A visual target is more difficult to recognize when it is surrounded by other, similar objects. This breakdown in object recognition is known as crowding. Despite a long history of experimental work, computational models of crowding are still sparse. Specifically, few studies have examined crowding using an ideal-observer approach. Here, we compare crowding in ideal observers with crowding in h...

The present study investigated the role of tonal context (extrinsic information) in the perception of Cantonese lexical tones. Target tones at three separate positions (initial, medial and final position) were recorded by two speakers (one male and one female). These sentences were edited and presented in three conditions: original carrier (target within the original context), isolation (target...

An important variant of the traditional line bisection task has involved a mechanical device invented by Bisiach and his colleagues (Bisiach et al. Perceptual and premotor factors of unilateral neglect. Neurology 1990;40:1278-81 [3]). This tool was devised to dissociate motor from perceptual factors in hemi-spatial neglect, by means of a mid-line indicator which moved 'congruently' or 'non-cong...

Unexpected events can have internal causes (action errors) as well as external causes (perceptual novelty). Both events call for adaptations of ongoing behavior, resulting, amongst other things, in post-error and post-novelty slowing (PES/PNS) of reaction times (RT). Both types of events are processed in prefrontal brain areas, indexed by event-related potentials (ERPs): Errors are followed by ...

A new methodology for perceptual quality measure is presented. The new method defines the bark coherence function (BCF) as a new cognition module. False prediction errors are occasionally observed in previously developed perceptual measures when they are applied to the end-to-end speech quality measurement of communication systems. Those errors are mainly caused by the linear distortion of the ...

A framework of complementary behavior has been proposed which maintains that direct manipulation and speech interfaces have reciprocal strengths and weaknesses. This suggests that user interface performance and acceptance may increase by adopting a multimodal approach that combines speech and direct manipulation. This effort examined the hypothesis that the speed, accuracy, and acceptance of mu...

The human visual system computes features of moving objects with high precision despite the fact that these features can change or blend into each other in the retinotopic image. Very little is known about how the human brain accomplishes this complex feat. Using a Ternus-Pikler display, introduced by Gestalt psychologists about a century ago, we show that human observers can perceive features ...

This study compared sentence intonation of L1 Mandarin by native speakers and L2 Mandarin by Cantonese learners, with both acoustic analysis and perceptual experiment. Three types of sentences (i.e., statement, intonation question, and particle question) ending with different tones and in different lengths were investigated. The perceptual experiment showed that declarative intonation in L2 spe...

INTRODUCTION Deficits in visual perception are well-established in schizophrenia and are linked to abnormal activity in the lateral occipital complex (LOC). Related deficits may exist in bipolar disorder. LOC contains neurons tuned to object features. It is unknown whether neural tuning in LOC or other visual areas is abnormal in patients, contributing to abnormal perception during visual tasks...

Young men's errors in sexual perception have been linked to sexual coercion. The current investigation sought to explicate the perceptual and decisional sources of these social perception errors, as well as their link to risk for sexual violence. General Recognition Theory (GRT; [Ashby, F. G., & Townsend, J. T. (1986). Varieties of perceptual independence. Psychological Review, 93, 154-179]) wa...