Psychological Research

Engelkamp, Johannes

doi: 10.1007/s004260000055pmid: N/A

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doi: 10.1007/s004260000056pmid: N/A

Hecht, Heiko; Vogt, Stefan; Prinz, Wolfgang

doi: 10.1007/s004260000043pmid: 11505611

Transfer from perception to action is well documented, for instance in the form of observational learning. Transfer from action to perception, on the other hand, has not been researched. Such action-perception transfer (APT) is compatible with several learning theories and has been predicted within the framework of common coding of perceptual and motor events (Prinz, 1992, 1997). Our first experiment aimed at an empirical evaluation of APT and involved motor practice of timed two-cycle arm movements on verbal command without visual feedback. In a transfer test, visual judgments of similar patterns had to be made. In addition, transfer from the visual to the motor task was studied. In Experiment 2 we separated kinesthetic aspects of motor practice from preparatory and efferent contributions to APT. The experiments provide evidence that transfer between perception and action is bi-directional. Transfer from perception to action and, more importantly, from action to perception was found. Furthermore, APT was equally pronounced for participants who had actively practiced movements during training and for passive participants who had received merely kinesthetic feedback about the movement. This kinesthetic-visual transfer is likely to be achieved via visuomotor-kinesthetic matching or via timekeeping mechanisms that are involved in both motor and visual performance.

Kelly, Stephen W.; Burton, A. Mike

doi: 10.1007/s004260000034pmid: 11505608

Two experiments examined performance in a sequence learning task. Participants were trained on a repeating sequence which was presented as a visual display and learning was measured via the increase in reaction time to respond to a new sequence. Some participants made a response to each stimulus while others merely observed the sequence. In Experiment 1 participants responding to the display via a keypress showed learning, but those merely observing did not. Five possible reasons for the failure to find observational learning were considered and the Experiment 2 attempted to resolve these. This second experiment confirmed the findings of Experiment 1 in a non-spatial sequence display using a cover story which encouraged attention to the display but not rule-search strategies. The results are discussed in relation to applied and theoretical aspects of implicit learning.

Stadler, Michael A.; Geary, David C.; Hogan, Mary E.

doi: 10.1007/s004260000044pmid: 11505609

In two experiments, subjects were presented with digit pairs (e.g., 32) and asked to respond to the rightmost number. Negative priming, that is, slowed processing, was evident when the rightmost number was a counting-string (e.g., 43 following 12) or addition-sum (e.g., 65 following 32) associate of the number pair from the preceding trial. The studies are the first to demonstrate negative priming with counting and arithmetical memory representations and suggest the obligatory activation of these representations with the presentation of number pairs. The results are also consistent with the view that negative priming often occurs at the semantic level.

Masse, Christel; Lemaire, Patrick

doi: 10.1007/s004260000030pmid: 11505610

The basic question of the present experiment was whether people use a combination of arithmetic problem solving strategies to reject false products to multiplication problems or whether they simply use the single most efficient strategy. People had to verify true and false, five and non-five arithmetic problems. Compared with no-rule violation problems, people were faster with (a) five problems that violated the five rule (i.e., N×5=number with 5 or 0 as the final digit; e.g., 15 × 4=62), (b) problems that violated the parity rule (i.e., to be true, a product must be even if either or both of its multipliers is even; otherwise, it must be odd; 4 × 38=149), and (c) problems that violated both the parity and five rules (e.g., 29 × 5=142). Finally, people were equally fast and accurate when they solved two-rule violation problems than when they solved five-rule violation problems, and faster for those two types of problems than for parity-rule violation problems. Clearly, people use the single most efficient strategy when they reject false product to multiplication problems. This result has implications for our understanding of strategy selection in both arithmetic in particular and human cognition in general.

Vickers, Douglas; Butavicius, Marcus; Lee, Michael; Medvedev, Andrei

doi: 10.1007/s004260000031pmid: 11505612

Little research has been carried out on human performance in optimization problems, such as the Traveling Salesman problem (TSP). Studies by Polivanova (1974, Voprosy Psikhologii, 4, 41–51) and by MacGregor and Ormerod (1996, Perception & Psychophysics, 58, 527–539) suggest that: (1) the complexity of solutions to visually presented TSPs depends on the number of points on the convex hull; and (2) the perception of optimal structure is an innate tendency of the visual system, not subject to individual differences. Results are reported from two experiments. In the first, measures of the total length and completion speed of pathways, and a measure of path uncertainty were compared with optimal solutions produced by an elastic net algorithm and by several heuristic methods. Performance was also compared under instructions to draw the shortest or the most attractive pathway. In the second, various measures of performance were compared with scores on Raven's advanced progressive matrices (APM). The number of points on the convex hull did not determine the relative optimality of solutions, although both this factor and the total number of points influenced solution speed and path uncertainty. Subjects' solutions showed appreciable individual differences, which had a strong correlation with APM scores. The relation between perceptual organization and the process of solving visually presented TSPs is briefly discussed, as is the potential of optimization for providing a conceptual framework for the study of intelligence.

Tommasi, Luca; Zavagno, Daniele; Vallortigara, Giorgio

doi: 10.1007/s004260000042pmid: 11505613

It is well known that a flat ellipse rotating in the frontoparallel plane appears, after brief inspection, as a rigid circular disc tilting back and forth in a 3-D space. We here report that rotation of a grey-shaded ellipse on a white or on a black background produces the compelling illusion of a dark smoke or a dazzling fog (depending on the conditions of the background) moving in front of a completely white or completely black tilting disc. The fog effect disappears when there is a luminance contrast all along the perimeter of the ellipse. An experiment is reported showing that the effect can be experienced in static conditions only to a limited extent and mostly in the `dazzling' version, and that relative movement between the contours of the figure and the shaded area is crucial to the occurrence of the effect, while the occurrence of a depth effect is not.

Badcock, David R.; Khuu, Sieu K.

doi: 10.1007/s004260000020pmid: 11505614

The human visual system contains a functional sub-system that is specialized to extract image motion. The sensitivities of neurons change as one moves higher in the pathway. Initially cells collect responses from small retinal areas but later those local signals are combined to extract global motion; either frontoparallel or radial motion relative to the center of the visual field. This sequence of processing is conducted in parallel by pathways sensitive to the motion of either the first- or second-order luminance statistics of the image. Previously it had been shown that these two pathways were independent at the level at which local motion signals and frontoparallel global motion signals are extracted. In this study independence is tested during the extraction of radial global motion; a process strongly associated with cortical area MST (or V6) and the next logical level in the motion pathway. We find that the two pathways do provide independent estimates of radial motion and are, therefore, independent at all levels of the motion pathway that have been tested to date.

Pasini, Margherita; Tessari, Alessia

doi: 10.1007/s004260000036pmid: 11505615

Three experiments were carried out to study hemispheric specialization for subitizing (the rapid enumeration of small patterns) and counting (the serial quantification process based on some formal principles). The experiments consist of numerosity identification of dot patterns presented in one visual field, with a tachistoscopic technique, or eye movements monitored through glasses, and comparison between centrally presented dot patterns and lateralized tachistoscopically presented digits. Our experiments show left visual field advantage in the identification and comparison tasks in the subitizing range, whereas right visual field advantage has been found in the comparison task for the counting range.