For questions regarding the organization and identification of transducted sensory information in the brain and its interpretation and consolidation in the mind
3
votes
0answers
28 views
Are there any free databases of audio-visual emotional stimuli (English)?
I am particularly interested in naturalistic and induced emotional content. I have found the SAVEE, the HUMAINE and the SEMAINE databases. I have read through the Terms for LDC (UPenn) and it seems ...
13
votes
2answers
306 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 ...
4
votes
1answer
95 views
What is the maximum number of objects an average human being can recognize at once?
I'm wondering, how many objects can the average human being can recognize?
For example, most of us can't look at this and say how many boxes there are without counting them:
But I think we can ...
7
votes
1answer
46 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 ...
1
vote
0answers
29 views
Short term time perception affect long term time perception?
It is known that attending to time (i.e. looking at duration) expands subjective time. So if I want to do something for 20 minutes and look at my watch, this would increase my subjective time ...
2
votes
0answers
22 views
Does the subjective experience of artificial light brightness vary for people, if so, by how much?
I'm thinking about human perception and particularly the experience of how bright artificial light is. I'm talking about dusk, when the sun has set and only street lamps and light reflecting off ...
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 ...
2
votes
0answers
60 views
Inducing Auditory-to-Visual Synesthesia
I recently watched an interesting video that was discussing conveying color to the blind through language. It implied that there may be a way to insert the sensation of color into a person's mind via ...
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 ...
2
votes
0answers
64 views
How effective are high audio frequencies in commercials in getting audience attention?
Does anyone know of a peer reviewed article that describes how commercials will often contain high audio frequencies in order to attract the viewer's attention?
Referrals to commercials using any ...
0
votes
0answers
59 views
Subtle manipulation in commercials - Kindle Fire HD [closed]
I was watching the new kindle commercial and I noticed a few things that seemed to make me lean towards the NEW Kindle Fire HD (They emphasize "new" a lot)
One of the things that stood out to me the ...
1
vote
0answers
24 views
Are “diagnostic” senses/feelings for brain study possible?
Modern science has quite an array of methods trying to localize and analyze brain activity, trying to get down to individual neurons firing: EEG, fMRI, CT, etc. This requires very expensive machines ...
11
votes
2answers
122 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 ...
3
votes
3answers
202 views
What factors influence a person's perceived expertise?
For example, some people believe they are excellent human lie detectors. But, research shows that the average person is only able to detect deception about 54% of the time. What techniques could be ...
3
votes
0answers
51 views
In what order do people notice another person's attributes (race, age, gender, etc.)
I seem to recall reading some research years ago about what people notice in the first second or so of seeing someone else, and in what order they notice those things. It's something like gender, ...
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 ...
2
votes
0answers
32 views
How do humans perceive height or vertical drop?
I'm looking at this video: Neil Burgess: How your brain tells you where you are, which discusses neurons within the brain that help people remember where stuff is in relation to other objects.
I'm ...
5
votes
2answers
64 views
Minimum duration for presenting a visual stimulus on screen
My experiment involves presenting simple visual stimuli briefly on screen (200 ms to 1000 ms). The stimuli would be simple enough (e.g. a circle and a line) but I want to use a range of durations to ...
3
votes
0answers
66 views
Is there any science behind movie/commercial camera angle changes?
Most of the regular waking cognition experiences a continuous visual field. One object of focus flows into another. Objects out of focus are pushed to the periphery. A person may move one's view ...
9
votes
1answer
294 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 ...
20
votes
1answer
297 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 ...
6
votes
0answers
63 views
Is there evidence for a unique isolated internal representation of loved ones?
Some time ago, I've read that the most significant people in a person's life have their own internal representation/model of within the person's mind. For example:
An internal representation of a ...
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 ...
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 ...
4
votes
1answer
124 views
How do you know if it's psychosomatic or not?
"It's in your head" is often true and often offensive. But as your head can invent any number of psychological and physiological symptoms how can you distinguish whether something is or isn't ...
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, ...
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 ...
6
votes
0answers
123 views
Is there psychoactive music?
Listen to this music for X minutes to observe Y result. Is there something like that that has been demonstrated to work for general public?
The only example of an experiment that is similar that ...
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 ...
3
votes
0answers
88 views
How does appreciation for music change over time for the same person?
I know that there's a concept of acquired taste, where a child may find certain tastes, like peppers and beer unappealing until certain age or frequency of exposure.
Is there something similar to ...
6
votes
1answer
143 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 ...
2
votes
1answer
48 views
How can pain sensations appear to originate within the person's skull?
I've read that humans have some sort of a kinesthetic model of their body and muscles. This internal representation of the body is used to control and coordinate locomotion. I don't remember if ...
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 ...
4
votes
1answer
150 views
Closure, an actual psychology term relating to filling in information?
I'm currently reading a book called "Understand Comics" and a term has come up called closure. I've understood this concept before and the book describes closure as the process the brain goes through ...
3
votes
0answers
151 views
Binaural Beats meets Sound-Color-Synesthesia
Binaural beats, the perception of which arises in the brain for specific physical stimuli. ... The effect on the brainwaves depends on the difference in frequencies of each tone: for example, if ...
4
votes
0answers
49 views
The effect of lifestyle photography on sales conversion rates
I work for a large UK-based clothing retailer. After some initial customer testing with our product details page (on our website) there has been some debate on the following question:
Do customers ...
-4
votes
1answer
47 views
Can thought be shifted between subconscious and conscious awareness? [closed]
While awake, can thought activity be transferred between the subconscious and conscious awareness, by will?
3
votes
0answers
55 views
How is light processed by the human brain when awake and in dreams?
I've recently seen this great video: How your brain tells you where you are. The video discusses how certain cells within the brain fire based on proximity to objects. There are great examples of ...
5
votes
0answers
36 views
Rated model of driving-related processes and objects
The SEEV-Model for predicting the distribution of visual attention contains a parameter called 'value' which represents the importance of a certain area of the field of view concerning a given task ...
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 ...
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 ...
13
votes
1answer
236 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 ...
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 ...
4
votes
1answer
101 views
How do we get used to smells?
How do we get used to smells?
For example, you walk into a room with a certain stench, but it seems no matter how strong it may be, spending enough time in the room will allow you to stop smelling ...
10
votes
1answer
825 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 ...
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 ?
7
votes
1answer
305 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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
