A Ubiquitous Illusion of Volume: Are Impressions of 3D Volume Captured by an “Additive Heuristic”?

Several empirical approaches have attempted to explain perception of 2D and 3D size. While these approaches have documented interesting perceptual effects, they fail to offer a compelling, general explanation of everyday size perception. Here, we offer one. Building on prior work documenting an “Additive Area Heuristic” by which observers estimate perceived area by summing objects’ dimensions, we show that this same principle—an “additive heuristic”—explains impressions of 3D volume. Observers consistently discriminate sets that vary in “additive volume,” even when there is no true difference; they also fail to discriminate sets that truly differ (even by amounts as much as 30%) when they are equated in “additive volume.” These results suggest a failure to properly integrate multiple spatial dimensions, and frequent reliance on a perceptual heuristic instead.

Bandoneon!

Bandoneon! (a combine), performed in October 1966 as part of the 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering, has been regarded as Tudor’s first work as a composer. However, the conception of this piece was not only directly influenced by two other amplified bandoneon pieces he realized in the same year, Gordon Mumma’s Mesa and Lowell Cross’s Musica Instrumentalis, but had also started off as a realization of a “Mobius-Strip” composition by Mauricio Kagel. Moreover, most of the modular electronics in his setup were also used in other realizations around the same period. The true difference lies in how these common materials were used and to what ends. What the self-proclaimed effort to make a “giant white noise generator” from scratch brings to the fore is a synecdochical relationship between the modular instruments used and the larger instrumental complex they compose. The investigation of this coordination between the parts and the whole reveals a strange disappearance of an entire group of instruments considered central to the performance, a mystery that highlights the peculiar nature of Tudor’s “composition.”

A ubiquitous illusion of volume: Are impressions of 3D volume captured by an ‘Additive Heuristic’?

Several empirical approaches have attempted to explain perception of 2D and 3D size. While these approaches have documented interesting perceptual effects, they fail to offer a compelling, general explanation of everyday size perception. Here, we offer one. Building on prior work documenting an ‘Additive Area Heuristic’ by which observers estimate perceived area by summing objects’ dimensions, we show that this same principle — an ‘additive heuristic’ — explains impressions of 3D volume. Observers consistently discriminate sets that vary in ‘additive volume’, even when there is no true difference; they also sometimes fail to discriminate sets that truly differ (even by amounts as much as 200%) when they are equated in ‘additive volume’. However, this heuristic also has limits: when volume varies to large extents, observers may rely on both ‘additive’ and true, mathematical volume to make volume judgments. These results suggest a failure to properly integrate multiple spatial dimensions, and frequent reliance on a perceptual heuristic instead.

Motivations of Cosplayers to Participate in the Anime Fandom

We examined differences between cosplaying and non-cosplaying anime fans with regard to their motivation to participate in the anime fandom. Participants, all anime fans, completed scales assessing a myriad of possible motivations for anime fandom participation. Cosplayers rated all of the assessed motivations higher than non-cosplayers. The highest-rated motivations for cosplayers included entertainment, escape from everyday life, belongingness, eustress, and aesthetic beauty. Modest sex differences were also found, as women were more likely than men to cosplay and, even among cosplayers, women reported higher belongingness, family, self-esteem, and escape motivations. With the exception of sexual attraction, however, where men were considerably more motivated by sexual attraction than women, the effect sizes for sex differences were fairly small, suggesting little true difference between male and female cosplayers. The results are discussed in relation to past research examining anime cosplayers.