The role of occlusion in the perception of depth, lightness, and opacity.

A theory is presented that explains how the visual system infers the lightness, opacity, and depth of surfaces from stereoscopic images. It is shown that the polarity and magnitude of image contrast play distinct roles in surface perception, which can be captured by 2 principles of perceptual inference. First, a contrast depth asymmetry principle articulates how the visual system computes the ordinal depth and lightness relationships from the polarity of local, binocularly matched image contrast. Second, a global transmittance anchoring principle expresses how variations in contrast magnitudes are used to infer the presence of transparent surfaces. It is argued that these principles provide a unified explanation of how the visual system computes the 3-D surface structure of opaque and transparent surfaces. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Experience, Context, and the Visual Perception of Human Movement.

Why are human observers particularly sensitive to human movement? Seven experiments examined the roles of visual experience and motor processes in human movement perception by comparing visual sensitivities to point-light displays of familiar, unusual, and impossible gaits across gait-speed and identity discrimination tasks. In both tasks, visual sensitivity to physically possible gaits was superior to visual sensitivity to physically impossible gaits, supporting perception-action coupling theories of human movement perception. Visual experience influenced walker-identity perception but not gait-speed discrimination. Thus, both motor experience and visual experience define visual sensitivity to human movement. An ecological perspective can be used to define the conditions necessary for experience-dependent sensitivity to human movement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Configurational and nonconfigurational interactions between odorants in binary mixtures.

Studies on odor mixture perception suggest that although odor components can often be identified in mixtures, mixtures can also give rise to novel perceptual qualities that are not present in the components. Using an olfactory habituation task, the authors evaluated how the perceptual similarity between components in a mixture affects the perceptual quality of the mixture itself. Rats perceived binary mixtures composed of similar components as different from their 2 components, whereas binary mixtures composed of dissimilar components were perceived as very similar to their components. Results show that for both types of mixtures, pretraining to Component A reduces subsequent learning about Component B in rats trained in the presence of A. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Logarithmic Image Processing Model: Connections with Human Brightness Perception and Contrast Estimators

The logarithmic image processing (LIP) model is amathematical framework based on abstract linear mathematicswhich provides a set of specific algebraic and functionaloperations that can be applied to the processing of intensityimages valued in a bounded range. The LIP model has been provedto be physically justified in the setting of transmitted lightand to be consistent with several laws and characteristics ofthe human visual system. Successful application examples havealso been reported in several image processing areas, e.g.,image enhancement, image restoration, three-dimensional imagereconstruction, edge detection and image segmentation.The aim of this article is to show that the LIP model is atractable mathematical framework for image processing which isconsistent with several laws and characteristics of humanbrightness perception. This is a survey article in the sensethat it presents (almost) previously published results in arevised, refined and self-contained form. First, an introductionto the LIP model is exposed. Emphasis will be especially placedon the initial motivation and goal, and on the scope of themodel. Then, an introductory summary of mathematicalfundamentals of the LIP model is detailed. Next, the articleaims at surveying the connections of the LIP model with severallaws and characteristics of human brightness perception, namelythe brightness scale inversion, saturation characteristic, Weber'sand Fechner's laws, and the psychophysical contrast notion. Finally,it is shown that the LIP model is a powerful and tractable framework for handling the contrast notion. This is done througha survey of several LIP-model-based contrast estimators associated with special subparts (point, pair of points,boundary, region) of intensity images, that are justified bothfrom a physical and mathematical point of view.     

Affordances in the design of enactive systems

Enactive interfaces must incorporate intuitive activity that characterizes naturalistic perception. However, the manner in which information is presented is not more important than the contents: what information is presented. In this contribution, we address the contents of perception. We argue that people perceive affordances, that is, the possible actions that are available in any given situation. We further argue that enactive interfaces should be designed to optimize presentation of information about the possible actions that are available to a person using the enactive interface. The design of enactive interfaces might be guided by an extension of the theory of ecological interface design (Vicente in Hum Factors 44:62–78, 2002) to include multimodal information that is accessed through fast, intuitive exploratory movement. We review two empirical studies that illustrate our arguments. Careful analysis of affordances, together with our increasing understanding of the enactive perception of affordances, should influence the design of enactive interfaces.     

Symbolic control of visual attention: The role of working memory and attentional control settings.

This study examined how 1 symbol is selected to control the allocation of attention when several symbols appear in the visual field. In Experiments 1-3, the critical target feature was color, and it was found that uninformative central arrows that matched the color of the target were selected and produced unintentional shifts of attention (i.e., involuntary, initiated slowly, producing long-lasting facilitatory effects). Experiment 4 tested whether such selection is the result of an attentional filter or of a competition bias due to a match of incoming information against integrated object representations stored in working memory. Here, the critical feature was shape and color was irrelevant, but matching color arrows were still selected. Thus, features of objects in working memory will bias the selection of symbols in the visual field, and such selected symbols are capable of producing unintentional shifts of attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contributions of Oral and Extraoral Facial Movement to Visual and Audiovisual Speech Perception.

Seeing a talker's face influences auditory speech recognition, but the visible input essential for this influence has yet to be established. Using a new seamless editing technique, the authors examined effects of restricting visible movement to oral or extraoral areas of a talking face. In Experiment 1, visual speech identification and visual influences on identifying auditory speech were compared across displays in which the whole face moved, the oral area moved, or the extraoral area moved. Visual speech influences on auditory speech recognition were substantial and unchanging across whole-face and oral-movement displays. However, extraoral movement also influenced identification of visual and audiovisual speech. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that these results are dependent on intact and upright facial contexts, but only with extraoral movement displays. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

STUDY ON PHASE PERCEPTION IN SPEECH

The perceptual effect of the phase information in speech has been studied by auditory subjective tests. On the condition that the phase spectrum in speech is changed while amplitude spectrum is unchanged, the tests show that: (1) If the envelop of the reconstructed speech signal is unchanged, there is indistinctive auditory perception between the original speech and the reconstructed speech; (2) The auditory perception effect of the reconstructed speech mainly lies on the amplitude of the derivative of the additive phase; (3) td is the maximum relative time shift between different frequency components of the reconstructed speech signal. The speech quality is excellent while td <10ms; good while 10ms< td <20ms; common while 20ms< td <35ms, and poor while td >35ms.