Perceptual organization in task performance

Perceptual organization concerns the organization of people’s perception into meaningful, structured entities—often wholes containing parts, with specific interrelationships among the parts as well as specific relationships between the parts and the wholes. It embraces a wide variety of distinct processes, which often occur together in everyday life and lead to interesting perceptual experiences by their interactions. The best-known perceptual organization processes are perceptual grouping and figure-ground organization, which appear to be determined by characteristic principles or laws, such as grouping by proximity, similarity, good continuation, area, convexity, symmetry, and so forth. Other important phenomena of perceptual organization include perceptual multi-stability (i.e., the fact that the same stimulus can give rise to multiple competing percepts that switch over time), visual illusions, the role of reference frames, and the role of context. Gestalt psychology has contributed deep insights into the way people’s perception of the world is organized, although it has also been criticized for its emphasis on subjective experiences and its sometimes vague and non-quantitative descriptions of the Gestalt principles. Because perceptual organization essentially concerns visual awareness, however, phenomenology is needed to describe what is experienced. This ultimately remains the basis for research on perceptual organization even when it is aimed at quantifying the principles of perceptual organization and identifying the neural correlates or mechanisms underlying perceptual organization.

The goal of this study was to investigate the use of cognitive modeling to assess the usability of an upper-limb prosthesis with a focus on mental workload responses. Prior studies have investigated usability of upper-limb prostheses with subjective surveys and physiological measures. However, these approaches have limitations, including subject recall of conditions and physiological response contamination by head and body movements and user speech during task performance as well as sensitivity to physical fatigue and room lighting conditions. Cognitive modeling was used to assess mental workload in use of transradial upper-limb prosthesis. A case study was conducted with a participant with upper-limb amputation using two different types of electromyography-based control schemes, including conventional direct control (DC) and pattern recognition (PR) control in order to compare cognitive model outcomes with mental workload assessment using eye-tracking measures. Cognitive models time estimates were also compared with actual task completion time results from the case study to further assess the validity of cognitive modeling as an analytical tool for evaluating upper limb prosthesis usability. Findings of both the cognitive models and case study revealed the PR mode to be more intuitive, reduce cognitive load, and increase efficiency in prosthetic control as compared to the DC mode. Results of the present study revealed that cognitive modeling can be used as an analytical approach for assessing upper-limb prosthetic device usability in terms of workload outcomes. Future studies should validate the present findings with more precise time estimations and a larger user sample size.

In our complex acoustic environment, we are confronted with a mixture of sounds produced by several simultaneous sources. However, we rarely perceive these sounds as incomprehensible noise. Our brain uses perceptual organization processes to independently follow the emission of each sound source over time. If the acoustic properties exploited in these processes are well-established, the neurophysiological mechanisms involved in auditory scene analysis remain unclear and have recently raised more interest. Here, we review the studies investigating these mechanisms using electrophysiological recordings from the cochlear nucleus to the auditory cortex, in animals and humans. Their findings reveal that basic mechanisms such as frequency selectivity, forward suppression and multi-second habituation shape the automatic brain responses to sounds in a way that can account for several important characteristics of perceptual organization of both simultaneous and successive sounds. One challenging question remains unresolved: how are the resulting activity patterns integrated to yield the corresponding conscious percepts?

1 The Relevance of Psychophysics for Speech Perception.- The role of psychophysics in understanding speech perception.- Central and peripheral processes in the perception of speech and nonspeech sounds.- Psychophysics versus specialized processes in speech perception: an alternative perspective.- Speech perception and the role of long-term memory.- Levels of representation of phonemes and bandwidth of spectral-temporal integration.- General discussion of session 1.- 2 Separation of Acoustic Events.- The meaning of duplex perception: sounds as transparant objects.- Perceptual separation of speech from concurrent sounds.- Sound separation and auditory perceptual organization.- On the significance of spectral synchrony for signal detection.- Auditory enhancement in speech perception.- General discussion of session 2.- 3 Dynamic Aspects.- Trading relations, acoustic cue integration, and context effects in speech perception.- Perceptual integration of rise time and silence in affricate/fricative and pluck/bow continua.- Reversal of the rise-time cue in the affricate/fricative contrast: an experiment on the silence of sound.- Possible acoustic bases for the perception of voicing contrasts.- Is there a natural sensitivity at 20ms in relative tone-onset-time continua? A reanalysis of Hirsh's (1959) data.- Auditory constraints on speech perception.- Studies of possible psychoacoustic factors underlying speech perception.- Perception of tone, band, and formant sweeps.- Psychophysical representation of stop consonant and temporal masking in speech.- Effects of stimulus dynamics on frequency discrimination.- Extending the search for a psychophysical basis for dynamic phonetic patterns.- General discussion of session 3.- 4 Timbre (Peripheral Constraints and Central Processes in the Perception of Complex Signals)..- Psychophysics of audio signal processing and the role of pitch in speech..- Does the human auditory system include large scale spectral integration?.- Some aspects of the sound of speech sounds.- Involvement of the critical band in identification, perceived distance, and discrimination of vowels.- Profile analysis and speech perception.- General discussion of session 4.- 5 Physiological Correlates of Speech Perception.- Peripheral auditory processing of speech information: implications from a physiological study of intensity discrimination.- Organization of the cochlear nucleus for information processing.- Changes in the phonemic quality and neural representation of a vowel by alteration of the relative phase of harmonics near F1.- Phase vowels.- Nonlinear responses, in the auditory nerve to vowel-related complex stimuli.- Discussion of physiological correlates of speech perception.- General discussion of session 5.- 6 Primary Speech Percepts.- English and French speech processing: some psycholinguistic investigations.- Units of organization and analysis in the perception of speech.- Implications from infant speech studies on the unit of perception.- General discussion of session 6.- 7 Psychophysics and Speech Perception in the Hearing-Impaired.- Relationship between psychophysical abilities and speech perception for subjects with unilateral and bilateral cochlear hearing impairments.- Speech-reception threshold in a fluctuating background sound and its possible relation to temporal auditory resolution.- Differences in listening strategies between normal and hearing-impaired listeners.- Critical bands in the perception of speech signals by normal and sensorineural hearing loss listeners.- Phase and the hearing-impaired.

The objective of the present study is to examine the historical formation of the visual cell concept, focussing on the the study of photoreceptor cells (cones and rods). In the mid-1860s, the current theory about the perceptual process was that of the specific energies of nerves proposed by Johannes Mller (1801-1858) and later developed by Hermann Von Helmholtz (1821-1894). Our research will examine the formation of the concept of specific types of nerve cells associated with perceptual processes (the focus of the work are the cells of the visual system). This debate involves the formation of the concepts of visual cortex, visual system, nervous information and nerve cell. The period examined will be the last two decades of the nineteenth century (1880s and 1890s), a period in which Ferruccio Tartuferi proposed the hybrid constitution of the retina in 1887 and also marked by the formulation of neuronal theory mainly by the Spaniard Santiago Ramn y Cajal.

Previous research has shown that the completion of basic perceptual processes is intrinsically pleasant. In the absence of diagnostic and objective cues to trustworthiness, nondiagnostic factors such as positive affect can incidentally lead to reported and behavioral trust. On the basis of these two premises, it was tested whether positive affect from the completion of perceptual processes has implications for the formation of trust in first‐time business‐consumer interactions. We tested this hypothesis in four experiments, using the famous Kanizsa illusion as an exemplary perceptual process that has been shown to trigger positive affect. We found that participants trusted companies who featured a Kanizsa shape as their logo more than companies with closely matched logos that did not allow for the completion of a basic perceptual process. This was evident on self‐reported (Experiment 1) as well as behavioral (Experiments 2–4) measures of trust. This effect even persisted under incentivized conditions (Experiment 4) and was partially mediated by the intrinsic pleasantness of perception (Experiment 3). These findings for the first time demonstrate that positive affect is not the only consequence of perception, but rather has further trickle‐down consequences for social judgments and economic decision making. Perceptual illusions seem to elicit illusory trust. Therefore, these novel findings bear important implications not only for both logo design and marketing but also for consumer decision making.

This chapter defines the perceptual process and discusses its stages detail. This sequence of steps begins with exposure to stimuli: the visual effects, smells, or sounds we hear in marketplace encounters. The chapter goes on to discuss the perceptual process in relation to sight, sound, smell, touch and texture, and taste. It then examines sensory thresholds and the ways to get consumers' attention. The chapter then looks at perceptual mapping, perceived risk, repositioning, and semiotics.

In 2 studies, we sought to investigate participants’ awareness of their own cognitive process when perceiving affordances (i.e., action capabilities) and whether their evaluations of this process relate to affordance perception accuracy. In Study 1, we combined data from 8 experiments and created a coding scheme designed to capture the unique features of different affordance perception theories within these post hoc evaluations. We then tested whether the perceptual process that participants reported was related to the accuracy of their judgments. We found that evaluations were distributed fairly evenly across the themes. We also found no relationship between the evaluations and accuracy. In Study 2, we conducted an experiment that specifically addressed our hypotheses about awareness and affordance perception accuracy, while controlling for confounds in Study 1. The greater detail participants gave about their cognitive strategy produced reports that largely did not relate to affordance perception theories. Participants used one of a few strategies aimed at estimating their body dimensions. Our results suggest that awareness of the perceptual process has no influence on the accuracy of affordance perception. It is likely that subjective reports of affordance perceptual process, though clear to the perceiver, are not related to the process itself.

James Tenney introduces a number of propositions, along with corresponding definitions and comments, concerning perceptual organization, musical parameters, formal perception and description, and entropy as a measure of variation. Among these propositions are: temporal gestalt-units (TGs) are formed at several different hierarchical levels during the process of musical perception; the perceptual formation of TGs at any hierarchical level is determined by a number of factors of cohesion and segregation, the most important of which are proximity and similarity; pitch, timbre, and (musical) time are not simply one-dimensional parameters, because each includes at least two relatively independent “subparameters”; the perception of form at any hierarchical level involves the apprehension of three distinct aspects of form at that and all lower levels—state, shape, and structure; the statistical entropy of an ergodic TG is zero.

In the previous chapter, I specified perceptual organization as an autonomous process that enables us to perceive scenes as structured wholes consisting of objects arranged in space. Because any scene can be interpreted in numerous ways, it is amazing not only that the visual system usually has a clear preference for only one interpretation, but also that this interpretation usually is sufficiently veridical to guide us through the world. Indeed, it is true that visual illusions show that what we see is not always what we look at, but a fair degree of veridicality seems necessary — otherwise, our visual system would probably not have survived during evolution. In this chapter, expanding on van der Helm (2000), I assess what degree of veridicality vision might achieve by aiming at simplicity. To this end, I elaborate on three related issues, which I next introduce briefly. S implicity versus likelihood . The main issue is whether the perceptual organization process is guided by the likelihood principle (von Helmholtz, 1909/1962) or by the simplicity principle (Hochberg & McAlister, 1953). Both principles take this process as a form of unconscious inference yielding interpretations which persons subjectively believe are most likely to be true. The question, however, is what drives this unconscious inference, and as I indicate next, the two principles differ fundamentally in this respect. The likelihood principle, on the one hand, aims explicitly at a high degree of veridicality in the external world.

7 - Heuristic Processes in Perception

The Role of Nonperformance Factors on Job-Related Relocation Opportunities: A Field Study and Laboratory Experiment

Humans as creatures who are born with perfection have the cognitive ability to process information from the surrounding environment. This ability is influenced by factors such as intelligence level, physical condition, and the speed of the information processing system. Cognitive limitations can occur due to problems or disturbances in cognitive abilities, either from birth or due to changes in the human body. This research uses a qualitative descriptive method approach with a focus on literature study. The research results discuss the concept of perception, outlining definitions from various experts, such as Stephen P. Robbins, Kinichi and Kreitne, McShane and Von Glinow, and others. Perception is understood as a complex process involving the recognition, organization, and interpretation of information through the five senses. In its analysis, the research highlights the perception process involving the stages of selection, organization, and interpretation. Selection involves choosing information that attracts attention, organization refers to the arrangement of information in a cognitive structure, and interpretation is the assignment of meaning to information. Research also explains that perception is not only limited to physical objects, but also involves perception of humans. Factors such as objects, sensory organs, attention, and perception processes play a role in forming an individual's impression and assessment of the surrounding environment. In conclusion, this research highlights the complexity of perceptual processes and their relevance in shaping human understanding and interaction with the environment. The importance of understanding perception has implications in various contexts, including psychology, social interaction, and self-development. The results of this study contribute to our understanding of how humans process and assign meaning to information from their environment.

Efficient interaction with complex visual environments depends on the balance between global and local processing, with a natural tendency to prioritize global information—a phenomenon known as the global advantage. This study investigates how non-invasive brain stimulation using continuous theta-burst stimulation (cTBS) over the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) affects this balance, with a focus on holistic face processing. We conducted a within-subject, crossover, sham-controlled experiment involving 36 participants who completed Navon and composite face tasks before and after cTBS stimulation over the left and right PPC. Cognitive modeling using the Diffusion Model of Conflict (DMC) was employed to examine the cognitive mechanisms involved and compare global and local processing in experimental versus sham conditions. The results confirmed the expected global precedence effect and holistic processing in both tasks but revealed no significant impact of cTBS over the right PPC on task performance in terms of accuracy or response time. However, under incongruent conditions, cTBS over the left PPC led to slower responses to local targets, particularly when compared with the sham condition. Despite these localized effects, no significant changes were observed in composite face task performance following either left or right PPC stimulation. Overall, our findings highlight the complexity of the neural mechanisms governing global-local processing and the limited impact of single-session cTBS over the PPC in altering the cognitive mechanisms underlying these processes. Further research is needed to better understand the role of the PPC in holistic and hierarchical visual processing.

BackgroundAffective biases are central to mood and anxiety disorders, with individuals often interpreting ambiguous facial expressions more negatively. Adaptation paradigms - where exposure to emotional stimuli shifts perception - offer a tool to separate perceptual from decisional biases, but have not yet been used to study emotional biases in affective disorders.MethodsEighty participants completed emotion and identity discrimination tasks before and after adaptation, making binary judgments on morphed facial expressions (happy/sad) and identities (Bonny/Sheila), followed by confidence ratings (high/low). Logistic and Gaussian functions were used to model responses, with adaptation effects indexed by shifts in the point of subjective equality (PSE) and confidence.Results Adapting to happy faces produced a bias toward sad judgments of ambiguous faces, while adapting to sad faces produced the opposite effect. Similar adaptation effects were observed for identity judgments. PSE and confidence shifts were positively correlated, indicating perceptual rather than decisional bias. Crucially, a negative affect factor (derived from BDI and STAI-Y2) moderated the degree of perceptual bias towards sad expressions following happy adaptation. This effect was specific to negative perceptual shifts, and not shifts towards positive expressions or identity. ConclusionThese findings suggest that negative affect interacts with ‘low-level’ perceptual processes in affective biases. This aligns with cognitive neuropsychological models of mood disorders, which propose that antidepressants initially target early perceptual processing to reduce negative biases. By demonstrating how negative affect alters fundamental aspects of facial emotion perception, this study provides new insights into the perceptual mechanisms underpinning mood and anxiety disorders.