylogarithmof
the number of equally likely response alternatives2.Therefore,theaverageresponsetimeforone,
two, and four response alternatives is expected to increase linearly. To separate variance due to
experimental manipulation from common variance due to basicaspectsofinformationprocessing
by means of a fixed-links modelling approach, 130 participants performed a RT task with three
levels of task complexity (one, two, and four response alternatives). Two independent sources
of variance were modelled: (1) a constant process representing basic aspects of information pro-
cessing unrelated to experimentally manipulated task complexity and (2) an experimental process
increasing with task complexity. The representation of the constant process was fixed to equal
unity for all conditions, whereas the shape of the experimental process was assumed to be strictly
increasing with complexity. The Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) of a gen-
eral linear increase, as predicted by Hick’s law, did not fit the data well (
χ
2=2.17,df =1, p=.140,
CFI = 0.99, TLI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.098). Therefore, the fixationsoftheincreasingfactorwere
systematically altered until an excellent model fit was achieved (
χ
2=0.00,df =1, p=.99, CFI = 1,
TLI = 1.02, RMSEA = 0.00). The fixations were 1, 1.52, and 2.92 for the increasing number of re-
sponse alternatives (Fig. 1). These results challenge the implicit notion of a homogenous process
underlying Hick‘s law. Furthermore, our findings indicate that fixed-links modelling provides a
useful approach to solve the impurity problem.
Figure 1. Fixed-links modelling of Hick data with two independent
processes. H1, H2, H4 = Hick task with one, two, four alternatives.
References
1K.Schweizer,Intelligence 35,591–604(2007).
2W.E.Hick,Q. J. Exp. Psychol. 4,11–26(1952).
∗Address for correspondence: Fabrikstrasse 8, 3012 Bern, Switzerland. E-mail:
natalie.borter@psy.unibe.ch
74

Effects of syntactic and semantic information in music
composition on subjective perception of time
Jos´
eL.O.Bueno
∗and Andrea T. Parreira
Center for Experimental Aesthetics, University of S ˜
ao Paulo, Ribeir˜
ao Preto, Brazil
It is well established that varied compositional elements ofsimilarmusicexcerptscandiffer-
ently distort differently the subjective time estimation1–3.Syntacticandsemanticelementsofa
piece of art are components which affect aesthetic appreciation4.Thisstudyaimedtoexamine
the influence of syntactic and semantic properties of musicalstimulusontimeestimates,using
excerpts from the piece ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ by the Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky.
The piece has metaphorical-descriptivefree-form compositional sections (hereafter Paint-Music)
inspired by some of Victor Hartmann’s paintings followed by ‘Promenade’ sections which are
structured upon a theme-and-variations form. It was proposed that these varied compositional
elements of Promenades might exert different influences on time estimates. This study involved
180 Brazilian undergraduates of both genders, with no systematic study in music, aged from 18
to 35 years old. The participants (n=180) were divided in three groups, each one related to one
of three previous-to-stimulus verbal-instruction conditions: syntactic (SYN), semantic (SEM),
and absent information (ABS). They were prospectively informed that the experiment implied a
time estimation task. In a training phase, participants listened to the Promenade 1 preceded by a
general SYN-, SEM-, or ABS-information concerning the wholepiece. ImmediatelyafterProme-
nade 1 listening, participants were instructed to reproduceitsdurationusingacomputerkeyboard.
After that, the participants of each group were submitted to two trials, one with the presentation
of Paint-Music ‘Gnomus’ followed by Promenade 2 and another of Paint-Music ‘Bydlo’ followed
by Promenade 4. The order of trials was counterbalanced amongtheparticipantsofeachgroup.
In each trial, participants received specific information corresponding to their group and music
excerpt, listened to the Paint-Music, received instructionregardingthetimereproductiontask
relative to the Promenade, listened to the Promenade, and reproduced the Promenade duration.
The preliminary analysis showed an effect of order presentation of ‘Promenades’ and thus the
data analysis of this experimental phase was made considering only the first Promenade stimu-
lus presented to each participant. The results showed that the time estimation of the group with
syntactic information relative to Promenade 2 was shorter than the time estimation of the group
with semantic information relative to Promenade 2. The results also showed that the time estima-
tion of the group with syntactic information relative to Promenade 4 was shorter than the groups
with semantic and absent information relative to Promenade 4. The results indicate that there was
an influence of perceived cognitive aspects while listening to genuine musical excerpts on time
perception. This influence can be mainly associated with the large scale musical cognitive (mode
and tempo) and verbal (syntactic and semantic) aspects.
References
1J.L.O.Bueno,E.Firmino,A.Engelmann,Perc e pt. Moto r S k i l l s 94,541–547(2002).
2E.A.Firmino,J.L.O.Bueno,J. New Music Res. 37(4), 275–297 (2008).
3J.L.O.Bueno,D.Ramos,Pe rcep t . M o t or Ski l l s 105,1087–1092(2007).
4D.Berlyne,Studies in the new experimental aesthetics (Wiley, New York, 1974).
∗E-mail:
jldobuen@usp.br, andreathame@gmail.com
75

Birds of a feather who flock together still don’t
assimilate
Arturo Calderona,DebraZellner
∗a,JenniferCobuzzi
b,andScottParker
b
aDepartment of Psychology, Montclair State University, USA
bDepartment of Psychology, American University, USA
Two t y pe s of h e do ni c c o n te x t e ff e c t s h a v e b e e n s e en : a ss i m i l ation and contrast. Assimilation
is when the target stimulus becomes more hedonically similartothecontextstimuliwhenitis
judged in the context of those stimuli 1.Ontheotherhand,contrastiswhenthehedonicjudgment
of the target stimulus moves away from the context stimuli2.
What determines whether assimilation or contrast is found? It has been suggested that assim-
ilation occurs with simultaneous presentation of the context and target stimuli whereas contrast
occurs with sequential presentation1.Ithasalsobeenproposedthatthemindsetoftheparticipant
at the time of judgment can affect whether assimilation or contrast is seen3.Subjectsprimedto
observe similarities will tend to show assimilation in theirjudgments,whereassubjectsprimedto
observe differences will show contrast. One way to prime suchsimilaritiesistoassignthecontext
and target stimuli to the same category4.
This study demonstrated contrast rather than assimilation using simultaneous presentation
of two sets (finches and warblers) of three birds (one hedonically neutral bird flanked by two
hedonically positive birds). Subjects in all groups were told that all of the stimuli they viewed
were from the same category of stimuli (warblers or finches). In addition, three groups of subjects
were given a task prior to giving hedonic judgments in which they looked for a similarity among
the context and target stimuli (Group Similarity—a common characteristic) or differences (Group
Rank—rank how much they like the 3 birds, and Group Favorite—pick their favorite). Another
group (Group Context) was given no task prior to giving hedonic judgments and Group Control
just saw and rated the target birds.
Mean attractiveness ratings of the target finch and warbler were computed for each subject in
each group. A Kruskal–Wallis test comparing those means among the five groups was significant,
H(4)=13.9, p=.008. Mann–Whitney tests comparing all of the groups found that all of the
experimental groups rated the target birds as significantly less attractive than did the control group
(all p<.02). No other differences were significant (all p>.3).
Although context and target birds were grouped within a category, simultaneous presentation
of the target and context birds always resulted in contrast, never assimilation. This was true even
for subjects who thought about how the birds are similar. ThissupportsFechner
5who thought
that both simultaneous and sequential presentation of stimuli produce hedonic contrast.
References
1D.H.Wedell,A.Parducci,R.E.Geiselman,J. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 23,230–249(1987).
2D.A.Zellner,E.A.Rohm,T.L.Bassetti,S.Parker,Psychon. Bull. Rev. 10,468–473(2003).
3L.Damisch,T.Mussweiller,H.Plessner,J. Exp. Psychol. A ppl . 12,166–178(2006).
4H.Bless,N.Schwarz,Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 28,159–172(1998).
5G.Th.Fechner,Vo r s c hu le de r A e st he tik I I (2nd ed., Breitkopf & H¨artel, Leipzig, 1898).
∗Address for correspondence: Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ 07043, USA.
E-mail:
zellnerd@mail.montclair.edu
76

Musical tonal modulation between minor keys and
subjective time
´
Erico A. Firmino∗and Jos ´
eL.O.Bueno
Center for Experimental Aesthetics, University of S ˜
ao Paulo, Ribeir˜
ao Preto, Brazil
In Western traditional music, key is the compositional tonalenvironmentinducedbymusical
notes and chords, and it may be of major or minor types. Tonal modulation is the key change, that
is, a development beginning at an original key, passing through a transitional section, and arriving
at a destination key. The interkey distance is measured by thenumberofcommonnotesshared
between the two underlying musical scales of the involved keys: the lesser the note commonality,
the longer the distance.
By using only major keys, Firmino and Bueno 1presented four chord progressions unfolding
close-sudden, distant-sudden, distant-gradual modulations, and a control no-modulation. Sudden
and gradual modulations respectively refer to a few or many chords taken to modulate. Each
participant listened to one progression and then retrospectively reproduced its duration using a
computer keyboard. The authors found tonal modulations eliciting time estimations as an inverse
function of interkey distances, with major impact for suddenmodulations. Inturn,thepresent
study investigated the influence of tonal modulations between minor keys on time estimations
with the same method of Firmino and Bueno 1.Theeffectsforminor-keysmodulationswerevery
similar to that for major-keys ones.
The stretching of the subjective time has been mainly explained by the amount or complexity
of information2,thedemandofattentionrequiredbythestimulusand/ortask3,andtheamount
of contextual information surrounding stimulus and task 4.However,suchmodelsdonotconfirm
these data. Tonality and time are supposed to be acquired by implicit learning once both seem to
be learned incidentally, by passive exposition, and throughlong-term.Suchmusicaltimeknowl-
edge fits the semantic memory concept stated by Schacter and Tulving5.Themulti-component
model for working memory by Baddeley6claims that information to be remembered must be re-
hearsed in order to prevent its decay and that any sound is verbally processed by the phonological
loop component. However, both the present stimuli and responses are nonverbal.
Alternatively, Firmino and Bueno 1proposed the Expected Development Fraction (EDF) model
which can also explain the present data. It claims that if an interkey distance is traversed, an ex-
pected temporal development (in musical semantic memory) longer than the perceived duration
(in musical implicit working memory) is evoked. Such disproportion or fraction is applied to
perceived duration, leading to shortening of time.
References
1E.A.Firmino,J.L.O.Bueno,J. New Music Res. 37(4), 275–297 (2008).
2R.Ornstein,On the experience of time (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1969).
3R.E.Hickset al.,Am. J. Psychol. 90,431–446(1976).
4R.A.Block,M.Reed,J. Exp. Psychol. 4,656–665(1978).
5D.Schacter,E.Tulving,in:D.Schacter,E.Tulving(eds.)Memory Systems (MIT Press, Cambridge MA,
1994), pp. 1–38.
6A.Baddeley,Curr. Biol. 20(4), 136–140 (2010).
∗E-mail:
ericoaf@yahoo.com, jldobuen@usp.br
77

Object-based attention: A General Recognition Theory
approach
Daniel Fitousi∗
Department of Behavioral Sciences, Ariel University, Israel
Observers are often more accurate when responding to two parts that belong to the same
object, than when responding to two parts that belong to different objects1.Thissame object
advantage is the hallmark of object-based research. It entails that objects are the elementary units
of attentional selection. However, the internal representations that govern object selection are still
not well understood.
The present work proposes a rigorous approach to modeling andtestingobject-basedatten-
tion that relies on the concept of perceptual independence2, 3 .Ifobject-basedattentionexists,
then features from a single object should exhibit stronger dependencies than do features from
two different objects. To test this idea, I employed the General Recognition Theory (GRT)4–
amultidimensionalelaborationofsignaldetectiontheory.TheGRTaffordstheassessmentof
various forms of violations of independence and separability, and is capable of providing detailed
descriptions of the underlying representation of multidimensional stimuli.
Four observers participated in the experiment. Stimuli weresimilartothoseusedintheclassic
study by Duncan 1,andconsistedofaboxandabarsuperimposedoverit. Twogapsappeared,
either on the two sides of the box (i. e., within-object condition), or on the left side of the box and
the bar (i. e., across-objects condition). Stimuli were presented briefly, and were followed by a
masking pattern. Observers reported the location (bottom ortop)ofthetwogaps.
Responses were summarized in identification confusion matrices. Of the four observers, two
exhibited the same object advantage.Toassessviolationsofperceptualindependence,perceptual
separability, and decisional separability, GRT tests were held. Consistent patterns obtained across
all four observers. Sampling independence (SI), which is related to perceptual independence,
failed in both within-object and across-objects conditions. Marginal Response Invariance (MRI),
which is related to perceptual and decisional separability,heldinbothconditions. Macrosignal
detection analyzes, which are related to perceptual and decisional separability, held, showing
equality of sensitivity (d′)andresponsebias(c)parameters.Themostlikelyinterpretationofthis
outcome is that perceptual independence is violated and perceptual and decisional separability
hold, with objects and non-objects alike!
Taken toge t h e r , t h e r es u l ts c a s t s e r i ou s d ou bt s o n t h e v a l i d ty of object-based attention: (a) when
presented in close spatial proximity, features that belong to different objects are perceptually de-
pendent, just like features that belong to the same object, (b) the internal representations underly-
ing objects and non-objects are very similar, (c) the obtainment of same object advantage cannot
distinguish objects from non objects in terms of their internal representation.
References
1J.Duncan,J. Exp. Psy. Hum. Perc. Perf. 113,1–517(1984).
2W.Garner,J.Morton,Psychol. Bull. 72,233–259(1969).
3D.Fitousi,Atten. Percept. Psychophys. 75,983–1000(2013).
4G.Ashby,J.Townsend,Psychol. Rev. 93,154–179(1986).
∗Address for correspondence: Ariel University, Ariel, Israel. E-mail:
danielfi@ariel.ac.il
78

Short-term learning effect in different psychoacoustic
measures
Leah Fostick∗
Department of Communication Disorders, Ariel University Center, Israel
Studies which use psychoacoustic tasks differ in regard to stimuli properties and methods,
but also in regard to the number of trials and blocks. Two previous studies showed a significant
learning effect for spectral temporal order judgment (TOJ),butnoneforspatialTOJ
1,2.The
aim of the current study was to replicate and expand previous studies, using four psychoacoustic
tasks. The expectations were (1) that improvement would occur from session one to session two,
as a result of greater familiarity with the task and stimuli; and (2) that if these tasks require the
participant to make different judgments, then also the effect of learning will be different.
Seventy-four participants performed either spectral TOJ (N=19), dichotic TOJ (N=20),
gap detection (N=20), or duration discrimination (N=15). 1 kHz tones were used for all tasks,
and an additional 1.8 kHz tone for the spectral task was used asthe‘high’tone. Toneduration
was 15 ms for the spectral and dichotic TOJ and 100 ms for the gapdetectionandduration
discrimination tasks. Tones for all tasks were presented at 40 dB SL. All tasks were performed in
a2-forcedchoice2-down-1-upadaptiveprocedure.Threshold was calculated for eight out of 10
reversals and represented ISI for spectral and spatial TOJ tasks, gap length for gap detection task,
and duration delta between reference and target toned in the duration discrimination task. Each
task was performed in two consecutive sessions.
Figure 1. (a) Threshold in two con-
secutive sessions in four psycho-
acoustic tasks; (b) Percentage of
threshold decrease in two consecu-
tive sessions in four psychoacous-
tic tasks.
No threshold differences between first and second sessions were found in any of the tasks
except for spectral TOJ (t(18)=3.021, p<.01, Fig. 1a). Mean percentage of change was signifi-
cantly higher for spectral TOJ (54%) than for the other tasks (F(3,73)=6.44, p<.01, Fig. 1b).
Similar short-term training effect for three out of the four psychoacoustic tasks included in
the current study suggests (1) that short-term training doesnotaffectperformanceonmostof
psychoacoustic tasks; and (2) although different judgmentsarerequiredfordichoticTOJ,gap
detection, and duration discrimination, similar (non)training effect was found, suggesting shared
perceptual mechanism. The results regarding spectral TOJ replicate previous studies1,2 on sub-
stantial learning effect in this task. It also raise the possibility that the spectral information, which
was included only in the spectral TOJ task, give rise to a different perceptual process than in the
other tasks included in the current study, which did not involve any spectral information.
References
1M.Fink,J.Churan,M.Wittmann,Restor. Neurol. Neurosci. 23,281–289(2005).
2L.Fostick,H.Babkoff,Exp. Psychol. 2,1–12(2013).
∗E-mail:
Leah.Fostick@ariel.ac.il
79

Acasestudyoftimeperceptioninthehighlevel
gymnast
Patricia Hannan∗a,EugeneGalanter
b,andChristinaWight
a
aPlayWisely, LLC, Dallas (TX), USA
bPsychophysics Laboratory, Columbia University, New York (NY), USA
High level gymnasts realize bring into being defined points ofspace/timewithinparabolic
tumbling arcs that when consistently attained assure the quality of the skill and also provide
opportunities to initiate actions if needed to achieve a safelanding.Muchasmusiciansusedefined
notes on a musical score to assure consistent quality of a performance, gymnasts use consistently
placed, defined points of space/time (psychological moments) within the parabolic arc to achieve
consistent quality of performance. The gymnast assesses notonlybodyposition(limbpositionto
torso) but also orientation of the whole body to space (rotation by degrees in relation to the figure
ground) at each point.
The number of space/time points brought into being appears toincreasewiththeadvancing
level of the gymnast and the complexity of the skill performed. It also appears that complex
skills can not even be attempted without these points and if points are lost or not attained it is an
indication that serious errors and possibly catastrophic injury will occur.
Gymnasts seem to harness a type of fight or flight response into daily training in order to
repeatedly practice high level (and dangerous) complex flipping and twisting maneuvers within
parabolic arcs. After a gymnast has completed a skill within aparabolictumblingarcitcantake
up to several minutes to explain all of the assessments, choices offered, actions initiated through
each point in the arc to the final landing. In the explanation ofoneOlympiclevelgymnastwho
realized he snapped an Achilles tendon on a take-off, it took over 5 minutes to explain in detail
every moment that passed in the 0.9 seconds of the parabolic tumbling arc to guide his body
to a safe landing onto his back instead of his head or neck. These time perceptions seem to
mirror those of individuals who experience fight or flight responses during car accidents when
time seems to slow down and experience is magnified.
Gymnasts require consistent achievement of precise space/time measures required for a skill
to be performed optimally. Their training is very much about defining, repeating and perfecting
the psychophysical space/time interface to optimize performance and this requires a clarity and
depth of time perception not commonly used in daily life.
Areviewofresponsesfromaquestionnairegiventoworldclass gymnasts regarding space/time
perception during parabolic arc maneuvers is presented in this poster.
∗E-mail:
info@playwisely.com
80

The filled duration illusion with the method of
adjustment when filled vs. empty comparison
intervals are used
Emi Hasuo∗a,b,YoshitakaNakajima
c,TakuyaKishida
c,ErikaTomimatsu
c,KazuoUeda
c,
and Simon Grondind
aFaculty of M edical Sciences, Kyu shu Unive rsity, Fukuoka, Japan
bJapan Society for the Promotion of Science
cFaculty of D esign, Kyushu Univer sity, Fukuoka, Japan
d´
Ecole de psychologie, Universit´
eLaval,Qu
´
ebec, Canada
The duration between the onset and the offset of a continuous sound (filled interval) is often
perceived to be longer than the duration between two successive brief sounds (empty interval)
of the same physical duration. This phenomenon is sometimes called the filled duration illusion
(FDI)1,2.
In the present study, we examined the occurrence of the FDI with the method of adjustment,
where the participants adjusted a comparison interval to match a standard interval of 100, 280, or
520 ms. There were four conditions regarding the types of the standard and the comparison (in
this order), i.e. empty-filled, filled-filled, empty-empty, and filled-empty. In each condition, the
point of subjective equality (PSE) for each standard was obtained, and the amount of the FDI was
calculated by subtracting the PSE for the empty standards from the PSE of the filled standards
with the same comparison type. We were interested in whether the FDI occurs in similar manners
when the comparison was filled or empty.
The amounts of the FDI obtained from 41 participants, for eachcomparisontype,weresub-
mitted to a cluster analysis. Results showed that, for both types of comparisons, participants could
be divided clearly into two clusters: one without FDI and the other with clear FDI. The number
of participants in the cluster without FDI (29 for filled comparison, 34 for empty comparison)
was larger than that in the cluster with clear FDI (12 for filledcomparison,7foremptycompar-
ison). This was consistent with our previous study3.Thereseemedtobenoclearcorrelationin
the amount of the FDI between the filled comparison and the empty comparison; the participants
who showed clear FDI with one comparison type did not always show such large FDI with the
other comparison type. It seemed that the FDI is not a stable phenomenon both across and within
participants.
References and notes
1J.C.Craig,Perc ept. Ps y c hophy s . 13,99–104(1973).
2J.H.Weardenet al., J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 33,716–729(2007).
3E.Hasuoet al., Acoust. Sci. & Tech. 32,82–85(2011).
4WewishtothankYukiKamimura,YushiroTsubaki,andAyumuFurukawa for their help in data collec-
tion.
∗Address for correspondence: Faculty of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, 3-1-1, Maidashi, Higashiku, Fukuoka,
812-8582, Japan. E-mail:
hasuo@neurophy.med.kyushu-u.ac.jp
81

Spatial compatibility in duration discrimination with
manual and vocal responses
Giovanna Mioni∗a,b,FrancaStablum
b,andSimonGrondin
a
a´
Ecole de psychologie, Universit´
eLaval,Qu
´
ebec, Canada
bDepartment of General Psychology, University of Padova, Italy
Different types of information are sometimes processed by the same cognitive mechanisms;
aclassicalexampleisthatofnumberandspaceinformationprocessing. Although most studies on
this research topic revealed this time–space interaction1,therearestillopenquestionsregarding
the cognitive processes involved. In particular is under debate the existence of a time–space
interaction with characteristics similar to that of the number-space interaction: participants should
be faster when responding to brief intervals with the left hand and to the long intervals with the
right hand. Some experimental characteristics (e. g. use of manual responses) might impose a
spatial representation, with effects on temporal judgments. If this is the case, we should eliminate
the time–space interaction by asking participants to respond verbally, whichis tested in the present
study. Interestingly we used temporal accuracy rather than response time as dependent variable.
We c o mp ared p a rtic i p an ts ’ per f o rm ance w i t h voc a l o r m an ual responses in a time discrimi-
nation task where two pairs of visual stimuli (standard–comparison) were presented at the centre
of the computer screen. Three ranges of durations were employed: short (400–1000 ms), middle
(700–1300 ms) and long (1000–1600 ms); which were randomizedwithinblocksoftrials. The
comparison durations were 25% shorter or longer than the standard. In Study 1, participants were
instructed to judge if the second stimulus presented was longer or shorter than the standard by
pressing one of two keys with the left or right index. Responsekeyswerecounterbalancedbe-
tween participants with half participants assigned to a short–left and long–right condition, and
half assigned to the reversed condition. With this procedurewecouldinvestigatethetime–space
interaction. We predicted better performances when the responses are short and associated with
the left key, and better performances when responses are longandassociatedwiththerightkey.
In Study 2, participants were instructed to vocally give their response by saying aloud ‘short’ or
‘long’.
In the case of manual responses, no effect of response key was found, indicating that the
position of the response key was not affecting temporal performances. In both studies, a sig-
nificant interaction between the standard duration and the duration of the comparison (short vs.
long) was found, that can be considered as a time–time interaction. For short intervals, at 400 ms,
better performance were observed when the comparison was shorter, while at 1000 ms, better
performances were observed when the comparison was longer. Similarly, for middle durations at
700 ms, better performance were observed when the comparisonwasshorter,whileat1300ms,
better performances were observed when the comparison was longer. With long intervals, better
performances were observed at 1600 ms when the comparison waslonger.Ourresultssuggestno
time–space interaction and showed that the temporal performance is mainly related to the duration
of the stimuli employed.
Reference
1M.Bonato,M.Zorzi,C.Umilt`a,Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev. 36,2257–2273(2012).
∗E-mail:
mioni.giovanna@gmail.com
82

Stand by your Stroop: The Stroop effect decreases in
astandingposition
Noa Nunberga,MeravBen-Nathan
b,andDanielAlgom
∗a
aTel - Av iv U n ive r si t y, I s r ae l
bWestern Galilee College, Acre, Israel
The vast majority of experiments in today’s psychological science are done with the partici-
pant performing the task in a sitting position. Does performing the same task while standing make
adifference?Wearguethatitdoesespeciallyinviewoftheories of embodiment which recognize
the influence of the motor system on cognitive responses. For example, approach and avoidance
arm movements have shown to affect people’s liking of objectsandtheirreactiontimetopositive
and negative stimuli. Notably, in a pair of recent studies Koch and her colleagues1,2 have shown
that locomotion is also associated with the mobilization of cognitive control. Movements of the
entire body recruit control to a different degree. Thus, Kochet al.1found that stepping backward
improved performance in the Stroop task compared with stepping forward.
Espousing Koch’s insights, in the current study we moved a step further and hypothesized
that performance in the Stroop task improves by merely standing rather than sitting. Participants
performed in the classic color-word Stroop task, naming, while timed, the ink color of color
words. One group performed in the customary sitting position, whereas another group performed
while standing. For each participant we calculated the difference in color naming latency between
congruent (e .g., the word RED in the ink color red) and incongruent (RED in g reen) stimuli (= the
Stroop effect). The Stroop effect in the standing group was significantly smaller than that in the
sitting group, documenting better selectivity of attentionintheformerposition.Theseresultsare
best understood within the framework of Koch’s notions on resource recruitment. Mere standing
up appears to be a powerful trigger of mobilizing cognitive resources. People do boost their
ability to deal with conflict and difficult situations by standing up. Quite apart from the particular
results of this research, we issue a call for the study of the psychology of standing.
References
1S.Kochet al.,Cognition 109,133–142(2008).
2S.Koch,et al.,Psychol. Sci. 20,549–550(2012).
∗E-mail:
algomd@post.tau.ac.il
83

Context effects in estimates on objective scales:
Scale distortion?
Scott Parker∗,VictoriaKim,AshleyBuono,KathleenCaffery,BiancaCardiel Bernal,
Kelsey Devery, Trevor Godley, Jacob Leibowitz, Kaeley Jo Majewski, Laura McDonald,
Emily Messer, Angelica Posey, and Wynn Tashman
American University, Washington DC, USA
Perceptual contrast is well-known and familiar in both the sensory and hedonic realms. It
has been proposed1that a similar phenomenon might occur for the numbers that subjects use
in rating scales. Frederick and Mochon’s1Group RG (who estimated the weight of a raccoon
in pounds before estimating the weight of a giraffe) gave lower giraffe weight estimates than did
Group G (who estimated only the weight of a giraffe). (Group WG, who first estimated the weight
of a whale, gave enlarged estimates of a giraffe’s weight.) The authors attribute this assimilative
effect to a contrastive process on numbers: RG subjects who estimated a raccoon’s weight at (on
average) “22 pounds” regarded big numbers like 1000 pounds aslargerandtorepresentalarger
weight than did G subjects who hadn’t said “22 pounds”.
In our severely underpowered replication, zebras and elephants (more giraffe-like in weight
and habitat) replaced raccoons and whales. Group G subjects estimated the weight of a giraffe,
Group ZG subjects first estimated the weight of a zebra and Group EG subjects first estimated the
weight of an elephant. There were no significant differences among the three groups’ estimates
of a giraffe’s weight (p>.35). EG subjects’ estimates were highest (mimicking whale subjects1)
but, surprisingly, ZG subjects’ estimates were slightly higher than G subjects’ estimates. The
effect size separating our G vs. ZG subjects (Cohen’s d=−.06) differed significantly from that
separating Groups G vs. RG (d=0.5)1.Inaseparatestudy,subjectswhoestimatedtheweight
of “a dollar bill” (Group DG) in place of raccoons or zebras, also gave slightly higher estimates
of giraffes’ weights than did G subjects, again producing an effect size (d=−.04), significantly
different from that separating Groups G vs. RG1.Sotherewasnoassimilationusingzebrasor
dollar bills; similarity to the weight of a giraffe is not the issue. Our results did not differ from
those on Groups G and WG 1when Group AG subjects first estimated something much larger
than a giraffe—an airplane.
Thus two studies modeled on the prior one 1result in an asymmetry: “assimilative” data
resembling the prior results when giraffes’ weights are estimated after the weights of heavier
things but not when giraffes’ weights are estimated after theweightsoflighterthings.
It has newly been shown2that estimates of giraffes’ weights are uninfluenced by priores-
timation of the weight of a tricycle or an air conditioner. It seems that conceptual relevance is
needed for anchoring effects to occur, consistent with the results of our study using dollar bills
and airplanes. Scale distortion is an interesting idea that deserves further investigation.
References
1S.Frederick,D.Mochon,J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 141,124–133(2012).
2D.Mochon,S.Frederick,Organ. Behav. Hum. Dec. 122,69–79(2013).
∗Address for correspondence: American University, Washington DC, USA 20016-8062.
E-mail:
sparker@american.edu
84

Assessing response times and peak force of responses
to visual size and brightness
Geoffrey R. Patching∗and Rasmus B˚
a˚
ath
Lund University, Sweden
Togeth e r w i t h r e sp o ns e t i m e (RT) t h e f or c e of r e s p on s es t o s t imuli can provide important clues
about perception–action links in the human brain. 1In RT research, response latency is recorded
from onset of a stimulus to a minimal force criterion sufficient to close a sensitive electronic
switch. Response force (RF) and its time integrals are built up in the response over time, so
it follows that RT is a direct function of force magnitude. Yet, response force (RF) continues
beyond the minimum required for measurement of RT, so peak RFscanvaryindependentlyof
RTs . Unlike RT, which is a criter i o n based mea sure, a d i fferent set of assumptions underlie
assessment of peak RFs which are left implicitly to the discretion of participants.
The present work examines RTs and peak RFs to visual stimuli ofincreasingsizeandbright-
ness. Each participanttook part in two sessions. In one session operational feedback was provided
by way of an auditory beep when the RF exceeded a minimum criterion (1.5N), and reaction time
recorded. In the other session no operational feedback was provided. The first 18 participants
were not informed that the force of their responses was being measured; the remaining 18 partic-
ipants were informed. An aim was to examine relations betweenvisualbrightnessandsize,RTs,
and peak RFs, under typical, but otherwise uninvestigated, variations in experimental procedure.
In addition, the data were analysed using hierarchical Bayesian methods, which overcome
problems associated with null hypothesis significance testing.2First, the overall effect of experi-
mental instructions and operational feedback on RTs, and separately peak RFs, was examined by
way of a split plot Bayesian analysis of variance. Second, relations between stimulus magnitude,
RTs , a n d separat e ly peak R F s, w e re exam i n e d by fitti n g y=
α
1
θ
1−
α
2
θ
2+
β
,wherethevariable
ywas the standardized log values of RT, and separately the standardized log values of peak RF,
and
θ
1and
θ
2are the standardized log values of the luminance and area of the visual stimuli,
respectively.
The results of our analyses indicate that operational feedback and force instructions certainly
slowed RTs and reduced peak RFs, but provide no reason to believe there is any direct relation
between visual magnitude and peak RFs. Yet, believable relations obtained between RTs and vi-
sual magnitude which remained constant throughout. In sum, the present work supports the view
that assessment of RT, in terms of Pi´eron’s function, with changes in visual size and brightness
reflects the perceptual processing of stimulus magnitude. 3
References
1A.Angel,Q. J. Exp. Psychol. 25,193–200(1973); R.Ulrich,A.M.Wing,Psychol. Rev. 98,268–294
(1991).
2J.K.Kruschke,Doing Bayesian data analysis (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 2010).
3H.Pi´eron,The sensations: Their functions, processes, and mechanisms(M¨uller, London, 1952);
D. Pins, C. Bonnet, Percept. P s y c hoph y s . 58,390–400(1996).
∗Address for correspondence: Lund University, Department ofPsychology,Lund,Sweden.
E-mail:
Geoffrey.Patching@psy.lu.se
85

Implicit coding of the temporal structure of events
Patrick E. Poncelet∗and Anne Giersch
INSERM U1114, Department of Psychiatry, University Hospital of Strasbourg, France
We expl o r e th e m echa n i sm s invol v e d in t h e se n se o f ti me con t i nuity by examining how events
are processed within temporal windows. Events within temporal windows are judged as simulta-
neous, and the overlap and hierarchical organization of successive temporal windows is usually
supposed to underlie the sense of time continuity.1However, the concept of elementary time win-
dow is based on experiments in which subjects are explicitly instructed to decide whether two
stimuli are simultaneous or not, 2and our previous studies already suggested that asynchronous
stimuli judged to be simultaneous are nonetheless distinguished in time. In the present work, we
wanted to study these implicit abilities as directly as possible. To do so, we built a new test whose
aims were to verify the hypothesis that successive events that occur within ‘elementary time win-
dows’ are in fact distinguished in time; and to probe the time course of this coding and its content
(motion or not).
Our first paradigm was aimed at testing whether or not there is an implicit coding of motion
when two visual stimuli (primers) are presented in close succession. These primers were square
frames displayed on the right and left side of the screen with an asynchrony of 17 ms. After a
100 ms delay, frames were subsequently filled in, and this filling-in represented the target infor-
mation. Subjects had to decide on which side the last filling-in had occurred. Subjects were faster
to response if the last filling-in was to the side of the first primer. These results are exactly the
reverse of what was expected in case of motion coding. These results confirm that an implicit
asynchrony has an effect on the judgment, independent of motion coding (but consistent with the
prior effect3). However, we had to check if this implicit processing can be observed in a task
that does not require a temporal judgment. We thus built Experiment 2 which was the same as
Experiment 1 except that subjects had to detect a single target displayed to the side of one of the
two primers. At a 25 ms delay, subjects were faster when the target appeared to the side of the first
prime, whereas this performance advantage concerned the second prime side at a 100 ms delay.
Our data confirm that events are distinguished in time at an implicit level, independent of
the task at hand; especially our results exclude the role of any visuo-motor or motion pathway
activation. Moreover, the biases to the side of the second primer observed could be understood as
automatic moves towards the most recent event, as if the visual system is wired to prioritize the
last event. Since the asynchrony is unconscious, this might mean a permanent expectancy of the
future moment, which might play a role in the emergence of the sense of time continuity.
References
1M.Wittmann,Fro nt . Integr. Ne urosci . 5,66(2011).
2L.Lalanne,M.VanAssche,A.Giersch,Schizophr. Bull. 38,506–513(2012).
3C.Spence,C.Paris,Consc. Cognit. 19(1), 364-379 (2010).
∗Address for correspondence: Unit´e INSERM 1114-1, porte de l’H ˆopital Clinique psychiatrique, 67000 Strasbourg,
France. E-mail:
poncelet@etu.unistra.fr
86

On the effect of nontemporal stimulus magnitude on
perceived duration as assessed by the method of
temporal reproduction
Thomas H. Rammsayer∗and Martin Verner
University of Bern, Switzerland
Several studies suggest that perceived duration of visuallypresentedstimuliincreaseswith
increasing stimulus size. To elucidate the nature of this effect, two experiments were performed
using the method of temporal reproduction. In time psychophysics, performance on time percep-
tion is often explained by the assumption of a hypothetical internal-clock mechanism based on
neural counting. According to this account, a neural pacemaker generates pulses, and the number
of pulses relating to a physical time interval is recorded by an accumulator. Thus, the number of
pulses counted during a given time interval is the internal representation of this interval. Based on
these considerations, the effect of nontemporal stimulus magnitude on perceived duration should
be brought about by a positive functional relationship between nontemporal stimulus magnitude
and pacemaker speed. By employing a temporal reproduction task, the question of whether non-
temporal stimulus magnitude affects pacemaker speed was investigated based on the following
rationale: (1) If larger nontemporal stimulus magnitude speeds up the pacemaker rate, increasing
the size of the stimulus marking the target interval should result in longer reproduced (perceived)
duration. (2) If this assumption holds, increasing the size of the stimulus indicating the reproduc-
tion interval should result in shorter reproduced (perceived) duration due to increased pacemaker
speed during temporal processing of the reproduction interval.
In order to investigate whether the effectof nontemporal stimulus magnitude on perceived du-
ration can be explained by a direct effect on pacemaker speed,twoexperimentswereconducted
employing a temporal reproduction task. In Experiment 1, theeffectofnontemporalstimulus
magnitude on perceived duration was assessed by experimentally varying the physical size of
the stimulus that marked target intervals ranging from 800 to1200ms,whereas,inExperiment2,
physical size of the stimulus marking the reproductioninterval was varied. In Experiment 1, a sta-
tistically significant main effect of stimulus size on reproduced duration supported the notion that
large target stimuli were perceived temporally longer than small target stimuli. However, there
was no indication for a main effect of stimulus magnitude on perceived duration in Experiment
2wherephysicalsizeofthevisualstimuluswassystematically varied during the reproduction
interval.
The present findings clearly argue against the general notionthattheeffectofnontempo-
ral stimulus magnitude on perceived duration originates from a direct effect of stimulus size on
pacemaker speed. An alternative interpretation implicatesnontemporalcognitiveprocessesto
account for the effect of stimulus magnitude on perceived duration. When performing temporal
reproductions, participants have to attend to the interval to be reproduced, maintain the temporal
information, categorize it, make a decision, and, eventually, perform a response. Although not
directly involved in the genuine timing process, all these operations are required for successful
temporal reproduction. Thus, the effect of nontemporal stimulus magnitude on perceived duration
may be mediated by one or several of these processes.
∗Address for correspondence: Fabrikstrasse 8, 3012 Bern, Switzerland. E-mail:
thomas.rammsayer@psy.unibe.ch
87

Detecting and measuring auditory-cognitive interactions
in speech comprehension
Bruce Schneider∗,MeitalAviviReich,andMindaugasMozuraitis
Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada
Online comprehension of speech requires the smooth and rapidintegrationofanumberof
auditory and cognitive processes. The presence of competingsoundspresentchallengesthatare
likely to slow or disrupt one or more of these processes. When such disruptions occur, it is likely
that top-down compensatory mechanisms are engaged at different levels of the processing stream
to insure comprehension of the targeted speech. However, theengagementofsuchmechanisms,
and how this engagement might affect the different stages or levels of speech processing, is not
easy to determine. In this poster we illustrate how judiciousanalysesofcorrelationsbetween
measures of cognitive competence and speech understanding (a procedure that is akin to an anal-
ysis of covariance) can be used to identify when and at what level compensatory mechanisms are
engaged when listening becomes difficult due to the complexity of the auditory scene.
Imagine an auditory scene in which a listener is attempting tofollowaconversationbetween
two people in a quiet room, with one of the conversationalistssituatedtotheleftandtheotherto
right of the listener. Now suppose we contrast this scene withoneinwhichthesameconversation
is occurring in a room in which there is a connecting door to another room where a cocktail
party is in progress. Under such circumstances, the source ofthebabbleofvoicesfromthe
cocktail party would appear to be located directly in front ofthelistener. Thepresenceofthe
babble would be expected to interfere with the bottom-up processes leading to word recognition,
thereby requiring the listener to focus her or his attention on segregating the two talkers from
this babble of voices. In other words, attentional resourceswouldbedivertedtosupportstream
segregation and word recognition, leaving fewer resources available for the execution of the kind
of higher-order, more cognitive-level processing that supports, for example, theme extraction,
the integration of information with world knowledge, and thestorageofthisinformationfor
later recall. The extent to which higher-order processes areengagedinsuchasituationcouldbe
assessed by examining the correlation between measures of general cognitive competence (e. g.,
vocabulary size, reading comprehension) and measures of speech comprehension in different
listening environments. The greater the need for these higher-order cognitive abilities the more
likely it is that individual differences in the measures of these abilities will predict individual
differences in performance. If the task does not require a particular ability, or if either the quality
or quantity of attentional resources is severely limited in apopulation(e.g.,olderadults)then
we would not expect measures of this skill to be related to performance. In this poster we use
this technique to show that top-down lexical processes are engaged only when there is reason
to mistrust the information provided by bottom-up lexical processing of the conversation, and
that some measures of higher-order cognitive processes, which are highly correlated with speech
comprehension when listening is easy, may no longer be predictive of speech comprehension
when listening is difficult. In general, it appears that the auditory and cognitive processes that
are engaged in speech comprehension are modulated by a numberoffactorsincludingbutnot
limited to: 1) the complexity of the auditory scene, 2) the nature of the speech material, 3) the
task demands placed on the individual, and 4) individual differences in the auditory, linguistic,
and cognitive abilities of the listener.
∗E-mail:
bruce.schneider@utoronto.ca
88

Afreshlookatanoldconcept:Selectiveattention
to aspects of a stimulus
Vered Sh a k uf∗a,FlorianKutzner
b,andKlausFiedler
b
aSchool of Psychological Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, Israel
bPsychologisches Institut, Universit¨
at Heidelberg, Germany
The ability to attend selectively to certain attributes of the environment while ignoring others
is essential for adaptation and survival. One classic measure that tests the human ability of
selective attention is Garner’s speeded classification task. In his seminal work from 19781,Gar-
ner made a distinction between two major stimulus variables:dimensions,whichhavemutually
exclusive positively defined levels, and features, which exist or do not exist in a given stimu-
lus. With feature-generated stimuli, two stimuli types haveaspecialrole: thenullstimulus,
in which all features are absent, and the complete stimulus,in which all features are present.
The feature-dimension distinction or, more precisely the difference between present–absent and
present–present stimuli, has received sporadic attention in such diverse domains as similarity
judgments 2,multiplecuedecisions
3and contingency judgments 4.
In the present study we took a fresh look at this distinction, taking advantage of the abilities of
modern tools to measure reaction times individually for eachstimulustype.Wefoundareduced
ability to attend selectively, (i. e., more interference), for features generated stimuli, and no in-
terference for stimuli that are generated from dimensions. In a second experiment we embedded
this attributes in a richer social context using identity cards. Opposite to the results of the first
experiment, we found a reduced ability to attend selectivelyfordimensionsbutnotforfeatures.
Our results can be explained by the distinct representation of features and dimensions in the
stimulus space. This stimulus space is more elaborate in the dimensions-generated stimuli set,
but more impoverished in features-generated stimuli set. Possible explanations for the context-
sensitivity of selective attention as well as the special roles of the null and complete cells are also
discussed.
References
1W.R.Garner,J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 107,287–308(1978).
2I.Gati,A.Tversky,J. Exp. P sychol. Hum. Percept. Perf orm . 8,325–340(1982).
3A.Br¨oderet al.,Judgment & Decision Making 5,326–338(2010).
4L.Allan,H.Jenkins,Learn. Motiv. 14,381–405(1983).
∗E-mail:
vshakuf@idc.ac.il
89

Visual cortex GABA predicts perceived duration
Devin B. Terhune∗,SoniaRusso,andRoiCohenKadosh
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, UK
Our perception of the duration of events constrains our experience of the world and exerts
apivotalinfluenceoveramyriadarrayofcognitiveandmotorfunctions. There is emerging
evidence that the perceived duration of visual intervals is driven by the magnitude of stimulus-
specific neuronal activity in sensory brain regions1,2 .Endogenousconstraintsonthisresponse
may give rise to individual differences in interval timing. On the basis of these studies and inde-
pendent research demonstrating that
γ
-aminobutyric acid (GABA) dampens visual processing3,
and its neural substrates 4,wehypothesizedthatelevatedvisualcortexGABAimpairsthe cod-
ing of particular visual stimuli, attenuating visual processing and producing a contraction of the
perceived duration of visual intervals.
In this study, we tested the prediction that visual cortex GABA would be associated with the
perceived underestimation of visual intervals. As a measureofvisualintervaltiming,partici-
pants completed a duration discrimination task in which theyjudgedsub-secondvisualstimuliof
varying intervals relative to a constant standard interval.Toensuretaskspecificity,wealsoad-
ministered a motor timing task in which participants reproduced the duration of empty intervals.
We m ea su re d en d o geno u s in vivo resting state GABA and glutamate concentrations in visual and
motor cortices using magnetic resonance spectroscopy5.Durationdiscriminationdatawerefitted
with a logistic function and the point of subjective equalitywasusedasameasureofvisualtim-
ing, whereas the mean deviation of reproduced durations fromtestintervalswasusedasameasure
of motor timing in the duration reproduction task. We corroborated the internal replicability of
correlations and compared correlations using bootstrap resampling.
Perceived duration of visual intervals selectively correlated with GABA, but not glutamate,
concentrations in visual, but not motor, cortex, with elevated GABA associated with the perceived
underestimation of visual intervals. Perceived duration was unrelated to motor cortex GABA and
glutamate concentrations and duration reproduction performance did not covary with metabolite
concentrations in either region. These results demonstrateanatomical,neurochemical,andtask
specificity and they are consistent with the hypothesized role of GABA in visual interval timing.
Our findings bridge disparate results on the neuronal mechanisms underlying interval timing and
the neurochemical basis of visual perception and provide further evidence for the role of local
sensory-specific neural mechanisms in time perception6.Thepresentresultssuggestthatvisual
cortex GABA contributes to individual differences in the perceived duration of visual intervals.
References
1N.G.Sadeghiet al.,J. C ogn. Neurosci. 23,3829–3840(2011).
2J.P.Mayo,M.A.Sommer,Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 110,1506–1511(2013).
3A.M.vanLoonet al.,J. Cogn. Neurosci. 24,965–974(2012).
4S.D.Muthukumaraswamyet al.,Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 106,8356–8361(2009).
5N.A.Puts,R.A.Edden,Prog. Nucl. Magnet. Reson. Spectr. 60,29–41(2012).
6R.B.Ivry,J.E.Schlerf,Tre nd s Cogn. Sci. 12,273–280(2008).
∗E-mail:
devin.terhune@psy.ox.ac.uk
90

Factor analyses of power fluctuations in spoken
sentences of eight languages: Analyses of individual
data
Kazuo Ueda∗a,YoshitakaNakajima
a,andTakuyaFujioka
b
aDept. Human Science/Research Center for Applied PerceptualScience,KyushuUniversity,
Japan
bDept. Acoustic Design, Kyushu University, Japan
Three factors and four frequency bands were consistently observed through factor analyses of
spoken sentences in eight languages, i. e., American English, British English, Cantonese, French,
German, Japanese, Mandarin, and Spanish 1.Groupdataofatleast10speakers(NTT-AT,Multi-
lingual speech database 2002) were used for each language. Generalizability of this tendency was
confirmed in most cases from analyses of individual data. However, a certain range of variety
appeared for a small number of speakers: some female speakersshowedanirregularpatternof
results with three factors, and some male speakers exhibitedfourfactorsinastablemanner. Itled
to the idea that speech with high fundamental frequency caused unstable results, and that speech
with low fundamental frequency enabled four-factor solutions.
To test th i s i d e a, fiv e s e n te n c es o u t of 200 in B r i t i s h English and five sentences out of 200
in Japanese were randomly selected, and fundamental frequency (F0) as a function of time was
estimated for each speaker with Praat2.Thevoicedportionsofutteranceswereselectedonacom-
puter screen, and fundamentalfrequency was estimated with autocorrelation. The female speakers
of Japanese exhibited significantly higher F0s (mean M=248.6Hz)thanthoseofBritishEnglish
(M=218.6Hz;t(8)=3.27,p<.05). The male speakers exhibited no significant difference
(M=137.2HzforthemalespeakersofJapanese;M=124.2HzforthemalespeakersofBritish
English). The three-factor analyses were successful in all female and male speakers, except for
one female speaker of Japanese, who had the highest F0 of 276 Hz. No female speaker exhibited
stable four-factor solutions, whereas some of male speakersdid(4speakersofBritishEnglishand
3speakersofJapanese). ThreemalespeakershadhighermeanF0s ranged from 149 to 155 Hz,
and the four-factor solutions for these speakers were unstable. The speech with high fundamental
frequency indeed led to unstable results, and that speech with low fundamental frequency led to
stable results.
References
1K.Ueda,Y.Nakajima,in:S.Mori,T.Miyaoka,W.Wong(eds.)Fech n e r D a y 2007 (International Society
for Psychophysics, Tokyo, Japan, 2007) pp. 503–508; K. Ueda et al.,in:A.Bastianelli,G.Vidotto(eds.)
Fec h ner Day 20 1 0 (International Society for Psychophysics, Padova, Italy, 2010), pp. 39–44.
2P.Boersma,D.Weenink,version5.3.50,http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/ (2013).
∗Address for correspondence: Dept. Human Science, Kyushu University, 4-9-1 Shioba ru Minami-ku, F ukuoka 815-
8540, Japan. E-mail:
ueda@design.kyushu-u.ac.jp
91

Cultural modulations of space-time compatibility effects
Antonino Vallesi∗a,YaelWeisblatt
b,CarloSemenza
a,c,andSamuelShaki
b
aUniversity of Padova, Italy
bAriel University, Israel
cIstituto di Ricovero e Cura a carattere scientifico, OspedaleS.Camillo,LidodiVenezia,Italy
The representation of elapsing time may require spatial attention. In certain circumstances
this spatial representation develops from left to right. This is suggested by a performance advan-
tage in responding “short” with the left hand and “long” with the right hand (Spatial-Temporal
Association between Response Codes, STEARC1). The present study tested whether one pos-
sible determinant of the directionality of the STEARC effectiscultural,similarlytowhatfound
with the SNARC effect2.Inparticular,weinvestigatedwhetherreading/writinghabits can af-
fect STEARC direction by administering a visual time judgment task to Italian participants, who
were exposed to a left-to-right reading/writing system, andIsraeliparticipants,whomainlyused
aright-to-leftsystem.
Participants were tested individually in a quiet and normally illuminated room. A trial started
with the central cross, which remained on the screen for 1 or 3 seconds. These durations were
presented randomly for an equal number of trials. After this period elapsed, the imperative arrow
was shown. The task consisted of pressing ‘Z’ for a short crossduration(i.e.,1second)and
‘M’ for a long cross duration (i. e., 3 seconds). We found that responses were faster for long
durations than for short ones. Moreover, there was a tendencyforaresponsesidebyduration
interaction. Importantly, the response side by duration by group interaction was significant. To
better understand this 3-way interaction, we ran an ANOVA with response side and duration
as the within-subjects variables, separately for each group. This analysis showed a significant
response side by duration interaction for the Italian group.However,asithasbeenfoundinother
domains, the Israeli participants did not show any spatial response preference for either short or
long duration, as demonstrated by a non-significant responsesidebydurationinteraction. Thus,
the STEARC effect was present in the Italian group only.
The study demonstrates that cultural habits can influence thewayinwhichspatialattention
supports the representation of time, similarly to the pattern found in other non-spatial domains
such as numbers. Future studies should try to test groups of individuals exclusively exposed to
right-to-left reading/writing systems. The hypothesis that cultural habits are the critical factors
biasing the spatialrepresentation of time would be further confirmed if these individuals will show
aSTEARCeffectwhichissignificantandintheoppositedirection with respect to that shown by
individuals exclusively exposed to left-to-right systems.
References
1A.Vallesiet al.,Cortex,47,148–156(2011).
2S.Shakiet al.,Psychon. Bull. Rev. 16,328–331(2009).
∗E-mail:
antonino.vallesi@unipd.it
92

Anti-mirror neuron system model for affordance based
k-TR Common Coding Theory
Karthik M. Varadarajan∗
Te c h n ic a l U n iv e r s i t y o f V i e n n a , A u s t r i a
Encoding of ‘concrete nouns’ such as ‘cup’ and ‘book’ in the human brain have been stud-
ied using fMRI. Breakthrough results by Just et al. 1have shown that there is an underlying
neuro-semantic theory to ‘concrete noun’ encoding. Rather than encoding by object sizes or
colors, the brain encodes them by semantic categories such as(1)physical/manipulationaffor-
dances (2) affordances corresponding to food consumption (3) affordance semantics, specifically
localizer filtrations. These results are in line with predictions of the k-TR theory of visual per-
ception which defines recognition as a composition of long-term affordance features and local
transient features, as well as the Common Coding Theory whichpositsthatvisualandmotoren-
coding is performed in the brain using a unified coding substrate. The regions that encode these
physical/manipulation affordances are located at the Supramarginal Gyrus (language processing),
Postcentral Gyrus (touch sensation), Precentral Gyrus (muscle movement) and Inferior Temporal
Gyrus (global shape, complex features processing). The brain regions that encode affordance
semantics are Precuneus (visuospatial processing), Inferior Temporal Gyrus (global shape affor-
dances), Fusiform gyrus (material affordances like color and intra-category identification) and
most importantly the Parahippocampal Gyrus – PHG (scene recognition), which has also been
identified recently to be the center of anti-mirror neurons, along with the Entorhincal cortex, by
Mukamel et al.2Anti-mirror neurons are neurons in the human subject brain that produce excita-
tory response when a certain affordance execution (such as grasping) is observed and a linguistic
association is made in the form of entities involved in the affordance execution, but produce an
inhibitory response when the affordance is executed by the subject. The PHG anti-mirror neurons
also exhibit excitatory behavior when performing only linguistic association.
In this paper, we build a schema theory based on PHG anti-mirror neurons and the known
affordance coding linkages (as noted above) of the PHG substrate, calling it the Anti-Mirror
Neuron System (AMNS) and use it to explain various aspects of the k-TR Common Coding The-
ory. The various sub-schemas of AMNS such as the Object/Hand Perception Schema, Reach/
Grasp Schema, Core Anti-Mirror circuit along with the various biological units catering to the
schemas in terms of sub-tasks such as object affordance extraction, motor execution, hand mo-
tion detection etc. and their contributions are analyzed through simulations and validated through
psychophysical tests that involve subject recall of ‘concrete nouns’ based on observation of af-
fordance executions with/without the target object, self-actuation without visual perception and
solely based on touch and move-assist by an external agent, along with control tests and negative
affordance coding linkages. These psychophysical tests demonstrate the contribution of various
affordance features (observed/imagined, as well as both visual coding and touch/motor coding)
with respect to object recognition or object identity label (concrete noun) association.
References
1M.A.Justet al.,PloS one,5(1), e8622 (2010).
2R.Mukamelet al.,Curr. Biol. 20(8), 750–756 (2010).
∗E-mail:
karthikmaheshv@gmail.com
93

Does perceived duration depend on physical and
numerical stimulus magnitudes?
Martin Verner∗and Thomas H. Rammsayer
Department of Psychology, University of Bern, Switzerland
Numerous studies provide evidence for a positive relationship between perceived duration and
nontemporal stimulus magnitude. In the visual domain, perceived duration appears to lengthen
with increasing nontemporal stimulus characteristics suchasthephysicalsizeorthenumerical
value of a stimulus 1,2 .Itremainsunclear,however,whetherphysicalsizeandnumerical value
can increase perceived duration in an additive manner. Moreover, the question whether such an
effect depends on the participant’s attention to those stimulus characteristics has not been explored
yet. In order to concurrently investigate the effect of physical stimulus size and numerical value
on perceived duration and, additionally, to examine whethersuchaneffectdependsonattention
focussed to those particular stimulus characteristics, a temporal reproduction task was employed
in the present study.
Thirty participants reproduced three target durations (800, 1000, and 1200 ms) marked by
arabic numbers varying in physical size (large and small) andnumericalvalue(lowvalue:2,3;
high value: 8, 9). Attention to particular stimulus characteristics was varied across two blocks.
In one block, participants were instructed to also indicate,asasecondarytask,whetherthenon-
temporal target stimulus was physically large or small. In a second block, on the other hand,
participants were required to indicate whether the target stimulus value was high or low as a
secondary task. Mean reproduced durations were compared by means of a four-way analysis of
variance with Target Duration, Physical Size, Numerical Value, and Attentional Focus as four
repeated-measures factors. A significant main effect of stimulus size on perceived duration indi-
cated that physically larger stimuli were perceived longer than smaller stimuli irrespective of their
numerical value or participant’s attentional focus. Besideamaineffectoftargetduration(per-
ceived duration increased with longer target intervals), noothermaineffectorinteractionyielded
statistical significance.
The present findings can be summarized as follows: (1) Our dataprovidefurtherevidencefor
the notion of a positive relation between physical, nontemporal stimulus magnitude and percieved
duration. (2) This effect seems not to depend on the participant’s attention paid to particular
stimulus characteristics. Thus, the processing of physicalsizeappearstooccurinanautomatic
way. (3) Our findings challenge the popular notion that largernumbersleadtolongerperceived
duration1,2 .Sincetheselatterstudiesemployedthenumbers1and2torepresent low numerical
stimulus values, the effect of numerical values on perceiveddurationmightactuallybecausedby
the distinct physical size of the number 1 and, thus, be ascribed to an effect of physical rather than
numerical stimulus magnitude on perceived duration.
References and notes
1A.Y.-C.Changet al.,Psychol. Sci. 22,1567–1573(2011).
2B.Xuanet al.,J. Vis. 7,1–5(2007).
∗Address for correspondence: Fabrikstr. 8, 3012 Bern, Switzerland. E-mail:
martin.verner@psy.unibe.ch
94

Poster session 2
95

Static faces, dynamic bodies: The recognition of
emotions in typically-developed individuals and
high-functioning autistic adults
Rossana Actis-Grosso∗and Paola Ricciardelli
Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
Research on emotion recognition has been dominated by studies of photographs of facial ex-
pressions. Although during past decades there was a growing interest towards the role of facial
movement in emotional expressions, results are controversial, given that it is very hard to sep-
arate experimentally the processing of facial identity fromthatofemotionalexpressions. This
is particularly difficult in the case of dynamic displays. Besides, facial expressions are not the
only source of input that conveys emotionally relevant information. In every-day situations, other
sources—such as the communicator’s body language or ‘bodilykinematics’—areequallyim-
portant, especially when facial expressions are inconsistent or unavailable to the observer. At a
perceptual level, it has been demonstrated that biological motion (i.e., a point light motion dis-
play1)issufficientfortheperceptionofemotions.Thus,ifontheone hand faces are universally
recognized as the most important key element for understanding others’ emotions, on the other
hand a growing body of evidence shows that motion is also a corecomponentofemotions.
The aim of the present study was to compare face and motion in the recognition of emotions,
by excluding the motion component from faces and the facial identity component from body mo-
tion. To this end we compared performance (i.e., accuracy andresponsetimes)intherecognition
of four basic emotions (fear, anger, sadness and happiness),conveyedeitherbystaticfaceimages
or by moving bodies. Emotion recognition was studied in 22 (21males)typicallydevelopedin-
dividuals (TD) and in 20 (16 males, both groups mean age = 22 years) high functioning autistic
young adults (mainly with Asperger syndrome, AS).
Emotional faces were taken from Radboud Faces Database2,whereasforbodilykinematics
patch light displays (PLD) were used, in which emotions were conveyed solely by biological
motion, specifically by the kinematics of light patches placed on the joints of an actor3.The
results showed an overall faster recognition of emotions when conveyed by faces, with a better
performance for happiness and anger for face images in both groups (p<.01), and for PLD only
in TD group ( p<.01). Thus, in line with previous studies we found a happy face advantage
and an anger superiority effect for faces, which for the first time were also found for bodies. As
hypothesized, while the recognition of fear in TD was more accurate when it was conveyed by
PLD, AS show an inverse pattern, with a more accurate recognition of fear when it was conveyed
by static face images. In contrast, the recognition of sadness for TD was more accurate when
it was conveyed by static face images, while in AS it was equal with static face images and
PLD. Interestingly, however, in AS recognition performancewithPLDwasnotmodulatedbythe
different emotions.
References
1G.Johansson,Pe rc e p t . P sych o p hys. 14,201–211(1973).
2O.Langneret al.,Cogn. Emot. 24,1377–1388(2010).
3A.P.Atkinsonet al.,Perc eptio n 33,717–746(2004).
∗E-mail:
rossana.actis@unimib.it
96

How well does the Wong–Baker FACES scale identify the
variation of pain?
Elisabet Borg∗and Gunnar Borg
Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Sweden
Pain is one of the most common symtoms reported clinically. Apart from the Visual Analogue
scale, several rating scales are used varying in degree of interpretability and suitability for various
types of pain 1.Onescaleoftenused,especiallyforchildren,istheWong–Baker FACES Pain
Rating Scale where pain is expressed in six drawn faces varying in expression from (1) a smiling
face denoting ‘no hurt’ to (6) a crying face for ‘hurts worst’ 2.
Two ex p e ri m en t s w e r e ca rr i e d ou t. Fir s t l y, 12 u n i v e r s i t y p rofessors of psychology (8 men and
4women,50–79yrs)answeredwhere(inwhatface)theyjudgedthat pain with certainty started.
Three answered that pain started in the sixth face. Two said that no face showed pain and the rest
said that the dimension shown was degree of happiness-sadness. However, if the intensity of pain
was estimated as if using cross-modality matching (sadness to pain), three said face no. 4, one
no. 4-5, one no. 4,5, or 6, and two said face number 5 (median = 4.5).
Secondly, sixteen university students (4 men and 12 women, mean age = 27.2, SD = 7.4 yrs)
answered the same question as above and then also used the BorgCR100(centiMax)ScaleR
⃝,
ageneral0—100intensityCategory-Ratioscaleformostkinds of subjective measurement3,to
scale the pain intensity expressed in each of the six faces (presented twice in a randomized order
in a Powerpoint presentation). Pain was ‘with certainty’ judged to start at the fifth face, and
several participants scaled the first two faces as ‘zero pain’. A continuous progression of pain
intensity for the six faces was on the average obtained with the CR100 scale: medians = 0.0, 0.5,
11, 31, 48, 72 centiMax. Thus, expressed with the verbal labels on the CR100 scale, the first two
faces were below ‘Minimal’, which indicates that these faceswerenotjudgedtoshowanypain,
the third face was just above ‘Weak’ (13), the fourth face justabove‘Moderate’(25),the5thface
just below ‘Strong’ (50) and the 6th face was just below ‘Very strong’ (70).
The conclusion was that the faces only with hesitation can be used to estimate pain. The last
face was not judged to show more than a very strong pain, thus causing a restriction of range and
aceilingeffect.Aproblemwiththesekindsofscalesispoorcongruence between pictures, verbal
labels and numbers.
References
1E.A.Stinsonet al.,Pa i n 125,143–157(2006).
2M.J.Hockenberry,D.Wilson,Wo n g ’s e s s e n t ia ls o f p e d ia t ri c nu r s in g (8th ed., Mosby, St. Louis, 2009).
3G.Borg,E.Borg,Psychologica 28,15–45(2001);E.Borg,On perceived exertion and its measurement
(Doctoral dissertation, Stockholm university, Dept. of Psychology, Stockholm, 2007).
∗Address for correspondence: Dept. of Psychology, StockholmUniversity,SE-10691Stockholm,Sweden.
E-mail:
eb@psychology.su.se
97

Perception of blackness as a training material for the
Borg CR100 Scale R
⃝
Elisabet Borg∗
Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Sweden
The Borg CR100 Scale R
⃝is a general intensity scale suitable for most kinds of experiences and
symptoms. On the scale verbal labels are placed in congruencewitharatioscalefrom0(nothing
at all) to 100 (“Maximal” and anchored in a previously experienced perception of, for example,
perceived exertion), with, for example, “Strong” at 50 and with the possibility to exceed 100
in extreme situations 1.Forinstructionandtrainingtheblacknessof5×5cmcardboardsquares
(varying from 5% to 95 % blackness NCS2)havepreviouslybeenusedwithanexponentinthe
psychophysical power function of between 0.9 and 1.2 (obtained both for Magnitude estimation
and previous versions of Borg CR scales)3.Forpracticalreasonsitisimportanttobeabletousea
Powerpoint presentation of blackness stimuli, for example when running classroom experiments.
Two d if f e r e nt r a n d om iz e d o r d e r s of 1 8 ( 2 ×9) blackness stimuli were presented in a classroom
setting to 47 participants (16 men and 31 women, students of psychology). Microsoft Powerpoint
for Apple was used with the 9 different greys preset in the program (5, 15, 25, 35, 50, 65, 75, 85,
95 % blackness) and scaled with the Borg CR100 R
⃝Scale. Two orders of presentation were used,
the second being the reverse of the first.
The responses obtained with the Borg CR100 scale R
⃝ranged from 2 to 90 (median values)
showing that blackness worked well across the whole subjective dynamic range. This is of im-
portance for a good training material. The group exponent, computed from geometric means,
was n=1.3(r=0.994) and thus a little higher than previously obtained. For a subgroup of 14
subjects who were retested after approximately 15 minutes the exponent for both occasions was
n=1.1(r=0.985 and r=0.965, respectively). From graphs it was obvious that there wasa
slight “dip” with relatively lower responses for 35 %, 50 % and65%blackness,especiallyforthe
first presentation order. This might in part explain why the exponent was a little higher than ob-
tained with the older cardboard presentations. Whether this“dip”wasmainlyduetodesign,the
blackness stimuli, or the scale, remains to be tested. However, as a training material, this would
have less consequence. As a conclusion, a Powerpoint presentation of blackness works well, and
may be recommended as a training material for the Borg CR100 scale R
⃝.
References and notes
1G.Borg,E.Borg,Psychologica 28,15–45(2001);E.Borg,On perceived exertion and its measurement.
(Doctoral dissertation, Stockholm university, Dept. of Psychology, Stockholm, 2007).
2NaturalColorSystem.
3G.Borg,E.Borg,Ageneralpsychophysicalscaleofblacknessanditspossibilities as a test of rating
behaviour (Reports from the Dept. of Psychology, Stockholm university, No. 73 7 , 1990 ) .
∗Address for correspondence: Dept. of Psychology, StockholmUniversity,SE-10691Stockholm,Sweden.
E-mail:
eb@psychology.su.se
98

AFunctionalMeasurementapproachtotheChild
Anxiety and Pain Face Scale
Joana C. Gonc¸ alves∗a,b,ArmandoM.Oliveira
a,Lu´ısC.Batalha
b,AnandaM.
Fernandesb,RicardoG.Viegas
a,andSaraS.Pratas
a
aInstitute of Cognitive Psychology, University of Coimbra, Por t uga l
bHealth Sciences Research Unit, Superior Nursing School of Coimbra, Portugal
The CAPS1is a set of two face scales, composed of 5 drawn faces each, for assessing pain
intensity and anxiety in children. In the present study we evaluated the claim that the two sets
of faces actually address distinct constructs. To this end, we examined the rules whereby the
inner features of each subset of faces are combined by children while evaluating conveyed pain
or conveyed anxiety/fear.
The study rested upon the methodology of Information Integration Theory 2.Facesineachset
were divided into upper- and lower halves (grossly, ‘eyes/eyebrows’ and ‘nose/mouth’ regions),
which were then fully factorially combined, giving rise to 25‘painfaces’and25‘anxietyfaces’.
Two sa m p le s o f ch i ld r e n (a g ed 9 – 1 1) p a r ti c i pa t e d in t he e x p e riments: a pain-free group, (n=23);
an acute-pain group, undergoing a post-operatory experience (n=21). Pain and anxiety faces
were evaluated in different experiments. Each experiment obeyed a 5 (upper-face) ×5(lower-
face) repeated measures design. Children were asked to evaluate on a graphic rating scale the
degree of expressed fear (anxiety experiment) and of expressed pain (pain experiment). Both ex-
periments were replicated with a sample of pain-free children (n=19) using reversed instructions
(pain judged from ‘anxiety faces’, and fear from the ‘pain faces’).
Parallel plots and a null interaction term were found with the‘anxietyfaces’inbothgroups.
Rightward convergence of the factorial plots and a significant interaction term were found in turn
with the ‘pain faces’. These results are consistent with an additive-type integration model in the
anxiety set and a differential-weighting averaging model inthepainset. Functionalmeasuresof
weight (importance) derived from the averaging models revealed that ‘eyes-eyebrows’ in the pain
set, and ‘mouth-nose’ in the anxiety set, got the most importance, a finding established in both
groups. Reversing the judgment dimension in each set didn’t change the integration rule or the
characteristic patterning of relative importance of the faces features.
Outcomes thus lend support to the construct validity of the CAPS, showing both distinct
psychological rules for the combination of informers in eachset,aswellasasymmetricalpattern
of relative importance between eyes and mouth. The graphical/pictorial elements of the two
sets, and not the judgment dimension, are to be accounted for these differences, which remained
unaltered despite a reversal of instructions.
References and notes
1L.Kuttner,T.LePage,Can. J. Behav. Sci. 21,198–209(1989).
2N.H.Anderson,Fou n d a t ion s o f i n for m a t io n int egr a t i on t he or y (Academic Press, New York, 1981);
N. H. Anderson, Methods of information integration theory (Academic Press, New York, 1982).
3WorksupportedbygrantPTDC/PSI-PCO/107910/2008fromthePortugueseFoundationforScienceand
Tec hno log y.
∗E-mail:
jcgoncalves@fpce.uc.pt
99

Losing ground: The perception of height as a function
of the makeup of the ground beneath
Tam ar G u r∗,LiorNiv,andDanielAlgom
School of Psychological Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, Israel
Perception and emotion have been considered separate domains of human experience with
little interaction in everyday life and research alike. However, recent studies have revealed deep
associations, suggesting that the process of perception is not immune to the effects of emotional
and motivational factors such as mood, perceived risks and goals, and resources required for the
task at hand 1.Evenlowlevelvisualprocessescanbeinfluencedbytheperceivers emotional
state. For example, fear can change the apparent height of a balcony such that people with an
elevated fear of height experience the height of a balcony to be greater than do people who are
not as fearful of height2,3 .
In the current experiment, we tested the effect of risk on perceived height. The participants
were standing on the same bridge with either grass or concretepavementbeneath. Theyindicated
the height of the bridge by numerical estimation. The participants have also fit the length of a rope
to match the diameter of a circle on the ground. Finally, the participants filled a short situation
anxiety questionnaire. The results revealed that those who looked down on the solid pavement
perceived the height of the bridge to be significantly greaterthanthosewholookeddownonthe
soft lawn. Fear of height did not affect the judgments of the height. A surprising finding was the
negativecorrelation between fear of height and the perceived diameter of the circle on the ground.
The results of the current experiment reinforce the bond between risk and the way that peo-
ple perceive height. The participants likely perceived the lawn as less hazardous then the hard
pavement, with judgment of height reflecting (unconsciously?) this perception. The results sup-
port embodiment theory by which emotions provide information on the consequences, costs and
benefits, of potential actions.
References
1J.R.Zadra,G.L.Clore,Wiley In terdi sc. R ev. C og n. Sc i. 2(6), 676–685 (2011).
2M.Bhalla,D.R.Proffitt,J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 25(4), 1076 (1999).
3D.R.Proffitt,Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci. 15(3), 131–135 (2006).
∗E-mail:
tamashki@gmail.com
100

Effects of contrast and background on visual
representational momentum
Timothy L. Hubbard∗aand Susan E. Ruppelb
aTexa s C hr ist i an U n ive r si t y, Fo r t W or th , U S A
bUniversity of South Carolina Upstate, Spartanburg, USA
Representational momentum for luminance in a target that changed in luminance has been
investigated1,butrepresentationalmomentumforlocationinatargetthatchangedinluminance,
and effects of contrast of target luminance and background luminance on representational mo-
mentum for location, have not been systematically investigated (although one report suggested
forward displacement was larger for targets that decreased in luminance on a dark backround2).
In Exps. 1 and 2, inducing stimuli implied leftward or rightward target motion, and target lumi-
nance and contrast varied. In Exp. 1, participants judged whether a probe was at the final location
of the target. In Exp. 2, participants judged whether a probe was at the next location that would
have been occupied by the target if motion had continued.
In Exps. 1 and 2, the target on each trial was either (a) high contrast (dark gray on a white
background, light gray on a black background), (b) increasing contrast (from light gray to dark
gray on a white background, from dark gray to light gray on a black background), (c) decreasing
contrast (from dark gray to light gray on a white background, from light gray to dark gray on a
black background), or (d) low contrast (light gray on a white background, dark gray on a dark
background). The probe was the same luminance as the final luminance of the target.
In Exp. 1, forward displacement was larger with higher contrast of the target and background.
High or increasing contrast targets exhibited the same final (high) contrast, and displacement did
not differ in these conditions; low or decreasing contrast targets exhibited the same final (low)
contrast, and displacement did not differ in these conditions, but was less than forward displace-
ment in high or increasing contrast conditions. Effects of contrast involved final, rather than initial
or mean, contrast. Forward displacement was larger if targets were on a white background, and
effects of contrast were larger if targets were on a black background. In Exp. 2, significant dis-
placement did not occur, nor was there an effect of contrast; however, there was a trend toward
backward displacement if targets were on a white background.
Larger forward displacement with higher contrast in Exp. 1 isconsistentwithfindingsthat
forward displacementis increased if less attention is allocated to the target3.Lackofdisplacement
in Exp. 2 is not consistent with suggestions that displacement reflects explicit prediction of where
the next inducing stimulus would appear2.
References
1J.C.Brehaut,S.P.Tipper,J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 22,480–501(1996).
2G.W.Maus,R.Nijhawan,Vi s i o n R es. 46,4375–4381(2006).
3A.E.Hayes,J.J.Freyd,Vi s . C ogn . 9,8–27(2002).
∗E-mail:
timothyleehubbard@gmail.com
101

Maintenance of the distractive effect of deviating
vibrotactile stimuli in a cross-modal oddball paradigm
Erik A. Marsja∗a,GregoryNeely
a,FabriceB.R.Parmentier
b,c,andJessicaK.
Ljungberga,d
aDepartment of Psychology, Ume˚
aUniversity,Sweden
bDepartment of Psychology, University of the Balearic Islands, Palma, Spain
cSchool of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Perth
dSchool of Psychology, Cardiff University, UK
It is well-known that certain properties of unattended information can capture attention: for
instance, sounds deviating (called deviant sounds) from a repeated standard sound (i. e., the odd-
ball paradigm). However, attention capture comes with the cost on the behavioral performance in
an ongoing task. Response times increase in a primary task in trials in which a deviant sound is
presented (i. e., behavioral deviance distraction) 1,2.Paststudieswerefocusingmainlyonatten-
tion capture by auditory deviants 1,2 ,somewhatlessonvisualdeviants
3or tactile deviants4,5.
As for the tactile modality, a pilot study from our lab found that the distractive effect of
deviating vibrotactile stimuli disappeared after the first block of 120 trials. An earlier study from
our lab found that the deviance distraction by sudden changesinvibratorystimulationremained
throughout the experiment. However, in that study auditory and vibrotactile blocks of 3 minutes
duration were alternated5.Thus,itwasclearthatthedistractiveeffectofvibrotactile stimuli
could be maintained if another task lasting 3 minutes was introduced between vibrotactile blocks.
The aim of the present study was to test if 3 minute pauses between vibration blocks would be
sufficient to maintain the distractive effect of vibrotactile stimuli or if, as previously seen, another
task between blocks was necessary for maintenance.
The present study used a cross-modal oddball paradigm and a hand-held vibrotactile stimula-
tor, 20 participants categorized visually presented digitsasoddorevenwhileignoringvibrotactile
or auditory distractors, which were presented prior onset ofeachdigit. Blockscontainingastan-
dard vibration (80 %) and a deviating vibration (20 %) were alternated with 2 blocks containing
auditory stimuli or 2 pauses of 3 minute duration. The order oftheblockswerecounterbalanced.
It was found that the distractive effect of deviating vibrotactile stimuli was maintained with the
introduction of pauses, regardless as to whether the pause was filled with a attentionally demand-
ing task or not (P<.05). Furthermore, no significant difference in deviance distraction was found
whether the vibrotactile blocks was preceded by a pause that was attentionally demanding or not
(P>.05).
In conclusion, introducing a 3-minutepause is as effective as using an attentionally demanding
task for the maintenance of behavioral deviance distractioninthevibrotactilemodality.
References
1F.B.R.Parmentieret al.,Cognition 106,408–432(2008).
2F.B.R.Parmentier,P.Andr´es,Exp. Psychol. 57,68–76(2010).
3S.Berti,E.Schr¨oger,NeuroReport 15,65–69(2004).
4F.B.R.Parmentieret al.,J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 37,1134–1139(2011).
5J.K.Ljungberg,F.B.R.Parmentier,Exp. Psychol. 59,355–363(2012).
∗E-mail:
erik.marsja@psy.umu.se
102

Motion extrapolation in people with motor constraints:
Evidence for embodiment
Isabel C. Martins∗a,b,ArmandoM.Oliveira
a,andBertSteenbergen
c
aInstitute of Cognitive Psychology, University of Coimbra, Por t uga l
bPor tugu ese Ass ociation of Ce reb ral Palsy
cRadboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Previous studies have suggested that people with cerebral palsy (CP) are impaired in their
motor planning abilities1and present a slow-down of motor imagery (MI) 2–withMIgenerally
defined as the inner reproduction of an action while motor output is inhibited3.Performanceon
tasks involving dynamic mental representations4,suchasRepresentationalMomentumorMo-
tion Extrapolation (the estimated time at which a moving target will reach a location), have on
the other hand been suggested to rely on mental imagery.5,6 This study compared CP and con-
trol participants using a Time-To-Contact paradigm (TTC) which requires estimating the time at
which a target in motion makes contact to an obstacle in the frontal plane.
48 CP participants (7–56 yrs) and 48 age-matched controls were enrolled in the experiments.
Included CP participants didn’t have a record of cognitive deficits or parietal injury and performed
at a normal level on an adapted handedness test. Stimuli were videos of a blue square (1cm side)
moving horizontally at a constant speed towards a stationaryobstacle,anddisappearingatagiven
point. Obstacles of two sorts were used, block-wise: (1) a black human silhouette; (2) a black
vertical rectangle matched for area and contrast. The direction, speed and vanishing point of the
target were varied, along with the position of the obstacle, resulting in a 3 (speed) ×8(distance
between the target’s vanishing point and the obstacle) ×2(direction)design.Participantspressed
abuttontosignalthemomentatwhichthevanishedtargetwould make contact to the obstacle.
Anticipation (underestimation of the time to contact) in both groups was larger in the silhou-
ette than in the rectangle condition. Participants with CP anticipated more than controls but more
so in the silhouette condition, disclosing a significant effect of the type of obstacle. Anticipation
in the CP group increased with the degree of functional impairment, from ataxic, to diplegic, to
quadriplegic participants. The magnitude of anticipation correlated significantly with a measure
of gross motor function impairment (the GMFCS), involving the whole body (0.37). No relation
was found between the degree of anticipation and questionnaire measures of visual and motor
imagery (KVIQ). Our results thus seem consistent with the useofanembodied‘thresholdofan-
ticipation’, more strongly activated in the silhouette condition and dependent on overall motor
constraints, rather than with the use of mental imagery for a predictive motion extrapolation.
References and notes
1B.Steenbergenet al.,Disab. and Rehab. 29,13–23(2007).
2I.Martinset al.,in:J.S.Monahan,S.M.Sheffert,J.T.Townsend(eds.)Fe chn e r D a y 2005 (International
Society of Psychophysics, Mt. Pleasant, 2005), pp. 193–198.
3M.Jeannerod,NeuroImage,14,S103–S109(2001).
4J.Freyd,Psychol. Rev. 94,427–438(1987).
5M.Mungeret al.,J. Exp. Psych. L earn., Mem. Cogn. 25,1557–1568(1999).
6R.Gray,I.Thornton,Perc e ption 30,1007–1022(2001).
7WorksupportedbygrantSFRH/BD/64960/2009,fromthePortuguese FCT.
∗E-mail:
catarinamartins@fpce.uc.pt
103

Representational momentum in people with cerebral
palsy: Effects of response format and delay imposed
on the response
Isabel C. Martins∗a,ArmandoM.Oliveira
a,andBertSteenbergen
b
aInstitute of Cognitive Psychology, University of Coimbra, Por t uga l
bRadboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Cerebral Palsy (CP) is a developmental disorder of movement and posture 1.PeoplewithCP
have shown ability to perform mental imagery tasks (e. g. mental rotations), however at a slower
pace than controls2.Weinvestigatedwhethersimilarlimitationswouldshowupin a Represen-
tational Momentum (RepMom) task, assumed to involve dynamicrepresentations
3.RepMom
refers to the forward mislocalization of the vanishing pointofamovingtargetbyobservers,an
error denoted hereafter by the more neutral expression M-displacement 4.O-displacementwill
stand for the error orthogonal to motion direction.
48 participants with CP and 49 age-matched controls participated in two experiments. Stimuli
were videos of a blue square (1 cm side) moving horizontally onawhitebackgroundataconstant
speed, and suddenly vanishing. A 4 (distance travelled by thetarget)×3(target’svelocity)
×5(delayimposedtotheresponse,from0to750ms)designwasused. In one experiment
participants located the vanishing point by displacing a mouse or trackball (motor localization).
In the other they issued a same/different judgment regardingtheplacementofasquarewhich
could be located behind, ahead, or at the position where the target had vanished (probe method).
Participants with CP displayed more M-displacement in the motor localization condition but
less M-displacement than controls in the probe condition. Inthelocalizationcondition,themag-
nitude of M-displacement increased with the severity of functional impairment as assessed by
the Gross Motor Function Scale (GMFCS) and the Manual AbilityClassificationScale(MACS).
AsignificantpositivecorrelationemergedbetweenM-andO-displacement (downward localiza-
tion error), which also correlated positively with hands functional impairment (MACS). A neg-
ative correlation (−0.746) occurred between M-displacement and a questionnaire measure of
motor imagery. In the probe condition, M-displacement peaked at longer delays in the CP group
(around 600 ms, compared to 150 ms for the controls). Our results illustrate a clear effect of motor
constraints on the dynamic representations assumed to underlie RepMom. The lower magnitude
and late peaking of M-displacement in the CP group in the probeconditionareoverallconsistent
with a slowing down of mental imagery. The observed increase in both M- and O-displacements
with functional impairment in the localization condition issuggestedtorestonembodiedmotor
anticipatory mechanisms, likely involved in the planning ofactionstowardsmovingobjects.
References
1M.Baxet al.,Dev. Med. Child Neur. 47,571–576(2005).
2I.Martinset al.,in:J.S.Monahan,S.M.Sheffert,J.T.Townsend(eds.)Fe chn e r D a y 2005 (International
Society of Psychophysics, Mt. Pleasant, 2005), pp. 193–198.
3J.Freyd,Psychol. Rev. 94,427–438(1987).
4T.Hubbard,Am. J. Psychol. 107,359–373(1994).
5WorksupportedbygrantSFRH/BD/64960/2009,fromthePortuguese FCT.
∗E-mail:
catarinamartins@fpce.uc.pt
104

Measurements of distinguishing abilities of clothed
buttocks
Tet su M i ya o ka ∗
Shizuoka Institute of Science and Technology, Shizuoka, Japan
False accusations have been serious problems in groper cases. Does a victim have enough
tactile ability to distinguish a gropers hands from other objects? This study was conducted to
examine tactile distinction ability; for example, do clothed buttocks have the ability to distinguish
between hands and bags?
In an experiment a female experimenter touched the buttocks of three male and three female
participants with her hands or a bag, and distinguishing abilities between the stimuli were mea-
sured using the two-alternative forced-choice technique. At the experiment the male participants
wore jeans and the female participants wore pleated skirts.
As the experimental results showed no significant differencebetweenmalesandfemales,the
average results were calculated and are shown in Figure 1. Theratiosofcorrectresponseswere
0.547 between the right hand and left hand, 0.669 between the palm and the dorsum side of hand,
0.764 between the open hand and the fist, 0.817 between the openhandandabag,and0.744
between the fist and the bag.
Differences between the ratios were checked by t-tests (all tests with 11 d.f.). Differences at
the 0.1 % level were found between the RH, LH and the OH, F (t=6.476), between the RH, LH
and the OH, B (t=6.552), and between the P, DH and the OH, B (t=4.504). Differences at
the 1 % level were found between the RH, LH and the F, B (t=4.258), and between the OH, B
and the F, B (t=3.398). Differences at the 5 % level were found between the RH, LHandtheP,
DH (t=2.762), between the P, DH and the OH, F (t=2.237), and between the P, DH and the
F, B (t=2.215). No significant differences were found between the OH, F and the OH, B, and
between OH, F and the F, B.
In conclusion, the distinguishing between the right hand andthelefthandwasimpossible.
The distinction rate between the palm and the dorsum of the hand was 2/3. The distinction rates
between the open hand and the fist and between the fist and the bagwere3/4. Thedistinction
rate between the open hand and the bag was 4/5. Statistical differences were found between the
distinction ratios in many cases.
Figure 1. Abbreviations: RH – right hand, LH
–lefthand,P–palm,DH–dorsumsideofthe
hand, OH – open hand, F – fist, B – bag.
∗E-mail:
miyaoka@cs.sist.ac.jp
105

Intermediate effects of spatial training on women’s
Mental Rotations Test scores
John S. Monahan∗
Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, USA
Measured gender differences in cognitive abilities appear to have diminished over time 1,but
mental rotation continues to yields large, statistically differences favoring men. A meta-analysis2
of spatial ability studies found a linear increase in effect size with age suggesting that gender
differences in spatial ability may be affected by experience, sexual differentiation, or both. The
largest gender difference was found with the Mental Rotations Test (MRT).3
In addition to the biological differences between women and men, there are experiential dif-
ferences between genders4,suchasearlychildhoodtoypreferenceandplay
2.Forexample,
puzzles are completed by mentally or physically rotating pieces to make comparisons. Dolls and
board games do not emphasize spatial relationships and may belesslikelytoinfluencespatial
ability. Voyer et al. 2found that men and women who reported childhood preference for spatial
toys performed better on the MRT than those who preferred non-spatial toys. Nevertheless, men’s
performance was greater overall.
The practiced group consisted of 44 women who completed six sessions of practice with fig-
ures different from those in subsequent testing. The women’sandmen’scontrolgroupsconsisted
of 53 and 40 participants. Members of all three groups took theRevisedMentalRotationsTest
5
(RMRT) consisting of items from the MRT plus an additional four items. The figures of each
item were presented in rectangular boxes instead of ovals. Practiced women scored 55 % higher
than did control group women. Practiced women’s and control group men’s scores were not sig-
nificantly different. Twenty-two practiced and 16 control group women were again tested on the
RMRT 4.5 months later. With the smaller, self-selected groups, practiced women scored 34 %
higher on the first test and 26 % higher on the second test than control group women. Neither
group scored significantly higher on the second test than the first test. Neither group improved
their score significantly.
The results seem to indicate that memory for RMRT items fades,atleastinwomen,afterafew
months but that skill improvement is maintained. Complicating factors in that conclusion include
not only the smaller self-selected samples for the second test, but also the fact that there was no
significant correlation between Test 1 and Test 2 scores for either group. Nevertheless, that on the
average, women maintained their improved scores after a third of a year seems to indicate that the
effect of practicing with figures similar to but different from the test’s figures confers a somewhat
lasting, improved ability to complete the RMRT. Practice improved women’s spatial ability, via
RMRT scores, to a level not significantly different than unpracticed men’s.
References and notes
1M.Wragaet al.,Psychonom. Bull. Rev. 13,813–819(2006).
2D.Voyeret al.,Psychol. Bull. 117,250–270(1995).
3S.G.Vandenberg,A.R.Kuse,Perc ept. Mot o r S k ills 47,599–604(1978).
4M.S.Terlecki,N.S.Newcombe,Sex Roles 53,433–441(2005).
5M.Peters,Guelph(ON),Canada:Tech.Rept.,Dept.Psychol.(1995).
6ThankstoresearchersAllisonLiberty,AmandaHartman,Nicole Losito, and Courtney Yaple.
∗E-mail:
monah1js@cmich.edu
106

Metric effects of taking tears out of the Wong–Baker
Faces Pain scale
Armando M. Oliveira∗a,Lu´ısC.Batalha
b,JoanaC.Gonc¸alves
a,b,AnandaM.
Fernandesb,RicardoG.Viegas
a,NunoTeixeira
a,andAnaC.Silva
a
aInstitute of Cognitive Psychology, University of Coimbra, Por t uga l
bHealth Sciences Research Unit, Superior Nursing School of Coimbra, Portugal
Whether or not to employ anchoring elements such as smiles andtearsinpainfacesscalesfor
pediatric use is a controversial matter. While the effects ofsmilingfacesasloweranchorshave
been shown to result mostly in higher pain scores 1,littleisknownabouttheeffectsofusingtears
in the higher anchors2.InthisworkweuseInformationIntegrationTheory
3to study the effects
of removing tears of the higher anchor of the Wong–Baker FacesPainscale(WBFPRS)
4.
Two g ro up s o f c hi l d re n (a g ed 9 –1 0 ye a rs ) e valu a t e d 3 6 pairs o ffacesarisingfromthefactorial
combination of the 6 faces of the WBFPRS with the 6 faces of the Facial Pain Scale-Revised (FPS-
R)5.TearswereremovedfromthehigheranchoringfaceoftheWBFPRS in one of the groups
(n=17; n=26 in the remaining group). When presented with each pair, children were made to
rate the degree of conveyed overall pain on a horizontal (600 pixels wide) graphic rating scale.
In accordance with previous studies6,childrenusedadifferentialweightingaveragingrule
to integrate the two pain informers, which allowed for independently estimating scale values and
functional importance for each face. Only the fifth face of theWBFPRShaditsscalevalue
significantly altered by the removal of tears: previously indistinguishable from face 4, it became
virtually indistinguishable from the higher anchor face. Nosignificanteffectontherangeofthe
WBFPRS (difference between the higher and the lower faces scale values) was found. Overall,
the WBFPRS became perceptually closer to the equal interval ideal. Measures of importance
disclosed a noticeable reduction in the importance accordedtothehigheranchoringface,which
became similar to that of the other faces. As a provisional implication, it is suggested that wiping
out tears in the higher anchor face of the WBFPRS may help improving scale linearity (an actively
sought after metric property) and homogenizing the psychological importance accorded to faces
(susceptible, for instance, to pain-associated affect) with no loss in the overall range or in the
degree of discrimination between faces in the scale.
References and notes
1C.T.Chambers,K.D.Craig,Pai n 78,27–37(1998).
2C.L.vonBaeyer,Pain Re s. Mana g. 14,39–45(2009).
3N.H.Anderson,Fou n d a t ion s o f i n for m a t io n int egr a t i on t he or y (Academic Press, New York, 1981);
N. H. Anderson, Methods of information integration theory (Academic Press, New York, 1982).
4D.L.Wong,C.M.Baker,Ped. O n c o l . N urs. 14,9–17(1998).
5C.L.Hickset al.,Pa i n 93,173–183(2001).
6J.C.Gonc¸alveset al.,in: D.Algomet al. (eds.) Fec hner D a y 2011 (International Society for Psycho-
physics, Ra’anana, Israel, 2011), pp. 373–378.
7WorksupportedbygrantPTDC/PSI-PCO/107910/2008fromthePortugueseFoundationforScienceand
Tec hno log y.
∗E-mail:
l.dinis@fpce.uc.pt
107

Extracting salient perceptual features of machinery
noise using triadic comparisons
Josef Schlittenlacher∗,AngelikaKern,andWolfgangEllermeier
Applied Cognitive Psychology Unit, Technische Universit¨
at Darmstadt, Germany
Triadic comparisons have been proposed as an indirect methodforidentifyingperceptual
structures 1,i.e.,thehierarchyofauditoryattributesemergingfromagiven set of sounds. Com-
pared to alternative methods it has the advantage that it disconnects the identification of auditory
sensations from their labeling. While the technique has beenappliedtosimplesyntheticsounds
and to the spatial auditory reproduction of music 2,anapplicatontoindustrialproductsoundhas
been lacking. Therefore, the present work investigated the auditory features of sounds emitted by
gear units.
The present study selected six recordings of industrial gearunits,eachrunninginstationary
mode and lasting 5s, which are of different types and further differ in load and rotational speed.
Each of 15 normal-hearing participants completed a full triadic comparison, consisting of 60 tri-
als. In addition, ten participants repeated the procedure inasecondblockand,inathirdblock,
were presented with all questions which had differed betweenthefirstandsecondblock.
Compared to an earlier study using simple synthetic sounds 1,thepresentworkemploying
actual recordings of a more complex nature resulted in a greater number of response changes
between blocks. Furthermore, none of the ten subjects was free of transitivity violations when
combining the three blocks, which had been the case for almosthalfoftheparticipantsintheear-
lier study1.Thusitisonlypossibletorepresenttheindividualfeaturestructures(byconstructing
lattice graphs) if some answers causing the transitivity violations are changed. Doing so for up to
amaximumof10percentofthetrials,uniquelatticegraphscould be constructed for seven of the
fifteen participants.
As a result, remarkable individual differences were observed: The seven participants gener-
ated a total of 18 nodes, with only three of the nodes being shared by at least half of the partici-
pants. Each node represents (at least) one feature which the stimuli belonging to this node have in
common but other stimuli do not have. Both the individual representations, and the nodes com-
mon to the sample as a whole were further characterized using two strategies: First by relating
them to the outcome of a scaling study of the same sounds performed earlier3,andsecondby
computing objective psychoacoustical metrics of the sounds.
The lattice graph representing the three nodes being shared by the majority of participants
could be labeled with the traditional psychoacoustic parameters of loudness, annoyance and tonal-
ity, but also some additional more domain-specific descriptors such as ‘droning’, ‘grinding’ or
‘whining’ may be identified. The attribute ‘droning’ could even explain all three nodes. The
technical-constructive properties of the machinery, by contrast, e. g. load and rotational speed,
did not help to describe the listeners’ perceptual space.
References
1F.Wickelmaier,W.Ellermeier,Pe rcep t . P s y chop h y s . 69,287–297(2007).
2S.Choisel,F.Wickelmaier,J. Audio Engineer. Soc. 54,815–826(2006).
3J.Schlittenlacher,W.Ellermeier,Proceedings of Inter-noise 2013,Innsbruck(2013).
∗Address for correspondence: Technische Universit¨at Darmstadt, Alexanderstr. 10, 64283 Darmstadt, Germany.
E-mail:
schlittenlacher@psychologie.tu-darmstadt.de
108

The centrality of psychophysics to psychology:
AHephaestianparadigm
Jordan R. Schoenherr∗
Department of Psychology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
Apeculiarityexistswithinexperimentalpsychology:ifpsychophysical methods are founda-
tional, why is so little reference made to them within the psychological literature? I will consider
the extent to which this phenomena represents paradigm change 1and reformulation of the bound-
ary of disciplines of psychology 2.Abibliometricanalysisprovidesevidencethatthemethodsand
object of study of psychophysics represent a core of modern experimental psychology’s Wundtian
paradigm. Disciplinary reformulation is therefore considered to be the most plausible basis for
the relative absence of reference to Fechner in particular and psychophysics more generally.
Like many practitioners of early psychological science, Fechner’s interdisciplinary interests
had considerable breadth: medicine, evolution, aesthetics, physiology, and philosophy. This gives
Fechner the appearance of modern day cognitive scientists which makes reduced references to
him in the literature relative to other early practitioners such as Wundt and Helmholtz somewhat
puzzling. Methods developed and codified by Fechner in his work provide the basis for much
contemporary research. Moreover, thresholds and discriminative accuracy still remain the core
of much contemporary experimental psychology in numerous research areas. Citation analyses
of English and German corpora suggest that this is partially the result of the Americanization of
psychological research with a concomitant shift to regionalpriorities.
In order to understand why Fechnerian psychology might be reject we must consider its theo-
retical and metatheoretical underpinnings. Unlike contemporary psychology’s dominant materi-
alist focus, Fechner’s panpsychism characterized all matter as mind. A rejection of the metathe-
oretical foundations leaves only the mathematical foundations of psychophysics: amongst them
the emblematic Weber–Fechner fraction. Here it is importanttonotethea-theoreticalparallels
with behaviourism and the contemporary paradigm’s rejection of the behaviourist’s ‘blackbox’.
Moreover, the formation of the development of the modern paradigm brought with it a wariness
of ‘the cult of empiricism’, a growing emphasis of theorizinginpublications,andareducedem-
phasis on individuals offering results in the absence of theory. The comparative lack of concern
with these internal operations relative to the modern paradigm are likely to have play a similar
role in the absence of reference to early psychophysics (similar accounts of Fechner’s work are
provided in the context of psychoaesthetics3). Given the similar citation patterns for Hermann
Ebbinghaus and Johannes M¨uller, it seems more plausible that the pre-paradigmatic nature of this
work is the most likely explanation for the comparatively reduced level of citation of Weber and
Fechner.
References
1T.Kuhn,The structure of scientific revolutions (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1962).
2T.F.Gieryn,Cultural boundaries of science: Credibility of the line (University of Chicago Press, Chicago,
1999).
3R.Arnheim,in:S.Koch,D.E.Leary(eds.)Acenturyofpsychologyasscience(McGraw-Hill, New York,
1985).
∗E-mail:
jordan.schoenherr@carleton.ca
109

Computational modeling of correct responses propor-
tion among confident ones in ‘greater–lesser’ task
Val e n t i n M. Shendyapin∗
Moscow City University of Psychology and Education, Moscow,Russia
Two y ea r s ag o a m at h e ma t ic a l m o d el h a s be e n d evel o p e d 1which described an ideal observer’s
choice of the most correct or the most useful response and his (her) estimation of confidence in
this response. The model reveals effects of erroneous responses payoffs and correct ones costs on
mean expectable all-alternative utility and confident responses correctness probability in ‘greater–
lesser’ task (see Figure 1). If payoff is less than cost, then all observers’ responses are confident.
When payoff is greater than cost, then unconfident responses appear. The model predicts that
along with the payoff further increase a number of unconfidentresponsesincreases,anumberof
confident ones decreases, but a pr oportion of correct responses among confident ones permanently
increases. So, this proportion is always greater than proportion of correct responses in the whole
data sample.
The model supposes: a) ‘post decisional confidence’ to be a subjective indicator of a chosen
response preference regarded to a rejected alternative; b) ‘decisional confidence’ to be a subjec-
tive indicator that the chosen alternative exceeds a minimalutilityleveldemanded,aswell;c)if
no alternative response exceeds the minimal zero-level demanded then an observer is unconfident.
‘Decisional confidence’ is understood as original unconscious, appeared in any decision making
and based on an evidence obtained in favor of the chosen alternative, while ‘post decisional confi-
dence’ – as subsequent conscious estimation of a response correctness, which is given if needed.
So the both kind of confidence may appear successively in the same observation. 2
Figure 1. —Parameters forcalculation: re-
sponses correctness probability P
cor =0.75;
constant correct responses costs vcost =1; er-
roneous responses payoffs vpayoff —variable.
P
conf,P
unconf —confidentandunconfidentre-
sponses probabilities; P
cor,conf —confidentre-
sponses correctness probability; P
cor,conf/P
conf
—proportion ofcorrectresponses amongcon-
fident ones; M[E(V)] —meanexpectableall-
alternative utility.
References and notes
1V.M.Shendyapin,I.G.Skotnikova,in:D.Algomet al. (eds.) Fech n er D ay 201 1 (International Society
for Psychophysics, Ra’anana, Israel, 2011), pp. 479–484.
2ThisstudywassupportedbytheRussianFoundationforHumanities, project number 12-06-00911.
∗E-mail:
valshend@yandex.ru
110

Storage: The standard features in memory
Natalya G. Shpagonova∗,VasiliyA.Sadov,andDariaL.Petrovich
Institute of Psychology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow
The dynamics of storage the standard stimulus of different modalities was investigated by
many authors. It was shown that observers can be stored a significant number of etalons in
memory, and to compare with high accuracy the presented physical stimulus with one that is
stored in memory. It was found noforgetting with time of storing the standard stimulus, but
rather the accuracy of identification and discrimination increases. The purpose of the study is the
experimental research of the dynamics of physical and semantic features of the standard stimulus
during its storage in long-term memory.
We have sel e c te d as s t an dard so u n d cl ip t he b ir dson g i n t h e fo rest (2449 ms) as the most
pleasant, natural, well-known, strong stimulus opposed to other fragments: cat’s meowing, dog-
barking, call of the cuckoo, the sound of the falling drops, kick ax on a tree, scream walrus and
chimes1.Thesurveywasconductedindividuallyandconsistedoffiveseries.In the first series
the subject was presented the standard stimulus that he couldhearafewtimestomemorizeits
duration. Then the subject measured the clip’s features at the points of semantic differential.
The survey consisted of five series. In the first series the subject was presented the standard
stimulus. After its memorization the subject measured the clip’s features at the points of semantic
differential (SD). After 20 minutes of storing the subjects reproduced the memorized duration of
the standard stimulus pressing a key (20 times). The second series was carried out after 7 days.
The task of the subject was to recall and reproduce the duration of the standard stimulus pressing
the key, as well as fill out a form of semantic differential. Thefollowingseriesweresimilartothe
second one and were carried out at 14, 21, 28 days after the firstseries.
The results of research identified the dynamic features of thesubjectivestandardstimulus
in the long-term memory storage. We found the shortening of the subjective duration of the
standard from 1 to 4 series (from 20 min to 21 days of storage). During its storage the standard
stimulus in memory increases the precision of its replaying.AnalysisofSDresultsshowedthat
after storage in long-term memory the standard stimulus was estimated as less natural, pleasant,
familiar, ringing, and more tiresome, longer, final. Two groups of subjects were pointed out. We
identified an underestimation of the duration of the standardstimulusinthefirstgroupandthe
overestimation in the second group in all five series. The analysis of variance demonstrated that
the time of the storing of the standard stimulus in memory can explain less than 2 percent of
variance. 2
References and notes
1V.A.Sadov,N.G.Shpagonova,Exp. Psychol. 1,34–43(2008).
2ThisstudywassupportedbytheRussianFoundationforHumanities, project number 11-06-00699a.
∗E-mail:
shpagonova@mail.ru
111

Faces contextualized by faces: The similarity effect in
face–context integration
Ana C. Silva∗and Armando M. Oliveira
Institute of Cognitive Psychology, University of Coimbra, Por tugal
Facial expressions typically happen in contexts, making that information in a face is rarely
the only one at play when observers judge expressions. This study investigates how contextual
information provided by a set of adjacent faces is combined with the information conveyed by a
focal face using the methodology of information integrationtheory
1.Besidesthegeneralissue
of the integration model, specific hypothesis were also considered: the claim by Susskind et al. 2
that context effects increase with physical similarity between contextual and focal information;
the claim by Barrett and Kensinger 3that context effects are larger for judgments of expressed
emotion than of expressed action tendencies (e.g. approach–withdrawal).
Stimuli were 3-D synthetic realistic faces of three male and three female characters. Expres-
sions arose from combinations of FACS-defined Action Units, in line with prototype definitions.
Focal and contextual information were taken as factors, and varied along a bipolar continuum
(sad–happy) with high intensity prototypical expressions at each end. This bipolar arrangement
allowed for different degrees of similarity between focal and contextual faces. A general 5 (focal)
×5(contextual)repeatedmeasuresdesignwasused. Participants judged the focal expression
as to conveyed ‘dissatisfaction–satisfaction’ in one experiment, and as to expressed ‘approach–
withdrawal tendency’ in another experiment, using a continuous graphic rating scale.
Significant context effects were observed in both experiments. A close to additive model was
found to govern the integration of contextual and focal information. However, slight but signif-
icant departures from additivity (convergence and divergences of lines) were also displayed in
the plots, supporting the predictions from the similarity hypothesis. Two clusters of participants
emerged, disclosing large context effects in one case (majorcluster)andvirtuallynocontextef-
fects in the other (minor cluster). While Masuda et al.4previously documented a modulation
of contextual effects on the judgment of facial expressions by cultural differences (e. g. Japanese
vs. North American participants), our findings highlight a key role of individual differences even
within a same cultural background. At odds with Barrett and Kensinger 3,whousedemotional
words as contextual information, context effects were noticeably larger for judgments of action
readiness (approach-withdrawal) than of expressed feeling. One likely interpretation for this re-
sult is that contexts defined by faces may entail direct implications as to the open courses of action
within a seemingly interpersonal situation.
References
1N.H.Anderson,Fou n d a t ion s o f i n for m a t io n int egr a t i on t he or y (Academic Press, New York, 1981);
N. H. Anderson, Afunctionaltheoryofcognition(Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah (NJ), 1996).
2J.M.Susskindet al.,Neuropsychologia 45,152–162(2007).
3L.F.Barrett,E.A.Kensinger,Psychol. Sci. 21,595–599(2010).
4T.Masudaet al.,J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 94,365–381(2008).
∗E-mail:
acduarte@fpce.uc.pt
112

Visual discrimination asymmetry: Decision making
criterion, time order error
Irina G. Skotnikova∗
Institute of Psychology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
Some authors have found ‘Same’ (S)responseswerefoundtobegivenmoreoftenandin
many cases more quickly than ‘Different’ (D)onesinspiteofequiprobablepresentationofsame
(s)anddifferent(d)lettersanddotspatterns,circularsdimensions,humanfaces in S–Dvisual
discrimination task. There is no conventional explanation of the phenomenon yet. In the present
work discrimination in pairs of s(600 ms and 600 ms) and d(600 ms and 600−∆t)lightflashes
durations was studied. ∆twas chosen individually in order to obtain 70–80 % of correct responses.
sand dpairs and a place of a longer duration in dones were equiprobable and changed randomly.
In each trial each of 71 observers gave 2 successive responses: 1) were sor ddurations presented,
2) is he (she) confident or unconfident in his (her) 1st responsecorrectness. Afterpreliminary
and training sessions a main session was conducted included 100 trials. d-trials were considered
commonly to be signal ones and decision making criterion was estimated by Yes Rate-index.
Statistical significance of discrepancy between probabilities of sand dtrials (.5 and .5), and
empirical frequencies of Sand Dresponses, was estimated by Laplace theorem, and discrepancy
between frequencies for different kinds of trials and responses by Wilcoxon Test.
It was found that 75 % of observers showed greater ( p<.003) Sresponses frequencies (.56
in average) than Dones (.44 in average). These data are rather close to theoretical probabili-
ties (.62 and .38 correspondingly) predicted by our model of confidence in sensory discrimina-
tion1.ThemodelexplainspredominanceofSjudgments by responses distribution in S–Dtask.
The empirical fact obtained did not depend on observers’ cognitive styles: field (in)dependence,
rigidity—flexibility, reflection—impulsivity (Spearman Correlation Test). In average frequency
of confident Sresponses (.47) was 1.4 times as greater as confident Dones (.33, p<.05) and
mean confidence of Sresponses was 2 times as nearer to the corresponding proportion correct as
compared to Dones (p<.01). Time Order Error (TOE) was revealed: erroneous Sresponses
frequencies were 1.7 times as lesser when the 1st stimulus waslongeraswhenitwasshorterthan
the 2nd one ( p<.001). That is, durations were discriminated better when the 1st one was the
longest. This corresponds to another authors’ data for similar durations.
Predominance of Sresponses means observers’ accepting of lax decision makingcriterionfor
these judgments while strict criterion for Dones. Lax criterion for equality was typical for 2 kinds
of trials: where the 1st duration was shorter and in strials. And a criterion was symmetrical only
in the 3rd kind of trials: where the 1st duration was longer. Ithastobediscussed: 1)havewe
consider TOE and lax criterion for equality to be independentfactorsorisoneofthemcaused
by the other; 2) are Sjudgments more easier and therefore preferable and more confident than D
ones?2
References and notes
1V.M.Shendyapin,I.G.Skotnikova,in:D.Algomet al. (eds.) Fech n er D ay 201 1 (International Society
for Psychophysics, Ra’anana, Israel, 2011), pp. 479–484.
2ThisstudywassupportedbytheRussianFoundationforHumanities, project number 12-06-00911.
∗E-mail:
iris236@yandex.ru
113

Habituation vs. sensitization to pain in newborns
Rosana M. Trist˜
ao∗,Let´ıciaM.Bernardes,NaiaraV.G.Martins,LudmilaArag
˜
ao,
Bruno C. do Amaral, and Jos´
eAlfredoL.deJesus
Faculty of Medicine, Universit y of Brasilia, Bras´ılia(D F), Brazil
Habituation to pain is an adaptation process which promotes areductioninbehavioralre-
sponse to a given pain stimulus over time. This mechanism is not well described in the literature
in neonates due to difficulties in characterizing pain in these individuals. The pain in newborns
may be evaluated by behavioral and physiological parameterssuchasCOMFORTBehaviorScale
and skin conductance activity (SCA), respectively, analyzing the overall score scale and SCA
through area under the curve (AUC) and number of peaks per second (NP).
The present study analyzed 14 newborns with a mean gestational age of 38 weeks (±2.18),
66 % males, birth weight of 3291g (±922 g) and minute-5APGAR of 9 (±0.3). These subjects
underwent five heel pricks for blood glucose curve during a period of 24 hours (0, 3, 6, 12 and
24 hours after birth). The last four events were videotaped and the SCA was measured by Skin
Conductance Measure System (SCMS R
⃝)15and30secondsafterpainevents,investigatingthe
effect of time elapsed after the nociceptive stimulus. Data was analyzed by repeated measure
analysis over four repeated pain events and showed that therewaspainhabituationforSCAto
the variable AUC at 15 s (F(1,3)=36.99, p=.009) and 30 s intervals (F(1,3)=52.04, p=.005).
Also, with good correlation between AUC and COMFORT (r=0.98, p=.002). However, there
was no significant habituation effect observed to NP neither to scale response, although decrease
in the mean values was observed specially to the 4th session, suggesting that there was a process
of habituation to pain.
Overall, the classic gradual habituation process was not observed to the behavioral dimension,
but a pattern of decrements and increments with a general tendency to decrease. The newborns
scores at pain scale only attended the cut off score (≥17) at 1st session, going down and up in
the next events. The absence of continuous decrease in the scores for the 3rd session can be ex-
plained by the pattern of habituation model presented by Colombo et al.1.Intheirmodel,both
functions of sensitization and habituation are considered to generate a third process called aggre-
gated function. Hence, behavioral habituation to pain in neonates is better observed, therefore,
by an aggregate function between sensitization and habituation while habituation was clear to the
physiological parameter AUC. This observed phenomenon still needs more studies utilizing the
psychophysical approach.
Reference
1J.Colombo,J.E.Frick,S.A.Gorman,J. Exp. Child Psychol. 70 26–53 (1997).
∗E-mail:
rosana.tristao@gmail.com
114

Randomly interleaved staircases and ‘acceptance
thresholds’ in computer graphics experiments
Michele Vicovaro∗a,LudovicHoyet
b,LuigiBurigana
a,andCarolO’Sullivan
b
aDept. of General Psychology, University of Padua, Italy
bGraphics, Vision and Visualisation Group, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Vid eogam e s and anim ated mo vies ar e p opulat ed by virt u al human characters and inanimate
objects which move and interact variously. A possible way forimprovingtherealismofvirtual
animations is to mirror closely how humans and objects behaveinthephysicalworld.Thedraw-
back of this approach is that a huge number of variables shouldbetakenintoaccount,andthis
causes the growth of computational costs. A more effective approach is to exploit the limits of the
visual system in order to create perceptually realistic animations while saving the computational
costs of details that observers cannot perceive.
Psychophysical experiments can provide valuable quantitative guidelines for animators who
wish to decrease the physical realism of virtual animations,andthustheircomputationalcosts,
without compromising their perceptual realism. In these experiments, acceptance thresholds are
measures quantifying how much a physical variable can departfromitsidealvaluewhilestill
being perceived as plausible with a reasonable probability.Inexperimentswheretheindependent
variable can be manipulated along a continuum, randomly interleaved staircases with fixed step
sizes is a quick and simple psychophysical method for obtaining acceptance thresholds. With
optimal setup, this method provides accurate and precise threshold measurements1.
Typical l y, the ob s e r v e r is a s k e d t o ju d ge w h e th e r th e p re s e nted virtual animation is natu-
ral/correct or unnatural/incorrect with respect to his/her previous experiencewith the correspond-
ing physical event. According to the staircase design, the ascending staircase starts with the most
physically realistic animation (which is perceived as clearly natural/correct), while the descend-
ing staircase starts with the animation which differs most from physical reality (the animation
is glaringly unnatural/incorrect). For each staircase, thevalueoftheindependentvariableisin-
creased by a predefined amount after a natural/correct response, and decreased by a fraction of
that amount 1after a unnatural/incorrect response. The two staircases are randomly interleaved in
order to avoid anticipatory effects. Each staircase stops after a pre-specified number of response
changes, and the acceptance threshold is then computed by averaging the physical values corre-
sponding to response changes, or by fitting a psychometric function to the data. The poster we
present shows that this method has proven being effective in graphics experiments on rigid bodies
collisions2and virtual throwing animations 3.
Computer graphics is a promising field of multidisciplinary research. On the one hand, ani-
mators need effective psychophysical methods for measuringacceptancethresholds. Ontheother
hand, psychologists may increase their understanding of thevisualsystemthroughresearchin
computer graphics, which is typically carried out with realistic ecological stimuli.
References
1M.A.Garc´ıa-P´erez,Optometry Vision Sci. 78,56–64(2001).
2P.S.A.Reitsma,C.O’Sullivan,ACM Trans. Appl. Percept. 6,3,Article15(2009).
3M.Vicovaroet al.,in:P.Kry,J.Lee(eds.)Proceedings of SCA 2012,pp.175–182(2012).
∗E-mail:
vicovaro85@gmail.com
115

Haptic sensation elicited by visual stimulation:
The “feeling by seeing” procedure
Michael Wagner∗and Tomer Elbaum
Ariel University, Israel
The effectiveness of minimally invasive surgery robots is limited by surgeon’s lack of hap-
tic sensation while remotely operating the robot. Thus, the reconstruction of haptic sensation
has become an important research goal. Here we report an experimental procedure in which vi-
sual stimuli successfully evoked haptic sensation. Participants performed stylus-tracking of pre-
defined paths on silicon surfaces, while required to maintainconstantstyluspressure(measured
by WACOM graphic tablet). Visual feedback on pressure was provided as a color signal (color
performance track-lines displayed on the task screen) and asavisualdynamiccue: Apulsating
ellipse displayed on the surrounding perimeter of the wide display task screen (at 75◦binocular
visual angle). Its pulsating frequency reflected stylus pressure.
The stylus tip constituted a randomly rotating “Landolt C”, requiring a secondary gap-detection
task. This attention demanding resolution task ensured the peripheral visual cue to be unattended.
Comparing acquisition phase performance with the 3 feedback-type trials (Peripheral-only,
color-line-only, and no-feedback conditions), pressure was efficiently maintained in the color-
line-only condition, as expected, and in the Peripheral-only condition. Performance significantly
declined in the no-feedback condition. Results indicated the peripheral cue as a significant feed-
back, although unattended.
In a second test phase we utilized virtual surfaces (no contact between stylus and tracking
surface). Here “Pressure” was computed based on calibrationscaleofstylustipelevationfrom
the WACOM graphic tablet. This study yielded similar results: The peripheral cue served as feed-
back. Moreover, participants reported subjective haptic sensation while “touching” the surface,
and in congruence with required stylus pressure. Our resultssupportthefeasibilityofastimulus-
substitution processing whereby haptic sensation is elicited by a non-attended peripheral-visual
stimulus.
∗E-mail:
wag.michael@gmail.com
116

Special symposium
“Ernst Mach’s legacy: Psychophysics and beyond”
117

Ernst Mach – examples of his scientific work in the area
of applied physics and measurement techniques
Klaus Thoma∗
Ernst-Mach-Institut – Fraunhofer Institut f¨ur Kurzzeitdynamik, Freiburg i. Br., G ermany
The achievements of Mach in the areas of optics, acoustic, gasdynamicsandBallisticsareof
essential importance in the physics of 19/20th century. His criticism of Newton and the purely
mechanical interpretation of physics made him one of the scientists to prepare the scientific com-
munity for Einsteins relativity theory. In the heritage of our Ernst-Mach-Institute was a letter
from Einstein to Mach, discussing this point. Although in German, this very personal letter from
Einstein to Mach will be presented.
In detail, Mach was one of the first physicists to analyze and understand the physics of shock
waves in air. Shock waves are inherently coupled effect of fast moving masses in air, as for
example a projectile, fired by a gun. To quantitatively measure and visualize such shock waves,
he developed new photographic techniques and thus created the first photografies of shock waves
in air. The wealth of his experimental results is now stored and conserved at the Deutsche Museum
in Munich.
The Fraunhofer Institut f ¨ur Kurzzeitdynamik in Freiburg, carrying the name of Ernst Mach,
continues at least partially some of the ground breaking workofMachintheareaofapplied
physics. Nowadays of course the laboratories and their equipment are much more advanced
going far beyond Mach’s experimental work. Nevertheless thelinkstoMach’sleadingworkwill
become obvious by comparing results from the 19th century to actual data. Typical applications
of the work are today in the areas of security research, aerodynamics and space research. A few
typical examples of modern research work will be presented and discussed.
∗E-mail:
klaus.thoma@emi.fraunhofer.de
118

Mach on Helmholtz on acoustics
Michael Heidelberger∗
Philosophisches Seminar, Universit¨
at T¨ubingen, Germany
It is well-known that Mach’s and Helmholtz’s approaches to sensory physiology deeply differ
from each other involving also a disparity in philosophical outlook. This is particularly apparent
for space and color perception where Mach is greatly influenced by Gustav Theodor Fechner and
Ewald Hering. To use the terminology Helmholtz introduced, Mach clearly sides with “nativism”,
whereas Helmholtz himself favors “empiricism”. A “nativist” is someone who tries to identify
a“neuralcorrelate”,aswewouldcallittoday,ofaperceptual capacity, whereas an “empiricist”
would postulate that such capacity is the result of a psychological learning process.
In the case of tone perception, however, the situation seems not as clear-cut, at least at first
sight. Mach wrote an enthusiastic review of Helmholtz’s On the Sensations of Tone as a Physio-
logical Basis for the Theory of Music of 1863 (engl. transl. 1875) which three years later led to a
short manual on the same work. The goal was to explain in a popular manner the basic features
of Helmholtz’s theory to musicians. In this pamphlet, Mach praised Helmholtz’s musical the-
ory for “grounding the laws of tonal art in simple physical andphysiologicallawsandbringing
acoustics, musical theory and esthetics in relation to each other.” Mach was even convinced that
Helmholtz, as he wrote, had “justified his theory to such a degree that the correctness of its essen-
tial features cannot be taken into doubt anymore.” From this it seems indeed hard to imagine that
the antagonism of nativism and empiricism could have played aroleintheacousticsofthetwo
sense physiologists. It seems as if Helmholtz and Mach had indeed met on the common ground
of acoustics irrespective of their dispute mentioned.
However, from the beginning of his work on acoustics and his reception of Helmholtz, Mach
characterized Helmholtz’s approach as incomplete. He claimed that several relevant phenomena
are not covered by Helmholtz’s explanation. He maintained for example that Helmholtz is unable
to explain the sense of pitch and of musical intervals. We can immediately identify the order
of three different sounds and compare intervals between themwithotherintervalsondifferent
scale locations even if they do not have any partial tones in common. Generally, Mach looks for
additional physiological mechanisms where Helmholtz is content with assuming one nerve fiber
for each sensation of tone and with reducing other perceptualphenomenaeithertothecoincidence
of partial tones or to special psychological processes. Later, Mach tried to expand on Helmholtz’
theory by assuming not one but two specific sense energies for each tone by drawing an analogy
to Hering’s nativist opponent theory of color.
In my talk, I shall present Mach’s criticism of Helmholtz’s acoustics in detail and will show
how it unfolded over the years until it reached its culmination in Mach’s Beitr¨
age zur Analyse der
Empfindungen (1886). In conclusion, I shall reflect on the nativism–empiricism-controversy and
the different role psychological explanation plays in the two approaches.
∗E-mail:
michael.heidelberger@uni-tuebingen.de
119

Mach on ‘monocular stereoscopy’
Erik C. Banks∗
Department of Philosophy, Wright State University, Dayton (OH), USA
Mach’s discovery of the Mach Bands and the lateral inhibitionmechanismshypothesizedto
cause them is well known, although the mechanisms remain deeply contested. Mach’s attempt
to extend these ideas into a theory of so-called “monocular stereoscopy” 1is less well known.
This episode has historical and philosophical interest because it is illustrative of Mach’s method
in psychophysics, in particular his theory of elements and functions. 2
Mach hypothesized that the brightness of a sensed point in thevisualfieldwasproportional
to departures from the mean of the brightness of neighboring points and set the deviations pro-
portional to the second derivatives of the luminance distribution (the physical stimulus). The
first derivatives were barely noticed but they played a different role for Mach, that of triggering
monocular depth sensations. A steadily lightening or darkening distribution was barely sensed as
achangeinlightingatallbutinsteadwassensedasasurfaceof uniform brightness in space, such
as a cylinder or a tilted wall. Other sensations of direction,size,andorientationinspacewere
reciprocally affected by light and depth sensations connected together like the parts of a machine,
as illustrated by Mach’s visiting card illusion.
Mach also advanced several other hypotheses in connection with monocular depth sensations.
For example, he believed that there was one space sensation ofdepth,notseparatesensationsfor
monocular and binocular vision, although there might well betwosortsoftriggeringmechanisms.
Mach’s experiments with the pseudoscope seemed to confirm this, where monocular cues seemed
to override binocular disparities. Mach seemed to think thatthemonoculardepthsensationwas
more primitive in the visual system and earlier in the organism’s evolutionary history and that
binocular fusion somehow enhanced depth sensations alreadypresentinthesinglevisualfields,
as for example in Hering’s contemporaneous theory. He also seems to have realized on his own
that the two eyes could fuse the monocular depth sensations oftwowavylightsurfacesdirectly
without identifying monocular contours.
Mach’s ideas led me to consider a monocular stereogram3,asinglesurfacewithoverlapping
double images, to see if the single eye is also capable of fusion. I did eventually find attempts
to construct these images, in fine arts and studies of diplopia, but the effect is probably better
explained by the relative blur of the doubled images. Today I can think of a better reconstruc-
tion of Mach’s idea, namely that the binocular fusion of directional sensations occasions the sort
of concomitant automatic changes in orientation and depth inthetwomonocularimagesthat
allows them to fuse, as if the monocular images behaved like coupled Mach cards. Mach’s ap-
proach differs in an interesting way from contemporary approaches to the still unsolved problem
of binocular fusion. Mach requires a direct “phenomenological” functional connection between
the observed sensations on both monocular surfaces, where the connection can also be observed
directly. This is illustrative of his general method in psychophysics.
References
1E.Mach,Sitzungsber. kaiserl. Akad. Wien, math.-naturwiss. Kl. 58,731–736(1868).
2E.Mach,Analysis of sensations (Dover, New York, 1959).
3E.C.Banks,J. Hist. Behav. Sci. 37(4), 327–348 (2001).
∗E-mail:
Erik.Banks@wright.edu
120

Mach’s concept of phenomenological science, and its
relevance for psychophysics
Jiˇ
r´ı Wackermann∗
Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health, Freiburg i. Br., Germany
Mach, being a physicist and not a professional philosopher, never expounded his ‘philosophy
of science’ in a systematic manner. His thoughts and views on the subject are scattered through
his major works (Analysis of Sensations,Mechanics,Knowledge and Error)andminoressays.
However, the main ideas can be safely reconstructed: (1) replacement of causal explanations by
functional relations, (2) conception of scientific knowledge as economical description of observed
phenomena, and (3) critique of theoretical constructs as provisional aids of questionable ontolog-
ical status. The ultimate aim of science, in his view, was mathematical representation of the total
nexus of natural phenomena—a program Mach called ‘phenomenological physics’.
Important are Mach’s analyses of mediation between experience and its mathematical model,
e.g. in his studies on the definition of mass1,oroftemperaturescales
2.Whatentersthefunctional
relations are not the observer’s sensations as such but theirmetricrepresentations,their‘labels’
or ‘signs of signs’2.Studyingameasurementproblem,oneisfacinganinterplaybetween the
procedural definition of the measured property, and its theoretical context, and balancing arbi-
trary choices on both sides of the problem. This leads to a moregeneralproblemofspecification
of ‘forms of forms’—i.e., classes of admissible functional representations—that can be traced
from early phases (dimensional analysis) via studies of functional equations to modern theories
of meaningful descriptions, or ‘forms of possible laws’.3For Mach, the task of science is speci-
fication of functional schemes, not assertions about the (hypothetical) underlying mechanisms.
The opposition between the mechanistic and functional approach is well illustrated by relation
between statistical mechanics (micro-level) and ‘phenomenological’ thermodynamics (macro-
level). Similarly, the brain’s action can be studied on the micro-level, in terms of neuronal
states and interactions (statistical neurophysics), or in terms of meaningfully defined macroscopic
states. 4Psychophysics since Fechner’s Elements aims at schematic functional descriptions: not
as a surrogate for exact knowledge of neural mechanics, but asaresearchprogramwithitsown
merits. Indeed, schematic representation on a macro-level is not a defect of the theory relative to
the micro-level, not a lack or loss, but rather a discovery, i.e.incremental knowledge.5
This idea is continued in the program of ‘integral psychophysics’ 6that does not want to be
merely an ancillary discipline for psychology or neurophysiology, but shall be a rigorous mathe-
matical study of relational structures of primary experience, out of which subdomains of physical,
physiological, or mental phenomena (and their respective levels of descriptions) emerge.
References and notes
1E.Mach,Die Geschichte und die Wurzel des Satzes von der Erhaltung derArbeit(Calve, Prag, 1872);
see also E. C. Banks, Stud. Hist. Phil. Mod. Phys. 33,605–635(2002).
2E.Mach,Die Principien der W¨armelehre (Barth, Leipzig, 1896).
3Cf.worksbyJ.Acz´el,R.D.Luce,L.Narens.
4C.Allefeld,H.Atmanspacher,J.Wackermann,Chaos 19,015102(2009).
5P.Bernays,Abhandlungen zur Philosophie der Mathematik (Wiss. Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1976).
6J.Wackermann,Philos. Psychol. 23,189–206(2010).
∗E-mail:
jw@igpp.de
121

Mach and Schlick on simplicity in science
Bj¨
orn Henning∗
University of Vienna, Austria
After receiving his doctorate under Max Planck, who provokedthefamousdebateonthena-
ture of scientific knowledge with Ernst Mach around 1910, young philosopher Moritz Schlick
continued the argument with proponents that he and Planck designated as ‘positivists’. Al-
though Schlick was influenced by Mach, he repeatedly took sides with Planck criticizing con-
cepts brought forward by the ‘positivists’. Schlick’s criticisms targeted a central idea of Mach’s
psychology of knowledge, the principle of economy of thought. Now, what do Mach and Schlick
understand by ‘economy’ and ‘simplicity’, respectively? What is Schlick’s objection to Mach?
According to Mach, science as a systematic presentation of facts is basically an economical
endeavor, meaning that scientific theories are developed with the objective of saving the trouble
of new experience, of mimetically reproducing facts, and, most importantly, for the purpose of a
more sparing utilization of our mental powers1.E.g.,Machacceptstheassumptionoftheoreti-
cal entities, but only for practical reasons. Nonetheless, he regards them as provisional auxiliary
means that postulate abstract attributes we are not familiarwithinourexperience. Theseprovi-
sional means ought to be replaced by assumptions that originate naturally and possess continuity
with familiar experiences2.Comparedwiththeabstractionoftheoreticalentities,concepts and
theories artlessly developed in the course of an extra- and interpolation from empirical facts are
better at meeting the requirements of economy of thought.
Despite the fact that both agree with the claim that scientists seek to present facts in an eco-
nomical form, Schlick is not convinced that Mach’s psychological interpretation of the principle
of simplicity in science is right. In Mach’s view, we tend to achieve scientific aims with as lit-
tle effort of mental labor as possible. What counts as ‘knowledge’, therefore, has to satisfy the
demand of convenience of thought. Schlick calls Mach’s principle a principle of ‘laziness’ and
claims that Mach deals with it only as a psychological phenomenon relating it with aspects of
habit, convenience, and familiarity.3
Schlick, however, understands ‘simplicity’ as a logical notion, apparently, later affirmed by
Einstein and Laue. Schlick names it the ‘principle of economyofconcepts’thathasnothingto
do with an ease of thought processes. We should favor those theories that presuppose fewer basic
premises from which a theory is derived. Schlick’s principlealsodemandseconomywithregard
to a theory’s formal coherence.4But his principle is not only a methodological consideration
regarding the elegance of a theory, interestingly enough, Schlick also thought of it as an indicator
of the level of knowledge a theory contains5.
References and notes
1E.Mach,Principles of the theory of heat (Reidel, Dordrecht, 1986), p. 359. Cf. E. Mach, Popu l a r s cient i fi c
lectures (Open Court, Chicago, 1898), pp. 186–213.
2Cf.E.Mach,The science of mechanics (Open Court, Chicago, 1919), p. 492.
3Cf.M.Schlick,General theory of knowledge (Open Court, Illinois, 1974), §13.
4Cf.M.Schlickin:M.St¨oltzner,Th.Uebel(eds.)Wien er Krei s. Text e z ur wi sse nscha ftl i ch en Welta uff as-
sung (Meiner, Hamburg, 2006), p. 55.
5Cf.M.Schlick,General theory of knowledge (Open Court, Illinois, 1974), p. 13.
∗E-mail:
bjoern.henning@univie.ac.at
122

Mach at younger ages, his research on psychophysics,
his subsequent world view and his contribution to
education
Karl H. Siemsen∗
Institut f¨ur Nachrichten und Kommunikation, Hochschule Emden-Leer, Germany
There are some papers of Mach on psychophysics as an area of expertise to demonstrate to
young students of medicine the physical functioning of the human body. These papers including
his “Compendium der Physik f ¨ur Mediciner” 1were well known in Europe as a basic course on
that topic for long time. Mach changed his scope to a more general view of the functionality
of the human body including the brain as his responsibility moved to students of physics. His
view as a scientist with Erkenntnistheory started early. That’s why he lifelong tried to avoid
contradictions, to avoid as much as possible a priori assumptions (at least to call them by name)
and to find and adjust a monistic view.2This led him, step by step, to corrections of some of his
early assumptions. His view at the end of his life unfortunately was not condensed in a book by
himself, so this has to be done piecewise from his writings3.
Mach’s sensualism, perception, Erkenntnistheory and his Gestalt idea had a huge impact on
education, especially on A. Binet 4and W. James5.BecauseoftheWorldWar1andthedeath
of the three, Mach’s view collapsed and 150 years later becomes visible by statistical means
and the access to Mach’s, Binet’s and James’ writings by internet. In the meantime until now it
is cultivated by Gestalt psychologists (for example by Ch. B¨u h l e r , E i n o K a i l a , R . H ¨o n i g s w a l d 6,
Heinz Werner; with the exception of Kaila they had to leave Germany after 1933 and are unknown
in Germany now) to theory and praxis of international scienceeducation
7–9.
References
1E.Mach,Compendium der Physik f¨ur Mediciner (Braum¨uller, Wien, 1863).
2E.Mach(1905/)Erkenntnis und Irrtum: Skizzen zur Psychologie der Forschung (5th ed., Leipzig, 1926;
reprint: rePRINT, Berlin, 2002).
3R.H¨onigswald,Zur Kritik der Machschen Philosophie (Schwetschke und Sohn, Berlin, 1903).
4A.Binet,Modern ideas about children (Suzanne Heisler, Albi, 1911/1975).
5J.Thiele,Wis sen schaf tliche Kom munikati on. Die Kor re spond enz E rns tMachs(Henn, Kastellaun, 1978).
6R.H¨onigswald,Die Grundlagen der Denkpsychologie (Teubner, Berlin, 1926).
7OECD.PISA 2006 – Science competencies for tomorrow’s world, (Vols. I and II, 2007)
http://www.oecd.org
,cited12June2008.
8K.Kurki-Suonio,Science & Education,20,211–243(2011).
9J.A.C.Hattie,Vi sible l e a r n ing.(Routledge,Oxon,2009)
∗E-mail:
siemsenfam@googlemail.com
123

Psychophysics as world view: Ernst Mach’s sensualism,
gestalt and erkenntnis-theory
Hayo Siemsen∗
Ernst Mach Institut f¨ur Erkenntnistheorie, Wadgassen, Germany
150 years ago in 1863 (only four years after Darwin had published his “Origin of the Species”
in 1859), Ernst Mach took the idea of psychophysics from Fechner and developed it into a consis-
tent world view. For Mach, it is thought-economical to use oneperspectiveasa“generalcurrency”
through which one can compare and even exchange and generalize concepts from different do-
mains or disciplines. The idea of psychophysics, i. e. that certain phenomena are in-between the
psychical, physiological and the physical perspectives, fits very well to this question of what is
general in science. If one takes psychophysics as a relation between the psychical and the physi-
cal perspectives and one can make the psychological, physiological and physicalist theories used
consistent to each other, there is no need anymore for arbitrary epistemological “cuts”. Such cuts
lead to many – often unconscious – inconsistencies. For Mach,itislikewalkingontwolegs,the
physical and the psychical and assuming that the world one’s legs walk on is the same for both.
This view of psychophysics was not shared by Fechner. Interestingly, in their correspondence
(see Thiele 1978), Mach relied on Herbart’s psychology (seemingly against Fechner’s more phys-
icalistic and metaphysical view). But in his books, Mach rather applied ideas of Heraclios he
found in Herbart’s early Neokantian counterpart in psychology, Friedrich Eduard Beneke. Thus
in criticism to Herbart, Mach transformed Beneke’s psychology into his psychophysical sensual-
ism. To this he further added the thought-economical conceptofgestalt. Gestaltisunderstoodby
Mach as adaptation and transformation, like in a Darwinian species. This is the transformed post-
Darwinian gestalt concept which von Ehrenfels and Wertheimer took as a specific concept from
Mach. Machian gestalts are process and product at the same time, which is fundamentally differ-
ent from an Aristotelian “holistic” gestalt concept still used by Goethe. The transformed gestalt
concepts has since been used by gestalt theory. Finally, in order to stabilize the new psychophys-
ical world view and to make it consistent, Mach (still consistent with Beneke) developed an
erkenntnis-theory based explicitly on erkenntnis-psychology and not only on erkenntnis-logic.
∗E-mail:
hayo.siemsen@gmail.com
124

Authors index
Actis-Grosso, R. 96
Alcal´a-Quintana, R. 32
Algom, D. 55, 83, 100
Amaral, B. C. de 114
Arag˜ao, L. 114
Atmanspacher, H. 20, 21
Aviv i R eich, M. 88
B˚a˚ath, R. 72, 85
Babkoff, H. 45
Bach, M. 15
Balk, R. 29
Banks, E. C. 120
Batalha, L. C. 99, 107
Bausenhart, K. M. 30
Ben-Nathan, M. 83
Bernardes, L. M. 114
Birkenbusch, J. 73
Blutner, R. 23
Borg, E. 97, 98
Borg, G. 4, 97
Borter, N. 74
Brodsky, J. 57
Bueno, J. L. O. 11, 75, 77
Buitenweg, J. R. 36, 37, 38
Buono, A. 84
Burigana, L. 115
Busemeyer, J. R. 22
Caffery, K. 84
Calderon, A. 76
Capa, R. L. 12
Cardiel Bernal, B. 84
Cobuzzi, J. 76
Cohen Kadosh, R. 90
Colonius, H. 50, 51
Devery, K. 84
Dierks, Th. 17
Doll, R. J. 37
Duval, C. Z. 12
Dyjas, O. 30
Dzhafarov, E. N. 50, 51
Ehm, W. 49
Elbaum, T. 116
Ellermeier, W. 73, 108
Elliott, M. A. 57
Estner, B. 60
Fernandes, A. M. 99, 107
Fiedler, K. 89
Filk, Th. 24
Firmino, ´
E. A. 77
Fitousi, D. 78
Fostick, L. 45, 79
Friedel, J. 57
Fujioka, T. 91
Galanter, E. 62, 80
Garc´ıa-P ´erez, M. A. 31, 32
Giersch, A. 12, 86
Godley, T. 84
Gonc¸alves, J. C. 99, 107
Graben, P. beim 23
Groeneveld, G. J. 39
Grondin, S. 81, 82
Gur, T. 100
Hannan, P. 62, 80
Hasuo, E. 81
Hatfield, G. 5
Hay, J. L. 39
Heidelberger, M. 119
Hellstr¨om, ˚
A. 28
Henning, B. 122
Hoyet, L. 115
Hubbard, T. L. 56, 101
Hubl, D. 17
Jauhiainen, T. 67
Jesus, J. A. L. de 114
Kakarot, N. 66
Kattner, F. 73
Kelly, J. 57
Kern, A. 108
Kim, V. 84
Kindler, J. 17
Kishida, T. 43, 81
Kleinb¨ohl, D. 34, 35
Kl¨ockner, F. 29
Koenig, Th. 17
Kornmeier, J. 15
Kottlow, M. 17
Kutzner, F. 89
Lachmann, Th. 60
125

Leibowitz, J. 84
Link, S. 54
Ljungberg, J. K. 102
Logan, J. 44
Luccio, R. 68
Majewski, K. J. 84
Marsja, E. A. 102
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