Disruptive Body Patterning of Cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) Requires Visual Information on Edges and Brightness of Objects on Natural Substrate Backgrounds

To achieve effective visual camouflage, prey organisms must combine cryptic coloration with the appropriate posture and behaviour to render them difficult to be detected or recognized. Body patterning has been studied in various taxa, yet body postures and their implementation on different backgrounds have seldom been studied experimentally. Here, we provide the first experimental evidence that cuttlefish ( Sepia officinalis ), masters of rapid adaptive camouflage, use visual cues from adjacent visual stimuli to control arm postures. Cuttlefish were presented with a square wave stimulus (period = 0.47 cm; black and white stripes) that was angled 0°, 45° or 90° relative to the animals' horizontal body axis. Cuttlefish positioned their arms parallel, obliquely or transversely to their body axis according to the orientation of the stripes. These experimental results corroborate our field observations of cuttlefish camouflage behaviour in which flexible, precise arm posture is often tailored to match nearby objects. By relating the cuttlefishes' visual perception of backgrounds to their versatile postural behaviour, our results highlight yet another of the many flexible and adaptive anti-predator tactics adopted by cephalopods.

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Body Patterning of Sepia officinalis in Captivity, from Feeding to Reproduction

10.33513/raas/1901-01 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 2019 (01) ◽

Author(s):

Keyword(s):

Sepia Officinalis ◽

In Captivity ◽

Body Patterning

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Flow of symbolic visual information from retina to calcarine cortex to frontal lobe to vocalization

Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology ◽

10.1016/s0013-4694(97)87958-1 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 103 (1) ◽

pp. 13 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

R Cracco

Keyword(s):

Frontal Lobe ◽

Visual Information ◽

Calcarine Cortex

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Investigating the Multimodal Nature of Human Communication

Journal of Psychophysiology ◽

10.1027/0269-8803.23.2.63 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 23 (2) ◽

pp. 63-76 ◽

Cited By ~ 41

Author(s):

Silke Paulmann ◽

Sarah Jessen ◽

Sonja A. Kotz

Keyword(s):

Visual Information ◽

Empirical Studies ◽

Physical Property ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Accurate Information ◽

Human Communication ◽

Channel Condition ◽

Prosodic Cues ◽

Early Processing ◽

Related Potentials

The multimodal nature of human communication has been well established. Yet few empirical studies have systematically examined the widely held belief that this form of perception is facilitated in comparison to unimodal or bimodal perception. In the current experiment we first explored the processing of unimodally presented facial expressions. Furthermore, auditory (prosodic and/or lexical-semantic) information was presented together with the visual information to investigate the processing of bimodal (facial and prosodic cues) and multimodal (facial, lexic, and prosodic cues) human communication. Participants engaged in an identity identification task, while event-related potentials (ERPs) were being recorded to examine early processing mechanisms as reflected in the P200 and N300 component. While the former component has repeatedly been linked to physical property stimulus processing, the latter has been linked to more evaluative “meaning-related” processing. A direct relationship between P200 and N300 amplitude and the number of information channels present was found. The multimodal-channel condition elicited the smallest amplitude in the P200 and N300 components, followed by an increased amplitude in each component for the bimodal-channel condition. The largest amplitude was observed for the unimodal condition. These data suggest that multimodal information induces clear facilitation in comparison to unimodal or bimodal information. The advantage of multimodal perception as reflected in the P200 and N300 components may thus reflect one of the mechanisms allowing for fast and accurate information processing in human communication.

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Situational Factors Competing for Attention

Journal of Media Psychology Theories Methods and Applications ◽

10.1027/1864-1105/a000002 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 22 (1) ◽

pp. 2-13 ◽

Cited By ~ 39

Author(s):

Weiyu Zhang ◽

Se-Hoon Jeong ◽

Martin Fishbein†

Keyword(s):

Task Performance ◽

Visual Information ◽

Situational Factors ◽

Sexual Content ◽

Sexually Explicit ◽

Explicit Content ◽

Audio Information

This study investigates how multitasking interacts with levels of sexually explicit content to influence an individual’s ability to recognize TV content. A 2 (multitasking vs. nonmultitasking) by 3 (low, medium, and high sexual content) between-subjects experiment was conducted. The analyses revealed that multitasking not only impaired task performance, but also decreased TV recognition. An inverted-U relationship between degree of sexually explicit content and recognition of TV content was found, but only when subjects were multitasking. In addition, multitasking interfered with subjects’ ability to recognize audio information more than their ability to recognize visual information.

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