Search

In this chapter, I discuss Tyler Burge’s account of the origins of objectivity. According to him, perceptual representation has a proto-predicational structure, represents the distal (as opposed to the proximal) stimulus and is necessarily governed by non-biological teleology. Furthermore, Burge argues that there is detailed empirical evidence for this conception of perceptual representation, as a mature scientific discipline, perceptual psychology, uses this conception in mathematically rigorous, predictively successful descriptions of the visual system of animal species. I discuss Burge’s proposal with an eye looking backward and an eye looking forward, as it were. First, the account adds to the critique of Quine’s own mature proposal by suggesting that Quine has been superseded by the progress of science. Second, I consider the merits of Burge’s account as an attempt at naturalized epistemology in its own rights.

In meiner Diplomarbeit zeige ich als ehemalige Betroffene des Messie-Syndroms, welch gro��en Stellenwert es noch immer in meinem Leben hat und wie ich begonnen habe, die darin versteckten Potenziale f��r meine Bewusstwerdung zu nutzen. Das Aufr��umen, Ausmisten und Umstellen von Gegenst��nden hat mir gezeigt, wie ich dadurch mit meinen inneren verdr��ngten Pers��nlichkeitsanteilen kommunizieren kann. Durch die jahrelange Besch��ftigung mit diesem Ph��nomen in meinem eigenen, ehemals an Dingen ��bervollen Wohnraum habe ich schrittweise gelernt, diese ���Sprache der Dinge��� zun��chst selbst zu verstehen und immer verst��ndlicher zu ��bersetzen. Im Mittelpunkt meiner Arbeit steht eine Wand in meinem Wohnzimmer, die als Projektionsfl��che f��r diese symbiosenhafte Beziehung zu Gegenst��nden, meine Bewusstwerdung und das Sichtbarmachen meiner verdr��ngten Gef��hle, Gedanken und Bed��rfnisse dient. Die zun��chst aus einer spontanen Zwangshandlung heraus entstandene ���Messie-Wand��� wird immer weiter transformiert und der Prozess in einer Fotopr��sentation festgehalten. Um Au��enstehenden die M��glichkeit zu bieten, diese komplexen Vorg��nge und den Leidensdruck dahinter nachvollziehen zu k��nnen, schreibe ich ��ber meine Motivationen, stelle Fachbegriffe der Psychologie in meinen eigenen Kontext, bringe meine inneren Welten und Denkweisen in Grafiken und Texten k��nstlerisch zu Papier, lasse auch andere Messies aus der Selbsthilfegruppe der Sigmund Freud Privatuniversit��t Wien zu Wort kommen und lade dazu ein, jene Werke von bildenden K��nstlerinnen und K��nstlern kennenzulernen, die mich auf meinem Weg der Bewusstwerdung begleitet haben. Mit dieser Arbeit m��chte ich die Mutter aller K��nste, wie die Architektur oft genannt wird, durch ein Randthema bereichern und einladen, den eigenen Wohnraum als Darstellungsort der Psyche zu erkunden., In my diploma thesis, as a former sufferer of Compulsive Hoarding, I show how important it still is in my life and how I began to use the hidden potentials for my awareness. Cleaning up, decluttering and moving objects has shown me how I can communicate with my inner suppressed personality parts. Through years of dealing with this phenomenon in my own living space, which used to be overcrowded with things, I gradually learned to understand this "language of things" myself and to translate it more and more comprehensibly. At the centre of my work is a wall in my living room that serves as a projection screen for this symbiotic relationship to objects, my awareness and the visualization of my repressed feelings, thoughts and needs. The initial "Wall of Mess", which was created out of a spontaneous compulsive action, is transformed further and further and the process is captured in a photo presentation. In order to offer outsiders the opportunity to comprehend these complex processes and the suffering behind them, I write about my motivations, put technical terms of psychology into my own context, artistically put my inner worlds and ways of thinking on paper in graphics and texts, let other Compulsive Hoarders from the selfhelp group of the Sigmund Freud Private University Vienna have their say and invite you to get to know the works of visual artists who have accompanied me on my path of becoming conscious. With this work I would like to enrich the mother of all arts, as architecture is often called, with a marginal theme and invite you to explore your own living space as a place of representation of the psyche.

One reason why Bayesian models based on Normal distributions are welcome in perceptual psychology is that they fit three natural expectations in the area: when two stimulus factors are in conflict the resulting perceptual value lies between the values separately supported by those factors, the resulting value is closer to that supported by the more reliable factor, and the variance implied by the combined action of the factors is no greater than the variances implied by them separately. To what degree are these good qualities shared by Bayesian models based on probability distributions other than the Normal ones? We address this problem by referring to distribution families that satisfy closure under multiplication, which is a key characteristic of prior families in Bayesian models, and by distinguishing seven desirable properties, one concerning the mean, three the variance, and three the relationship between mean and variance. The distribution families we discuss are the Bernoulli, Geometric, Gamma (including Exponential), Beta, and Pareto families. Through propositions, counterexamples, and graphical demonstrations, we show that these families vary in the degree to which they approximate the optimum performance of the Normal. We conclude by noting the relevance of our results for the Bayesian concept of information integration in psychology.

Encompassing ideas and techniques from music composition, perceptual psychology, computer science, acoustics, biology and philosophy, data sonification is a multi- even trans-disciplinary practice. This chapter summarizes different ways sonification has been defined, the types and classifications of data that it attempts to represent with sound, and how these representations perform under the pressure of various real-world utilizations.

The synergy of perceptual psychology, technology, and neuroscience can be used to comprehend how virtual reality affects cognition of human brain. Numerous studies have used neuroimaging modalities to assess the cognitive state and response of the brain with various external stimulations. The virtual reality-based devices are well known to incur visual, auditory, and haptic induced perceptions. Neurophysiological recordings together with virtual stimulations can assist in correlating humans' physiological perception with response in the environment designed virtually. The effective combination of these two has been utilized to study human behavior, spatial navigation performance, and spatial presence, to name a few. Moreover, virtual reality-based devices can be evaluated for the neurophysiological correlates of cognition through neurophysiological recordings. Challenges exist in the integration of real-time neuronal signals with virtual reality-based devices, and enhancing the experience together with real-time feedback and control through neuronal signals. This article provides an overview of neurophysiological correlates of cognition as revealed by virtual reality experience, together with a description of perception and virtual reality-based neuromodulation, various applications, and existing challenges in this field of research. Nanyang Technological University Published version S.M., P.P., and B.G. acknowledge the support from Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine and Data Science and AI Research (DSAIR) Centre of NTU (Project Number ADH-11/2017-DSAIR, and the support from the Cognitive Neuroimaging Centre (CONIC) at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Does visually perceived distance differ when objects are viewed in augmented reality (AR), as opposed to the real world? What are the differences? These questions are theoretically interesting, and the answers are important for the development of many tablet- and phone-based AR applications, including mobile AR navigation systems. This article presents a thorough literature review of distance judgment experimental protocols, and results from several areas of perceptual psychology. In addition to distance judgments of real and virtual objects, this section also discusses previous work in measuring the geometry of virtual picture space and considers how this work might be relevant to tablet AR. Then, the article presents the results of two experiments. In each experiment, observers bisected egocentric distances of 15 and 30 m in tablet-based AR and in the real world, in both indoor corridor and outdoor field environments. In AR, observers bisected the distances to virtual humans, while in the real world, they bisected the distances to real humans. This is the first reported research that directly compares distance judgments of real and virtual objects in a tablet AR system. Four key findings were: (1) In AR, observers expanded midpoint intervals at 15 m, but compressed midpoints at 30 m. (2) Observers were accurate in the real world. (3) The environmental setting—corridor or open field—had no effect. (4) The picture perception literature is important in understanding how distances are likely judged in tablet-based AR. Taken together, these findings suggest the depth distortions that AR application developers should expect with mobile and especially tablet-based AR. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

One important contribution of Carol Fowler's direct approach to speech perception is its account of multisensory perception. This supramodal account proposes a speech function that detects supramodal information available across audition, vision, and touch. This detection allows for the recovery of articulatory primitives that provide the basis of a common currency shared between modalities as well as between perception and production. Common currency allows for perceptual experience to be shared between modalities and supports perceptually guided speaking as well as production-guided perception. In this report, we discuss the contribution and status of the supramodal approach relative to recent research in multisensory speech perception. We argue that the approach has helped motivate a multisensory revolution in perceptual psychology. We then review the new behavioral and neurophysiological research on (a) supramodal information, (b) cross-sensory sharing of experience, and (c) perceptually guide...

Those in education committed to folk psychology (everyday talk about ourselves) reject the advances of neuroscience as the way to explain learning. Winch is one of the most determined defenders of folk psychology. Yet his account of folk psychology is weak and his rejection of neuroscience is deeply flawed. This article sets out Winch’s Wittgensteinian theory of learning then proceeds to critically examine a number of issues, including the folk psychology/cognitive science dualism, problems with folk psychology, the advantages of cognitive science and why folk psychology should be replaced by cognitive science.

This article presents a theoretical framework for the author’s experimental work in contemporary poetry, which has received the term cognitive poetry. In contrast to cognitive poetics, which applies the principles of cognitive psychology to interpret poetic texts, cognitive poetry applies these principles to produce poetic texts. The theoretical considerations of cognitive poetry are based on the assumption that one of the major purposes of creative work is to elicit an aesthetical reaction in the beholder. The aesthetical reaction to poetic texts could be achieved via their satiation with multiple meanings presented through multiple sensory modalities. Cognitive poetry employs techniques developed in cognitive psychology to explicitly address cognitive processes underlying the construction of multiple conceptual planes. The following techniques are discussed: priming, the Stroop effect, multimodal and multilingual presentations. The applications of these techniques are illustrated with examples of poetic texts produced by the author.

I argue that discussions of cognitive penetration have been insufficiently clear about (i) what distinguishes perception and cognition, and (ii) what kind of relationship between the two is supposed to be at stake in the debate. A strong reading, which is compatible with many characterizations of penetration, posits a highly specific and directed influence on perception. According to this view, which I call the “internal effect view” (IEV) a cognitive state penetrates a perceptual process if the presence of the cognitive state causes a change to the computation performed by the process, with the result being a distinct output. I produce a novel argument that this strong reading is false. On one well-motivated way of drawing the distinction between perceptual states and cognitive states, cognitive representations cannot play the computational role posited for them by IEV, vis-a-vis perception. This does not mean, however, that there are not important causal relationships between cognitive and perceptual states. I introduce an alternative view of these relationships, the “external effect view” (EEV). EEV posits that each cognitive state is associated with a broad range of possible perceptual outcomes, and biases perception towards any of those perceptual outcomes without determining specific perceptual contents. I argue that EEV captures the kinds of cases philosophers have thought to be evidence for IEV, and a wide range of other cases as well.

This editorial introduces the first part of a 2-part special issue of Ecological Psychology dedicated to James J. Gibson's 1966 book, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, which presents man...

Pixelphonics is a prototype system for the colocation of audio sources with their associated visual objects in screen-based media and virtual reality, a technology described in System, Method and Apparatus for Co-locating Visual Images and Associated Sound (International Application No. PCT/CA2018/050433), sponsored by the Innovation Office of Simon Fraser University. The prototype produces a new form of multichannel audiovisual display in which the associated sound emanates from the specific screen or physical enclosure areas of the moving and virtual images, allowing for colocated audio and visuals. The technology adds a new perceptual and experiential layer to the technology of synchronized sound, which has existed now for over a century, by adding its spatial complement, so that sound can now be in place with its image, in addition to being in time with it. This paper presents the premise of the system’s design and the empirical results of the first pilot experiments studying perceptual responses to the presentation of media in the prototype display.

Three experiments investigated a phenomenon of memory distortion. Social influence, in the form of bogus feedback information about the accuracy of an interpersonal judgment, dramatically distorted people's recollections. Participants in all three experiments watched a short video of a couple interacting. After the video was over, participants either judged which person had an affair or which person committed suicide (Experiment 1 only). After making their decision, participants were randomly assigned to hear bogus confirming ("Yes. that is the person who had the affair [committed suicide]") or discontinuing ("Actually, it was the other person who had the affair [committed suicide]") feedback. Participants in Experiment 1 (N = 98) who heard confirming feedback reported recalling more certainty in their decision, making their decision more easily, having a better basis for their decision, making their decision more quickly, being better at making judgments about others in general, and other distortions in recollection. This pattern of results was labeled the "post-decision feedback effect." Experiment 2 (N = 128) eliminated the possibility that the post-decision feedback effect is caused by participants' self-presentation concerns. Experiment 3 (N = 429) tested competing hypotheses for the post-decision feedback effect: anchoring and adjustment versus biased search of memory. Three variables were manipulated: post-decision feedback (Confirming vs. Disconfirming). completing dependent measures questionnaire under time pressure (Yes vs. No), and completing the dependent measures under cognitive load (Yes vs. No). The magnitude of the feedback effect was not changed by the resource constraint manipulations suggesting that the feedback effect is a highly

The concept of affordances appeared in psychology during the late 60s as an alternative perspective on the visual perception of the environment. It was revolutionary in the intuition that the way living beings perceive the world is deeply influenced by the actions they are able to perform. Then, across the last 40 years, it has influenced many applied fields, e.g., design, human-computer interaction, computer vision, and robotics. In this paper, we offer a multidisciplinary perspective on the notion of affordances. We first discuss the main definitions and formalizations of the affordance theory, then we report the most significant evidence in psychology and neuroscience that support it, and finally we review the most relevant applications of this concept in robotics.

We present a new and immersive form of imaging technology, Fovography, which has shown measurable benefits in the broadening of attention. Narrow fixation on screens, such as tablets and smartphones, and resultant neglect of peripheral visual field may be harmful to visual perception and cognitive functioning, with consequent effects on psychological health and wellbeing. Many immersive technologies and virtual reality systems, which narrow the focus of attention to the central visual area, are used in clinics, surgical theatres, treatments and training, and may be doing harm as well as good. We aim to improve existing imaging technologies, which are based on linear perspective, by developing more perceptually natural technologies that are modelled on human perception and awareness, and incorporate peripheral sensory information for improved naturalistic perspective. We have empirically tested the benefits of Fovography technology in the areas of attention modulation, user preference, immersion, empathy, visual comfort and spatial presence. Potential applications include tools for mindfulness training, spatial awareness, perceptual psychology, and other medical or therapeutic uses. The benefits of our approach include greater reported wellbeing due to decreased anxiety and fixation.

The cognitive penetrability of perceptual experiences has been a long-standing topic of disagreement among philosophers and psychologists. Although the notion of cognitive penetrability itself has also been under dispute, the debate has mainly focused on the cases in which cognitive states allegedly penetrate perceptual experiences. This paper concerns the plausibility of two prominent cases. The first one originates from Susanna Siegel’s claim that perceptual experiences can represent natural kind properties. If this is true, then the concepts we possess change the way things appear to us. The second candidate for cognitive penetration is Fiona Macpherson’s claim that, in addition to concepts, our beliefs can penetrate perceptual experiences. It is argued that neither candidate is a case of cognitive penetration. In doing so, I provide an explanation to both that is based on perceptual learning, a non-cognitive phenomenon where relatively slow and long-lasting modifications to an organism’s perceptual system bring about changes in perception. This explanation is theoretically more plausible and remains closer to the empirical data than the explanations based on cognitive penetration.

This article explores the Central European philosophical roots of perceptual psychology from a historical perspective. It will be shown that Alexius Meinong’s notion of a forum of perception is the point of departure for a beginning inclusion of external factors in explaining perception. This conclusion is mainly because of Fritz Heider’s early contributions on perception and its influence on Egon Brunswik. In addition, the impact of Meinong and Edmund Husserl— both students of Franz Brentano— on Brunswik’s teacher, Karl Buhler, is highlighted.

Visual modules can be viewed as expressions of a marked analytic attitude in the study of vision. In vision psychology, this attitude is accompanied by hypotheses that characterize how visual modules are thought to operate in perceptual processes. Our thesis here is that there are what we call “intrinsic reasons” for the presence of such hypotheses in a vision theory, that is, reasons of a deductive kind, which are imposed by the partiality of the basic terms (input and output) in the definition of a module, and by peculiar characteristics of those terms. Specifically, we discuss three hypotheses of functional attributes: successive stages in the action of modules, residual indeterminacy of their effects, and the role of prior constraints. For each of the three, we indicate its occurrence in perceptual psychology, explain corresponding intrinsic reasons, and illustrate such reasons with examples.

Political psychology takes an individual level of analysis approach to the study of international conflict. This study has traditionally investigated the psychological foundations of decision making among elite leaders in the area of war and peace. Psychological models that have been applied to the examination of this area include those taken from cognitive psychology and evolutionary models. Such approaches include the application of prospect theory to cases of decision making under conditions of risk. Similar work in this area further explores the nature of psychological biases in decision making, particularly in the area of risk assessment. More recent work has explored the biological underpinnings of aggression, and their contribution to the emergence of violent behavior. Past work has tended to neglect the role of emotion, but more recent work has investigated these forces more fully. Future work that seeks to incorporate both biological and environmental forces in precipitating violence appears challenging but worthwhile. In addition, experimental methods drawn from psychology have been applied to the study of international conflict. The use of field experiments to explore the psychological forces that both motivate and sustain conflict appears promising. Keywords: political psychology; conflict; cognitive psychology; evolutionary psychology; prospect theory; risk; decision making

Philosophers of art use the term ‘seeing-in’ to describe an important part of our experience of pictures: we often ‘see’ a picture’s subject matter ‘in’ its surface. This paper proposes that seeing-in is illuminated by a perceptual phenomenon that has received extensive attention in perceptual psychology: the perception of transparency. It is generally accepted that transparency perception is governed by laws of ‘scission’. I argue that some instances of seeing-in can be straightforwardly understood as a kind of transparency effect, and that all seeing-in is illuminated by these laws.

One of the goals of second language (L2) speech research is to identify aspects of talker and listener behaviour that both facilitate and detract from effective communication. To achieve this, researchers elicit audio-perceptual (AP) evaluations of global properties of L2 speech – including accentedness, comprehensibility and intelligibility – from audiences of listeners. Substantial empirical evidence confirms the reliability of such data and points to the validity of the dimensions at issue. However, the AP approach clearly has limitations, and caution must be observed in interpreting judgement data. While ongoing research has helped resolve a number of methodological concerns, some questions about comprehensibility measurement have yet to be addressed, and confusions about the distinction between this construct and the other two still persist. To grasp the differences, it is essential to understand speech comprehensibility as a type of processing fluency, a concept widely employed in perceptual psychology that refers to a perceiver’s cognitive management of a stimulus. The ease with which a listener understands an utterance (comprehensibility) must be carefully distinguished from the amount of understanding that has actually taken place (intelligibility). Fortunately, well-established measurement techniques are available for assessing both accentedness and intelligibility. However, the methodology of comprehensibility assessment has received less attention. It has not been demonstrated, for instance, whether the usual approach of eliciting listener ratings on an equal-interval scale is suitable. To address this gap, the present chapter presents a brief study in which a nine-point linear rating was found to capture the dimension at least as well as other types of scaling.

Even as remote sensing technology has advanced in leaps and bounds over the past decade, the remote sensing community lacks interfaces and interaction models that facilitate effective human operation of our sensor platforms. Interfaces that make great sense to electrical engineers and flight test crews can be anxiety-inducing to operational users who lack professional experience in the design and testing of sophisticated remote sensing platforms. In this paper, we reflect on an 18-month collaboration which our Sandia National Laboratory research team partnered with an industry software team to identify and fix critical issues in a widely-used sensor interface. Drawing on basic principles from cognitive and perceptual psychology and interaction design, we provide simple, easily learned guidance for minimizing common barriers to system learnability, memorability, and user engagement.

The chapter develops the theme that the concept of perceptual object and the rules of grouping and organization are essential to describe the abilities and limitations of selective attention. Attention can only be directed to preattentively defined perceptual objects, and it facilitates all the responses associated with properties or elements of the selected object. Evidence is presented from studies of the Stroop task, effects of visual grouping on recall, search and selective attention in tachistoscopic displays, and the visual and auditory suffix effects. A theoretical analysis of perceptual objects is outlined, in which perceptual identity is distinguished from the process of identification.

When magicians perform spectacles that seem to defy the laws of nature, they do so by manipulating psychological reality. Hence, the principles underlying the art of conjuring are potentially of interest to psychological science. Here, we argue that perceptual and cognitive principles governing how humans experience hidden things and reason about them play a central role in many magic tricks. Different from tricks based on many other forms of misdirection, which require considerable skill on the part of the magician, many elements of these tricks are essentially self-working because they rely on automatic perceptual and cognitive processes. Since these processes are not directly observable, even experienced magicians may be oblivious to their central role in creating strong magical experiences and tricks that are almost impossible to debunk, even after repeated presentations. We delineate how insights from perceptual psychology provide a framework for understanding why these tricks work so well. Conversely, we argue that studying magic tricks that work much better than one intuitively would believe provides a promising heuristic for charting unexplored aspects of perception and cognition.

Subconscious processes, which are based on experience and which can be trained, control our behavior and follow an “internal reasoning”. They are shaped—among other things—by linguistic constructs. These subconscious processes form the “fast and intuitive thinking”. The benefits of this efficiency are associated with hazards such as prejudices, bias etc. Intuition is an essential resource of our cognitive system and can be influenced. The subconscious mind acts as an associative machine which works on the basis of pattern recognition. So we form our reality in a three-step process consisting of suppression, distortion and generalization. Associations and analogies are essential characteristics of intelligence. These aspects from behavioral psychology and cognitive science at the personal level can be used to support good decision-making and—in the context of the respective organization—they also can be used in the light of the metaphor of shaping “the subconscious mind of organizations” in order to cope with change, uncertainties and disruption.

This account is the second of two chapters addressing a portion of the ETS research on cognitive, personality, and social psychology conducted since the organization’s inception. The topics covered include, in cognitive psychology, creativity; in personality psychology, cognitive styles and kinesthetic aftereffect; and in social psychology, risk taking.

PurposeThis review aims to discuss concepts and theories from cognitive psychology, identifies tourism studies applying them and discusses key areas for future research. The paper aims to demonstrate the usefulness of cognitive psychology for understanding why tourists and particularly pleasure travellers demonstrate the behaviour they exhibit.Design/methodology/approachThe paper reviews 165 papers from the cognitive psychology and literature regarding pleasure travel related to consciousness, mindfulness, flow, retrospection, prospection, attention, schema and memory, feelings and emotions. The papers are chosen to demonstrate the state of the art of the literature and provide guidance on how these concepts are vital for further research.FindingsThe paper demonstrates that research has favoured a behaviourist rather than cognitive approach to the study of hedonic travel. Cognitive psychology can help to understand the mental processes connecting perception of stimuli with behaviour. Numerous examples are provided: top-down and bottom-up attention processes help to understand advertising effectiveness, theories of consciousness and memory processes help to distinguish between lived and recalled experience, cognitive appraisal theory predicts the emotion elicited based on a small number of appraisal dimensions such as surprise and goals, knowledge of the mental organisation of autobiographical memory and schema support understanding of destination image formation and change and the effect of storytelling on decision-making, reconstructive bias in prospection or retrospection about a holiday inform the study of pleasurable experience. These findings indicate need for further cognitive psychology research in tourism generally and studies of holiday travel experiences.Research limitations/implicationsThis review is limited to cognitive psychology and excludes psychoanalytic studies.Practical implicationsCognitive psychology provides insight into key areas of practical importance. In general, the use of a cognitive approach allows further understanding of leisure tourists’ behaviour. The concept of attention is vital to understand destination advertising effectiveness, biases in memory process help to understand visitor satisfaction and experience design and so on. Use of cognitive psychology theory will lead to better practical outcomes for tourists seeking pleasurable experiences and destination managers.Originality valueThis is the first review that examines the application of concepts from cognitive psychology to the study of leisure tourism in particular. The concepts studied are also applicable to study of travellers generally.

Interactive visual applications often rely on animation to transition from one display state to another. There are multiple animation techniques to choose from, and it is not always clear which should produce the best visual correspondences between display elements. One major factor is whether the animation relies on staggering-an incremental delay in start times across the moving elements. It has been suggested that staggering may reduce occlusion, while also reducing display complexity and producing less overwhelming animations, though no empirical evidence has demonstrated these advantages. Work in perceptual psychology does show that reducing occlusion, and reducing inter-object proximity (crowding) more generally, improves performance in multiple object tracking. We ran simulations confirming that staggering can in some cases reduce crowding in animated transitions involving dot clouds (as found in, e.g., animated 2D scatterplots). We empirically evaluated the effect of two staggering techniques on tracking tasks, focusing on cases that should most favour staggering. We found that introducing staggering has a negligible, or even negative, impact on multiple object tracking performance. The potential benefits of staggering may be outweighed by strong costs: a loss of common-motion grouping information about which objects travel in similar paths, and less predictability about when any specific object would begin to move. Staggering may be beneficial in some conditions, but they have yet to be demonstrated. The present results are a significant step toward a better understanding of animation pacing, and provide direction for further research.

Some experiments in perceptual psychology measure perceivers’ phenomenal experiences of objects versus their cognitive assessments of object properties. Analyzing such experiments, this article responds to Pizlo’s claim that much work on shape constancy before 1985 confused problems of shape ambiguity with problems of shape constancy. Pizlo fails to grasp the logic of experimental designs directed toward phenomenal aspects of shape constancy. In the domain of size perception, Granrud’s studies of size constancy in children and adults distinguish phenomenal from cognitive factors.

Tyler Burge's anti-individualism – the view that individuating many of a creature's mental kinds is necessarily dependent on relations that the creature bears to the physical, or in some cases social, environment – backs his theory of perceptual representation, i.e. perceptual anti-individualism. Perceptual anti-individualism articulates a framework that, according to Burge, perceptual psychology assumed without articulation. In this interview, Burge talks about the main tenets and underpinnings of perceptual anti-individualism in relation to classic representational theories of perceptual experience, reductive theories of mental content, theories of phenomenal consciousness, and other associated topics.

While there has been a lot of discussion of picture perception both in perceptual psychology and in philosophy, these discussions are driven by very different background assumptions. Nonetheless, it would be mutually beneficial to arrive at an understanding of picture perception that is informed by both the philosophers and the psychologists story. The aim of this paper is exactly this: to give an account of picture perception that is valid both as a philosophical and as a psychological account. I argue that seeing trompe loeil paintings is, just as some philosophers suggested, different from other cases of picture perception. Further, the way our perceptual system functions when seeing trompe loeil paintings could be an important piece of the psychological explanation of perceiving pictures.

In recent years there has been renewed philosophical interest in the thesis that perceptual experience is cognitively penetrable, i.e., roughly, the view that the contents and/or character of a subject's perceptual experience can be modified by what a subject believes and desires. As has been widely noted, it is plausible that cognitive penetration has implications for perception's epistemic role. On the one hand, penetration could make agents insensitive to the world in a way which epistemically 'downgrades' their experience. On the other hand, cognitive penetration may sometimes be epistemically beneficial by making agents more sensitive to the way the world is, i.e., by enabling them to see things that others cannot. For example, penetration could ground a 'high-level' view of perceptual content, according to which agents can have experiences as of 'complex' properties, e.g., natural kind and aesthetic properties. Relatedly, it could elucidate the view that agents can gain perceptual expertise by learning. A type of sophisticated perception (and associated 'perceptual expertise') which has hitherto received little attention in relation to cognitive penetration is ethical perception. In this paper I examine the significance of cognitive penetration for 'Perceptualist' views in ethics which appeal to a notion of 'ethical perception'. Although cognitive penetration could ground a literalist model of Ethical Perception according to which agents can have perceptual experiences of the instantiation of ethical properties, the results are otherwise somewhat mixed: cognitive penetrability does not support Perceptual Intuitionism, although it may provide some limited support for Virtue Ethics and Cornell Realism. However, as I stress, the significance of cognitive penetration for Perceptualism should not be overstated.

What are the earliest beings that have minds in evolutionary order? Two marks of mind are consciousness and representation. I focus on representation. I distinguish a psychologically distinctive notion of representation from a family of notions, often called ‘representation’, that invoke information, causation, and/or function. The psychologically distinctive notion implies that a representational state has veridicality conditions as an aspect of its nature. Perception is the most primitive type of representational state. It is a natural psychological kind, recognized in a mature science: perceptual psychology. This kind involves a type of objectification, and is marked by perceptual constancies. The simplest animals known to exhibit perceptual constancies, perception, and representation in a distinctively psychological sense, are certain arthropods. Representational mind, or representational psychology, begins in the arthropods. We lack scientific knowledge about the beginnings of consciousness. Consciousness is neither necessary nor sufficient for perception. I conclude by reflecting on the kinds mind and psychology.

Researchers are increasingly recognizing the role of culture as a source of variation in many phenomena of central importance to consumer research. This review addresses a gap in cross-cultural consumer behavior literature by providing a review and conceptual analysis of the effects of culture on pre-behavioral processes (perception and cognition). The article highlights a series of important perceptual and cognitive differences across cultures and offers a new perspective of framing these differences among cultures—that of “culturally conditioned” perceptual and cognitive orientations. The article addresses several theoretical issues and suggests directions for future research as well as managerial implications.

Cognitive penetration of perception, broadly understood, is the influence that the cognitive system has on a perceptual system (e.g., visual, auditory, haptic). The paper shows a form of cognitive penetration in the visual system (defined as early vision) which I call ‘architectural’. Architectural cognitive penetration is the process whereby the behaviour or the structure of the perceptual system is influenced by the cognitive system, which consequently may have an impact on the content of the perceptual experience. I scrutinize a study in perceptual learning that provides empirical evidence that cognitive influences in the visual system produce neural reorganization in the primary visual cortex. The type of cognitive penetration can be synchronic and diachronic.

This paper arises from the need to explain expert decision-making in professional environments from a plural and interdisciplinary perspective. An extended review of Rational Choice Theory (RCT) from its first developments to current trends makes explicit the mismatch between RCT and empirical work settings. A review of recent theories on the cognitive abilities of agents makes clear the lack of integration between findings in evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, perceptual psychology and neurology, and those proposed by RCT. We will examine the causes for the failure of Good Old Fashioned Artificial Intelligence (GOFAI), the strongest empirical program for testing RCT premises. Contributions from the cognitive and social sciences put forward the weaknesses of analytical sociology at all four levels: the biological, the psychological, the epistemological, and the ontological. Alternative explanations from contemporary cognitive science will be put forward.

It is often argued that for a perceptual experience to be able to justify perceptual judgments, the perceptual experience must have a propositional content. For, it is claimed, only propositions can bear logical relations such as implication to each other. In this paper, this claim is challenged. It is argued that whereas perceptions and judgments both have intentional content, their contents have different structures. Perceptual content does not have a propositional structure. Perceptions and judgments can nevertheless have the same cognitive significance. So the veridicality of a certain perceptual experience, can imply the truth of certain propositions. Consequently, perceptions can have non-propositional content, but even so justify perceptual judgments which have a propositional structure.