Acoustic-Perceptual Factors Both Maintain and Account for the Rarity of the Czech Trill-Fricative

Czech has a sibilant inventory that contrasts at three places of articulation: Alveolar, a pre-post-alveolar, and palato-alveolar. The specific aim of this study is to examine the perception of the typologically rare Czech sibilant inventory and to determine whether acoustic-perceptual characteristics play a role in the maintenance of the Czech trill-fricative. These results are compared to a more common three-way sibilant inventory, Polish. Native Czech listeners performed an auditory AX discrimination task in two blocks: A Czech block and a Polish block. Stimuli were embedded in varying levels of noise to increase task difficulty. Signal-to-noise ratio differences affected the perception of the Czech sibilants more than Polish sibilants. Moreover, a multidimensional scaling analysis revealed less perceptual dispersion for the Czech inventory than the Polish inventory. These results suggest that there is greater difficulty maintaining the Czech inventory considering the signal-to-noise comparisons and that this a factor that contributes to its rarity; however, similarities in perceptual dispersion indicate that maintenance across several acoustic-perceptual cues is possible, and Czech shows few signs of losing this typologically rare contrast.

Executive Functioning: Assessing the Role of Perceived Paranormal Ability

This study examined whether scores on self-report measures of executive functions varied in accordance with level of self-professed paranormal ability. The investigators compared three groups varying in attribution of paranormal facilities: practitioners (Mediums, Psychics, Spiritualists and Fortune-Tellers), self-professed ability and no ability. Consistent with recent research on cognitive-perceptual factors allied to delusional formation and thinking style, the researchers anticipated that practitioners would score higher on paranormal belief and self-reported executive function disruption. Correspondingly, the investigators also hypothesised that the self-professed ability group would demonstrate greater belief in the paranormal and higher levels of executive function disruption than the no ability group. A sample of 499 (219 males, 279 females) respondents completed the measures online. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) found a large effect size, alongside significant differences on all variables apart from Cognitive Reappraisal. Pairwise comparisons indicated that Paranormal Belief increased as a function of level of ability; practitioners scored higher than self-professed, who in turn scored higher than the no ability group. For executive functioning, significant differences emerged only for the no ability vs. self-professed ability and no ability vs. practising groups. Collectively, outcomes indicated that perception of ability, regardless of intensity of paranormal conviction, influenced subjective appraisal of executive functions. Failure to find consistent differences between practitioner and self-professed ability groups suggested that discernment of ability was sufficient to heighten awareness of executive functioning disruptions.

Fight the Virus and Fight the Bias: Asian Americans’ Engagement in Activism to Combat Anti-Asian COVID-19 Racism

The global COVID-19 pandemic reinforced anti-Asian biases, accompanied by the rise of violence against Asians. We examined Asian Americans’ engagement in activism to combat anti-Asian racism and advance their community using the situational theory of problem solving (STOPS) and two additional factors—past discrimination and subjective norms. Asian American activism includes social media, political, and advocacy actions. Structural equation modeling was conducted with data from online survey responses of 240 Asian Americans. Our results suggest pathways from Asian Americans’ past racism experiences to political and advocacy actions via three perceptual factors in STOPS (problem, involvement, constraint recognition), subjective norms, and expression of opinion on social media.

Tailored Reality: Perception-aware Scene Restructuring for Adaptive VR Navigation

In virtual reality (VR), the virtual scenes are pre-designed by creators. Our physical surroundings, however, comprise significantly varied sizes, layouts, and components. To bridge the gap and further enable natural navigation, recent solutions have been proposed to redirect users or recreate the virtual content. However, they suffer from either interrupted experience or distorted appearances. We present a novel VR-oriented algorithm that automatically restructures a given virtual scene for a user’s physical environment. Different from the previous methods, we introduce neither interrupted walking experience nor curved appearances. Instead, a perception-aware function optimizes our retargeting technique to preserve the fidelity of the virtual scene that appears in VR head-mounted displays. Besides geometric and topological properties, it emphasizes the unique first-person view perceptual factors in VR, such as dynamic visibility and objectwise relationships. We conduct both analytical experiments and subjective studies. The results demonstrate our system’s versatile capability and practicability for natural navigation in VR: It reduces the virtual space by 40% without statistical loss of perceptual identicality.

Differences in Cognitive-Perceptual Factors Arising From Variations in Self-Professed Paranormal Ability

This study examined whether scores on indices related to subclinical delusion formation and thinking style varied as a function of level of self-professed paranormal ability. To assess this, the researchers compared three groups differing in personal ascription of paranormal powers: no ability, self-professed ability, and paranormal practitioners (i.e., Mediums, Psychics, Spiritualists, and Fortune-Tellers). Paranormal practitioners (compared with no and self-professed ability conditions) were expected to score higher on paranormal belief, proneness to reality testing deficits, emotion-based reasoning, and lower on belief in science. Comparable differences were predicted between the self-professed and no ability conditions. A sample of 917 respondents (329 males, 588 females) completed self-report measures online. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed an overall main effect. Further investigation, using discriminant descriptive analysis, indicated that paranormal practitioners scored higher on proneness to reality testing deficits, paranormal belief, and emotion-based reasoning. Belief in science did not meaningfully contribute to the discriminant function. Overall, results were consistent with previous academic work in the domains of paranormal belief and experience, which has reported that paranormal-related cognitions and perceptions are associated with factors related to subclinical delusion formation (i.e., emotion-based/intuitive thinking).

How Stakeholders Adopt and Share Flood Forecast Information: A Survey of Mississippi River Outlook Users

Guided by the literature in diffusion of innovations, the technology acceptance model, and risk information sharing, this paper reports the results of a survey distributed to National Weather Service (NWS)-Memphis Weather Forecast Office (WFO) stakeholders who receive the Mississippi River Outlook product and its embedded 28-day experimental forecast. The survey examined perceptual factors that likely influence participants’ adoption of flood forecast information provided in the Outlook, and assessed Outlook recipients’ forecast-sharing behaviors and perceptions. Results revealed that the first responders perceived the Outlook product to be more useful than experts, while experts experienced less social influence to use it than first responders or the public. Although participants were generally favorable toward and intended to use the Outlook in the future, experts were significantly less likely to do so and hold a favorable attitude. The majority of participants reported sharing the Outlook with an average of 11 people, and were most likely to share either the entire Outlook verbatim or specific, verbatim sections. Implications of the Outlook’s perceived characteristics and participants’ Outlook-sharing behaviors are discussed.

More than just a mental stressor: psychological value of social distancing in COVID-19 mitigation through increased risk perception—a preliminary study in China

Social distancing is an effective measure to prevent epidemic infections during a pandemic outbreak, but its psychological value in COVID-19 pandemic mitigation remained less detected. Our study fills this gap by conducting a nationwide survey in China between 12 and 25 February (2020), and a follow-up survey targeting the same participants between 25 and 28 March (2020). We have discovered that perceived increased time staying at home, a subjective agency for social distancing, positively predicts not only risk perception of COVID-19 epidemic at the outbreak and eased stage, but also predicts subjective controllability of COVID-19 epidemic at the eased stage. Given that risk perception indicates potential active engagement of preventative behavior and that subjective controllability associating with self-efficacy could promote individual health behavior, this study preliminarily justifies the value of social distancing from the angle of perceptual factors, adding to existing mounting evidence of its effect on physically controlling pandemic spread.