For questions regarding the organization and identification of transducted sensory information in the brain and its interpretation and consolidation in the mind
22
votes
2answers
2k views
Is Golden Ratio's association with perceived beauty a myth?
Many people advocate using the Golden Ratio in design (e.g. logo design).
Is the Golden Ratio's purported aesthetic appeal supported by scientific evidence?
20
votes
1answer
298 views
The effects of bilingualism on colour perception
Peltola et al. (2012) showed that there are two types of bilinguals.
Balanced bilinguals mix their two languages and are effected by linguistic categories from both.
Dominant bilinguals seem to ...
17
votes
3answers
166 views
Why does the human visual system produce a bright patch after staring at a bright light source and looking away?
If a person looks at a bright light source, such as a light bulb or perhaps the sun for a period of time, and then looks away and closes their eyes, they typically see a bright patch in the shape of ...
16
votes
5answers
352 views
Why do we prefer visually aligned objects?
We all know visual alignment is one of the foundations of design. Everything must be aligned with everything else.
We also know that when things are aligned it is easier to process information.
My ...
15
votes
2answers
511 views
Perception of time as a function of age
For many people time seems to run faster as they get older. That is, for an old person an hour, a day or a year seems to be shorter than for a young person.
Is there any hard data for such ...
14
votes
1answer
132 views
Is there a range in time on which the mind detects correlation between events?
I've been searching for info on this but I'm usually finding unrelated information.
My question is whether there is a time range in which our mind suspects that two events are correlated.
For ...
13
votes
2answers
308 views
Does the fusiform face area in patients with Prosopagnosia (face blindness) show lower activity under an fMRI?
I watched last night's episode of 60 minutes about Prosopagnosia (Face Blindness) and found it absolutely fascinating. They mentioned in the segment (Around 5:22 into the second part of the online ...
13
votes
1answer
238 views
Why is white on black considered higher contrast than black on white?
While researching to answer Why are "Inverted Colors" considered an accessibility feature? I noticed the puzzling claim that "White text on a black background is a higher contrast to the opposite, so ...
13
votes
2answers
308 views
What is the threshold where actions are perceived as “instant”?
In Human Computer Interaction and User Experience there's some oft repeated rules of performance:
0.1 second is about the limit for having the user feel that the system is reacting ...
12
votes
1answer
265 views
What concepts of perception should designers be aware of when designing?
Visual perception is a huge topic, much of which is relevant to the work of a designer. I have identified topics in visual memory, visual cognition and colour perception that are relevant, and I'm ...
12
votes
1answer
236 views
What stimulus features determine the psychophysical power law exponent?
Following the work of Stanley Stevens, psychophysical functions of stimulus intensity are commonly assumed to follow power laws, as illustrated below:
This appears to be true for a wide variety of ...
11
votes
11answers
331 views
Any work being done on Perception, Action, and/or Cognition in Video games?
Call it a nerd crossover, but I've always been curious about how we play games on a mechanistic level. However, even coming from a rational viewpoint video games seem like a fruitful domain of study, ...
11
votes
2answers
413 views
Why do humans prefer symmetrical arrangement of objects?
Most of the times, we associate symmetry with beauty. The symmetry may be in architectural/interior design for instance. Why would this be so ?
11
votes
1answer
109 views
How is the size of a video related to its perceived quality?
Video is often presented at different sizes. On the Internet, many websites provide quite a few size settings. In the store, you can buy TVs of many different sizes. In both cases, it's the same ...
11
votes
2answers
123 views
How rare is synesthesia?
I visited a neuropsychologist recently who told me I have Synesthesia. I never really knew what it was, but it's fascinating and I can't believe it isn't the norm among people. For me, certain numbers ...
10
votes
5answers
252 views
Visual search: complexity of positive vs negative search tasks
Thinking about experiments where participants perform visual search tasks, I remember hearing in a Cog Psych lecture that if the instructions of the task were of the form "find the element that has ...
10
votes
1answer
382 views
Effect of words highlighting on reading comprehension
I'm interested if there are studies dealing with text understanding and POS (part of speech) coloring, or coloring syntactic/semantic information. The studies should solve the questions like:
Which ...
10
votes
1answer
153 views
What does “veridicality” mean in terms of psychology?
I'm reading the paper "Visual Space Perception and Visually Directed Action" by Loomis, Da Silva, Fujita and Fukusima (1992; pdf). In this paper, the word 'veridicality' is used in several sentences.
...
10
votes
1answer
234 views
Under what conditions does 60hz video produce visual artifacts?
There are some important thresholds of frame rate in video playback that effect whether or not animation appears fluid. This wikipedia page about Visible Frame Rate suggests that a framerate of 60 ...
10
votes
1answer
177 views
Sensory Immersion Research?
Sensory deprivation is a relatively common technique for medititation and general consciousness-exploration.
However, I'm more interested in sensory immersion. That is, deliberate overstimulation as ...
10
votes
1answer
831 views
How to get rid of subvocalization?
When I read a text written in latin alphabet and I want to understand what it means I usually
transform each word into spoken word (internal speech) and
then I transform it into meaning.
I can't ...
9
votes
1answer
173 views
How do humans control saccades?
I've gathered the standard rational for a visual system utilizing saccades from perception textbooks: the neural cost of processing an entire scene at a high level of detail would be prohibitive, but ...
9
votes
3answers
212 views
Simulate colorblindness in non-colorblind individuals
Is there any way by which individuals with normal color vision could "see" the effects of Deuteranopia or any of the common colorblindness types, say by using special lenses or anything?
Color ...
9
votes
1answer
142 views
Is there an effect of visual expertise on eye movements when examining an image?
In the following linked image, you can see the eye movement traces of a subject examining a bust of Nefertiti (I came across this image while reading the following blog).
When I was in grade ...
9
votes
1answer
298 views
Why people choose “boring” colors for new cars?
I've been interested in this question for a few years, sorry if this is not the right place to ask it.
As I've been driving around the US for the last few years, I noticed that some community parking ...
8
votes
2answers
205 views
How does the brain act on the information gained via eye saccades?
I've often heard that the process of saccading can be described as a statistical sampling technique. Specifically, the standard textbook definition of the function of saccades seems to be that the ...
8
votes
2answers
161 views
What is the “static” in human vision called?
Sort of like a cheap digital Camera, the human eye has certain feedback that's perceived but doesn't actually exist in the real world; a little layer of Static that's especially noticeable in pitch ...
8
votes
2answers
2k views
How to temporarily induce low latent inhibition?
As the Wikipedia article says,
High levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine (or its agonists) in the ventral tegmental area of the brain have been shown to decrease latent inhibition. Certain ...
8
votes
1answer
79 views
What happens when a person “imagines” how food could taste like just from looking at it?
What processes are triggered by imagining the taste of food (let's assume it's sealed so that its smell doesn't reach the test subject's nose) only by looking at it, based on memories of food with ...
8
votes
1answer
101 views
Hearing first but understanding later?
I have experienced this phenomenon several times and checked with other people as well.
It goes like this: you hear something, but it's just a sound with no meaning. Some seconds later, you ...
7
votes
3answers
435 views
Is it possible to improve reading speed and visual comprehension by doing exercises?
Background
I'm trying to capture detailed information from the images in my visual memory, mainly text. My daily life requires reading many documents on varying topics. I want to increase my reading ...
7
votes
2answers
302 views
How good are people at guessing the ages of their respective ethnic group?
I have a Chinese friend and she says that she has a much harder time guessing Western people's ages than Eastern people's ages. No particular surprise here. For me it's the opposite. I have the ...
7
votes
1answer
122 views
To what extent do individuals vary in their ability to mentally visualise?
Background:
Yesterday I was shocked when a friend of mine told me that he can see only "completely black darkness" when he closes he eyes.
When I close my eyes, I can see some images or "movies" of ...
7
votes
1answer
138 views
How do people that can't perceive 3D view a stereoscopic 3D image or movie?
According to Mendiburu (2009), 3-15% of the people can't view a stereoscopic 3D image or movie, mostly due to poor binocular vision.
Imagine one of those is in the movie theater, trying to watch a 3D ...
7
votes
1answer
47 views
Fusiform Face Area (FFA) for within class recognition?
Is there any evidence (papers, studies, etc) that the Fusiform Face Area is used for any other type of recognition besides facial recognition? I remember hearing or reading a long time ago that ...
7
votes
1answer
83 views
Are there shapes defined by 3 (or more) generative parameters whose mapping to psychological similarity space is known?
I am trying to generate 4 shapes that are equidistant in psychological similarity space - meaning that they are all equally discriminable from one another - which differ in 3 parameters, such that ...
7
votes
1answer
306 views
What form might Jungian archetypes take in the brain?
Modern psychology and psychiatry are very well grounded in scientific principles. Both, however, have a history in various analytical philosophies. Jung had the notion of an archetype, a universally ...
7
votes
1answer
1k views
Is Apple's iPhone Retina Display really accurate to human eye resolution?
Apple based their Retina Display on the following claim, as cited by Wikipedia:
The display has a contrast ratio of 800:1. The screen is marketed by Apple as the "Retina Display", based on the ...
7
votes
1answer
137 views
How does task difficulty schedule affect the rate and efficiency of perceptual learning?
In perceptual learning (line length/orientation discrimination, visual target detection, tone frequency discrimination, etc), when training people or animals to perform a task better, is there an ...
7
votes
1answer
210 views
How do animals recognize other animals of their own species?
My motivation for this question is dog-based, but I suppose it would apply equally well to humans. How do animals recognize their own kind, particularly where there is large variation in appearance?
...
7
votes
0answers
68 views
Is the theory of Information Metabolism a reasonable scientific theory?
Background
I have been checking out various personality typing assessments lately when I came across a Personality typing system known as Socionics which aims at explaining relationships between ...
6
votes
2answers
230 views
What is the term for “What has been seen cannot be unseen” in cognitive sciences?
During a discussion with my officemate I told him that I read somewhere that the gas pillar in Carina nebula looks like a cat punching the dog; ever since then, every time my wallpaper slideshow ...
6
votes
1answer
123 views
Face-Blindness: Have I seen you before?
Sometimes when I meet new people, I feel like I have seen them before. Their faces might look similar to people's faces, I have really have met before.
The wiki article on Difficulties with Facial ...
6
votes
1answer
51 views
Any research on how we use visual category information in visuomotor tasks?
So I've been reading up on the Two-streams Hypothesis*, and it bothers me that the explanations both sides give only extend to tasks involving one type of visual information. For example, an ...
6
votes
1answer
1k views
Do we recognize ourselves better when we see our mirror image?
A friend of mine recently noticed that we both have a birthmark on the face. He looked at me and said that we have exactly the same mark. But he has it left and I right. But, when looking in a mirror, ...
6
votes
2answers
88 views
Is there any chromatic analogue of the Shepard tone?
Is there any chromatic analogue of the Shepard tone? I am imagining that each pure tone would correspond to a pure wavelength of light, transformed in such a way that the middle of three consecutive ...
6
votes
1answer
144 views
How much red/orange is needed to stimulate hunger?
A common claim thrown around is that red and orange are great for restaurants because it stimulates hunger. However, I've heard time and time again that this does not work in web design because you ...
6
votes
1answer
72 views
Psychology of timbre processing
Are there any studies concerning the psychological aspects of timbre processing in the brain, e.g. while listening to music? In particular, can any lower-level correlates be discerned when trying to ...
6
votes
1answer
148 views
How do people visually recognize their own reflection?
I'm interested in how the brain processes and recognizes the image of the person's own face.
A bit of background:
A while ago I've developed an overlay-camera like app for iPhone that allows me to ...
6
votes
0answers
31 views
Are there any rules about masking?
I am currently programming an experiment where participants have to do a divided visual field task. In a paper about the correct methodology about these tasks, it is said that you should use a ...
