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Object shape is an important cue to material identity and for the estimation of material properties. Shape features can affect material perception at different levels: at a microscale (surface roughness), mesoscale (textures and local object shape), or megascale (global object shape) level. Examples for local shape features include ripples in drapery, clots in viscous liquids, or spiraling creases in twisted objects. Here, we set out to test the role of such shape features on judgments of material properties softness and weight. For this, we created a large number of novel stimuli with varying surface shape features. We show that those features have distinct effects on softness and weight ratings depending on their type, as well as amplitude and frequency, for example, increasing numbers and pointedness of spikes makes objects appear harder and heavier. By also asking participants to name familiar objects, materials, and transformations they associate with our stimuli, we can show that softness and weight judgments do not merely follow from semantic associations between particular stimuli and real-world object shapes. Rather, softness and weight are estimated from surface shape, presumably based on learned heuristics about the relationship between a particular expression of surface features and material properties. In line with this, we show that correlations between perceived softness or weight and surface curvature vary depending on the type of surface feature. We conclude that local shape features have to be considered when testing the effects of shape on the perception of material properties such as softness and weight.

Repeated exposure to a consistent trans-saccadic step in the position of the saccadic target reliably produces a change of saccadic gain, a well-established trans-saccadic motor learning phenomenon known as saccadic adaptation. Trans-saccadic changes can also produce perceptual effects. Specifically, a systematic increase or decrease in the size of the object that is being foveated changes the perceptually equivalent size between fovea and periphery. Previous studies have shown that this recalibration of perceived size can be established within a few dozen trials, persists overnight, and generalizes across hemifields. In the current study, we use a novel adjustment paradigm to characterize both temporally and spatially the learning process that subtends this form of recalibration, and directly compare its properties to those of saccadic adaptation. We observed that sinusoidal oscillations in the amplitude of the trans-saccadic change produce sinusoidal oscillations in the reported peripheral size, with a lag of under 10 trials. This is qualitatively similar to what has been observed in the case of saccadic adaptation. We also tested whether learning is generalized to the mirror location on the opposite hemifield for both size recalibration and saccade adaptation. Here the results were markedly different, showing almost complete generalization for recalibration and no generalization for saccadic adaptation. We conclude that perceptual and visuomotor consequences of trans-saccadic changes rely on learning mechanisms that are distinct but develop on similar time scales.

Our visual experience appears uniform across the visual field, despite the poor resolution of peripheral vision. This may be because we do not notice that we are missing details in the periphery of our visual field and believe that peripheral vision is just as rich as central vision. In other words, the uniformity of the visual scene could be explained by a metacognitive bias. We deployed a confidence forced-choice method to measure metacognitive performance in peripheral as compared to central vision. Participants judged the orientation of gratings presented in central and peripheral vision, and reported whether they thought they were more likely to be correct in the perceptual decision for the central or for the peripheral stimulus. Observers were underconfident in the periphery: higher sensory evidence in the periphery was needed to equate confidence choices between central and peripheral perceptual decisions. When performance on the central and peripheral tasks was matched, observers were still more confident in their ability to report the orientation of the central gratings over the one of the peripheral gratings. In a second experiment, we measured metacognitive sensitivity, as the difference in perceptual sensitivity between perceptual decisions that are chosen with high confidence and decisions that are chosen with low confidence. Results showed that metacognitive sensitivity is lower when participants compare central to peripheral perceptual decisions compared to when they compare peripheral to peripheral or central to central perceptual decisions. In a third experiment, we showed that peripheral underconfidence does not arise because observers based confidence judgments on stimulus size or contrast range rather than on perceptual performance. Taken together, results indicate that humans are impaired in comparing central with peripheral perceptual performance, but metacognitive biases cannot explain our impression of uniformity, as this would require peripheral overconfidence.

In dem Infrastrukturprojekt NOWA (NeurOscientific Workflow Assistance) des von der DFG geförderten SFB/TRR 135 "Kardinale Mechanismen der Wahrnehmung: Prädiktion, Bewertung, Kategorisierung" werden Werkzeuge für die gemeinsame Nutzung von Forschungsdaten entwickelt. Um die Reproduzierbarkeit aller Schritte im Lebenszyklus einer wissenschaftlichen Studie zu verbessern – d.h. von der Planung bis zur Veröffentlichung von Forschungsdaten – zielt NOWA darauf ab, einen organisatorischen und technologischen Rahmen zu schaffen, der die Arbeitsabläufe entlang des gesamten Forschungsdatenlebenszyklus unterstützt. Ziel ist es, Forschungsdaten von Beginn an innerhalb der Arbeitsgruppen und des SFB zu teilen und sie zum Zeitpunkt der Veröffentlichung der Ergebnisse "auf Knopfdruck" öffentlich zugänglich zu machen. Die geplante Workflow-Unterstützung realisiert sich in einer Reihe von Leitlinien für das Forschungsdatenmanagement, die einerseits durch Sensibilisierung, Support und Schulung und andererseits durch eine kohärente Sammlung von Datenverarbeitungswerkzeugen umgesetzt werden. Das Poster präsentiert den Status Quo des INF-Projekts sowie die aktuelle prototypische Implementierung des digitalen Assistenzsystems., CRC/TRR 135 1 - NOWA: Aims and objectives 1 - Analytical part: Data Management Plans and Workflow Evaluation 1 - Technical part: A Software Toolset for Workflow Assistance 1 - Further Working Packages 1 - Long Term Perspective 1

© 2018 The Authors. Peripheral perception is limited in terms of visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, and positional uncertainty. In the present study we used an image-manipulation algorithm (the Eidolon Factory) based on a formal description of the visual field as a tool to investigate how peripheral stimuli appear in the presence of such limitations. Observers were asked to match central and peripheral stimuli, both configurations of superimposed geometric shapes and patches of natural images, in terms of the parameters controlling the amplitude of the perturbation (reach) and the cross-scale similarity of the perturbation (coherence). We found that observers systematically tended to report the peripheral stimuli as having shorter reach and higher coherence. This means that their matches both were less distorted and had sharper edges relative to the actual stimulus. Overall, the results indicate that the way we see objects in our peripheral visual field is complemented by our assumptions about the way the same objects would appear if they were viewed foveally. ispartof: JOURNAL OF VISION vol:18 issue:13 status: published