Match me if you can: Evidence for a domain-general visual comparison ability

Visual comparison—comparing visual stimuli (e.g., fingerprints) side by side and determining whether they originate from the same or different source (i.e., “match”)—is a complex discrimination task involving many cognitive and perceptual processes. Despite the real-world consequences of this task, which is often conducted by forensic scientists, little is understood about the psychological processes underpinning this ability. There are substantial individual differences in visual comparison accuracy amongst both professionals and novices. The source of this variation is unknown, but may reflect a domain-general and naturally varying perceptual ability. Here, we investigate this by comparing individual differences (N = 248 across two studies) in four visual comparison domains: faces, fingerprints, firearms, and artificial prints. Accuracy on all comparison tasks was significantly correlated and accounted for a substantial portion of variance (e.g., 42% in Exp. 1) in performance across all tasks. Importantly, this relationship cannot be attributed to participants’ intrinsic motivation or skill in other visual-perceptual tasks (visual search and visual statistical learning). This paper provides novel evidence of a reliable, domain-general visual comparison ability.

Auditory-Perceptual Judgement of Speech-Language Pathologists in Fricative Distortion by EPG Task

Objectives: In a clinical setting, a ‘trained ear’ is the essentials for speech–language pathologists (SLPs) because most SLPs rely on the auditory - perceptual method during assessment and treatment for speech difficulties. However, transcribing distortion errors using only auditory-perceptual judgement is a difficult task. This study investigated the auditory– perceptual ability in terms of distortion errors for pre and present SLPs.Methods: Sixty pre and present SLPs completed a survey, then performed a perceptual judgement task which was manufactured by electropalatography (EPG). The task consisted of 30 questions, including distorted (dentalized, palatalized, lateralized) and normal speech samples of Korean fricative /s/ with different types of vowels (/ɑ/, /u/) and lengths (1-syllabled, 2- syllabled, sentence).Results: There was no significant difference in the distortion task among three groups. All participants had the highest score in “dentalization”, the lowest in “lateralization”, and all distortion types were perceived better in the /u/ context than /ɑ/. Also, SLPs tended to judge “lateralization” errors as “normal articulation” and many of the participants perceived “palatalization” as “lateralization”.Conclusion: The results of this study indicated that active auditory training for SLPs is necessary to improve auditory perceptual ability, and suggests that EPG could be a useful instrument for the auditory training program.

The Perceptual Ability to Identify Japanese Language Accent Patterns by Indonesian Learners

Research on the acquisition of suprasegmental sounds in Japanese has been carried out both in terms of production and perception. The conducted research shows that there are difficulties in acquiring Japanese sounds. This study focused on the perception of Japanese accents, with the aim of describing the learner’s ability to identify Japanese accent patterns. The data sources of this research are Japanese learners at beginner level. Data were collected using a test instrument, through a hearing test, in the form of a set of words which selected based on the category of words and patterns of Japanese accents to be measured by listening and recording techniques. The results showed that based on the results of the hearing test, of the 17 participants who completed the test reached the highest score 47.14 (S01), and the lowest score of 15.41 (S14), with an overall average score of 29.16 and Standard Deviation (SD) 7.9018. These scores represent the participants’ ability to identify Japanese accent patterns is in the very low category. The results indicate that the learners have difficulty identifying Japanese accent patterns. In fact, the vocabulary in research instrument was the basic vocabulary that had been learned by them. It can be concluded that the acquisition of vocabulary is not in line with the suprasegmental elements attached to these words. The results of this research need to be continued by applying listening exercises of Japanese accent.

Heat stress during development makes antlion larvae more responsive to vibrational cues

We investigated the effects of heat stress on the responsiveness to vibrational cues, our measure of perceptual ability, in Myrmeleon bore antlion larvae (Neuroptera: Myrmeleontidae). We reared these trap-building predatory larvae under two heat stress regimes (mild, 30 °C, and harsh, 36 °C), and after they progressed from one instar stage to another, we tested their perceptual ability in common unchallenging conditions. We hypothesized that exposure to the harsh heat stress regime would impose costs resulting in handicapped vibration responsiveness. We found that the harsh heat stress regime generated more stressful conditions for the larvae, as evidenced by increased mortality and postponed molting, and the loss of body mass among larger larvae. Furthermore, among the individuals who remained alive, those originating from the harsh heat stress regime were characterized by higher vibration responsiveness. Our results suggest two not mutually exclusive scenarios. Costly heat stress conditions can sieve out individuals characterized by poor perceptual ability, or surviving individuals can attempt to hunt more efficiently to compensate for the physiological imbalance caused by heat stress. Both of these mechanisms fit into the ongoing debate over how adaptation and plasticity contribute to shaping insect communities exposed to heat stress.

Expert Perceptual Behavior under the Spatiotemporal Visual Constraints in Table Tennis

OBJECTIVES The perceptual ability to detect movement is essential for expert table tennis players. A spatiotemporal occlusion paradigm was employed to examine the critical information that facilitates athletes’ perception.METHODS Thirty-one expert table tennis players, 29 participants and 2 demonstrators, volunteered to participate in the study. Four types of temporal conditions and five types of spatial occlusions were displayed in experimental videos of two opponents playing a table tennis forehand stroke. Period t1–4 represented the four temporal conditions, with 250, 500, 750, and 1000 ms of action being occluded, respectively. The five types of spatial occlusion involved showing the kinematics of only the ball, paddle, arm, trunk, or head. The participants were instructed to judge the landing direction of the ball on the basis of the information in the footage.RESULTS The footage depicted the longest period of play. Furthermore, in separate trials, the spatial information (for the ball, torso, or head) was missing because of occlusion. The absence of such critical spatiotemporal information impaired the ability of players to make an accurate prediction.CONCLUSION Players obtained crucial spatiotemporal information if the timeframe of the video was relatively complete and spatial information on the opponent’s torso and head was available. For peak performance, expert table tennis players perceive and detect the optical flow of the ball’s flight and consider invariant information concerning their opponent’s torso and head.

PENGARUH KEMAMPUAN PERSEPTUAL, MOTIVASI KERJA DAN DISIPLIN KERJA TERHADAP KINERJA PEGAWAI NEGERI SIPIL (PNS) DINAS PENDIDIKAN KABUPATEN BOJONEGORO

The objectives to be achieved in this study are to describe the perceptual ability, work motivation, work discipline on the Performance of Civil Servants (PNS) of the Bojonegoro Regency Education Office, to test and analyze perceptual abilities, work motivation and work discipline on the Performance of Civil Servants (PNS). Bojonegoro District Education Office. The population in this study were all Civil Servants (PNS) at the Bojonegoro Regency Education Office who assessed 60 people with a sample of 60 people. Total sampling technique or census sampling. The analytical method used is multiple linear regression. Based on the results of research and discussion, perceptual ability, work motivation, work discipline and the performance of the Civil Servants (PNS) of the Bojonegoro Regency Education Office are in good categories. Perceptual ability has a positive and significant effect on the Performance of Civil Servants (PNS) of the Bojonegoro Regency Education Office. Work motivation has no effect on the performance of Civil Servants (PNS) of the Bojonegoro Regency Education Office. Work discipline has a significant effect on the performance of the Civil Servants (PNS) of the Bojonegoro Regency Education Office.

Auditory Attention Detection via Cross-Modal Attention

Humans show a remarkable perceptual ability to select the speech stream of interest among multiple competing speakers. Previous studies demonstrated that auditory attention detection (AAD) can infer which speaker is attended by analyzing a listener's electroencephalography (EEG) activities. However, previous AAD approaches perform poorly on short signal segments, more advanced decoding strategies are needed to realize robust real-time AAD. In this study, we propose a novel approach, i.e., cross-modal attention-based AAD (CMAA), to exploit the discriminative features and the correlation between audio and EEG signals. With this mechanism, we hope to dynamically adapt the interactions and fuse cross-modal information by directly attending to audio and EEG features, thereby detecting the auditory attention activities manifested in brain signals. We also validate the CMAA model through data visualization and comprehensive experiments on a publicly available database. Experiments show that the CMAA achieves accuracy values of 82.8, 86.4, and 87.6% for 1-, 2-, and 5-s decision windows under anechoic conditions, respectively; for a 2-s decision window, it achieves an average of 84.1% under real-world reverberant conditions. The proposed CMAA network not only achieves better performance than the conventional linear model, but also outperforms the state-of-the-art non-linear approaches. These results and data visualization suggest that the CMAA model can dynamically adapt the interactions and fuse cross-modal information by directly attending to audio and EEG features in order to improve the AAD performance.

ACOUSTIC EFFECTS OF DURATIONAL CUES IN THE PERCEPTION OF NAJDI ARABIC VOWEL CONTINUA

This paper explores how the manipulation of vowel duration as a perceptual cue influences listeners’ perceptual ability. Four native speakers of Najdi Arabic, a well-known variety of Arabic in the Arabian Peninsula, were tested on the perception of /a/ vs. /ɛ/ vowels. Listeners’ identification and discrimination rates along each vowel continuum showed a clear effect of duration on the perception of /a/-/ɛ/ contrast. In each vowel continuum, listeners were more inclined to classify stimuli as belonging to one vowel or the other based on relative proximity to the steady-state vowel duration. Perceptibility naturally improved as duration approximated the normal duration of either vowel. Listeners’ perceptual judgments in the identification and discrimination of the vowels were swayed by their aural sensitivity to perceptual shifts (/a/-/ɛ/ at 185-195ms; /ɛ/-/a/ at 195-205ms). Moreover, findings of the identification task followed predictably from the discrimination task; this could be taken as evidence for the existence of categorical perception. Results aggregately indicate that perception of the two Najdi Arabic vowels proceeded as a function of duration.

Sleep Quality’s Effect on Vigilance and Perceptual Ability in Adolescent and Adult Athletes

The aim of the study was to investigate the effect of sleep quality in cognitive domains of perceptual ability after exhausting exercise in adolescent and adult athletes. Eighty-six male professional soccer players were included in our study and divided into two groups: adolescents (age: 17.3 ± 0.2 yrs, body mass: 68.9 ± 7.9 kg, body fat: 9.9 ± 3.6 %) versus adults (age: 26.3 ± 5.2 yrs, body mass: 76.5 ± 7.2 kg, body fat: 10.3 ± 3.1 %). For each athlete, prior to cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET), anthropometric and morphological characteristics were recorded and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) questionnaire was answered. Immediately after CPET, all athletes underwent the perceptual ability test (PATest) for 30 sec and the sum of hits (rep/30 sec) and the time between a visual stimulus and the following stimulus (mean reaction time; RT, sec) were recorded. Oxygen uptake in maximal effort and in anaerobic threshold showed differences between hits ( P = 0.037 ) and RT ( P = 0.025 ). The variable of PSQI questionnaire “had bad dreams” showed correlation with hits ( P = 0.021 ) and RT ( P = 0.011 ) and the RT showed correlation with variables “cannot breathe comfortably” ( P = 0.041 ) and “...enthusiasm to get things done” ( P = 0.041 ). Adolescents showed poorer sleep quality (PSQI score: 5.7 ± 3.6 vs. 2.4 ± 2.6) compared to adults and slower reaction time (0.9 ± 0.1 vs. 0.8 ± 0.1 sec, P = 0.029 ) compared to adolescent athletes with PSQI score ≥5.5. The variable of PSQI score in adolescents is related to HR in maximal effort (r = −0.364, P = 0.032 ) and in adults is related to speed (r = −0.335, P = 0.016 ). Perceptual ability, which requires sustained attention, vigilance, and motor coordination, is often negatively affected by restricted sleep, especially in adolescents.