In plain sight: implicit priming of patterns and faces using change symmetry.

Aksentijevic-Gibson complexity is an original complexity measure based on the amount of change in a string or 2D array that has been successfully implemented on data from psychology to physics. The key ingredient to computing the measure is a change symmetry (CS)-a novel form of structure (also known as generalised palindrome) which represents a central or mirror symmetry based on the redundant arrangement not of symbols but of changes. This results in patterns that although globally symmetrical do not appear as such when inspected locally. We used this property to (a) affect the registration of a target, (b) prime the symmetry judgment of 2D arrays and (c) faces using 1D patterns possessing change symmetry. In Experiment 2, we applied the lock and key principle to complete the prime without showing its structure at once. In Experiments 3 and 4, we presented subjects with fast sequences of CSs such that the configuration of an individual pattern was masked by the subsequent pattern leaving only the structural "essence" of the prime symmetry. The results strongly support the contention that higher-level hidden structure of change symmetry successfully primes the symmetry perception of 2D arrays as well as facial attractiveness.

It takes me back: The mnemonic time-travel effect.

Given the links between motion and temporal thinking, it is surprising that no studies have examined the possibility that transporting participants back mentally towards the time of encoding could improve memory. Six experiments investigated whether backward motion would promote recall relative to forward motion or no-motion conditions. Participants saw a video of a staged crime (Experiments 1, 3 and 5), a word list (Experiments 2 and 4) or a set of pictures (Experiment 6). Then, they walked forward or backwards (Experiments 1 and 2), watched a forward- or backward-directed optic flow-inducing video (Experiments 3 and 4) or imagined walking forward or backwards (Experiments 5 and 6). Finally, they answered questions about the video or recalled words or pictures. The results demonstrated for the first time that motion-induced past-directed mental time travel improved mnemonic performance for different types of information. We briefly discuss theoretical and practical implications of this "mnemonic time-travel effect".

Local spatial distortion caused by simple geometrical figures.

Dynamic distortion of the visual field has been shown to affect perceptual judgment of visual dimensions such as size, length, and distance. Here, we report four experiments demonstrating that the different aspects of a triangle differently influence judgments of distance. Specifically, when the base of the triangle faces the centre of the display, participants consistently underestimate and overestimate the distance of a small dot from the unmarked centre of the display relative to conditions in which the vertex of the triangle faces the centre. When the dot is close to the figure, the distance of the dot to the centre is underestimated. Conversely, when the dot is close to the figure, the distance to the centre is overestimated. The effect is replicated when the internal distances are equalized and when ellipses are used instead of triangles. These results support a ripple model of spatial distortion in which local curvature acts to attract or repel objects. In conclusion, we suggest some implications of our findings for theories of perceptual organization.

It's all in the past: Deconstructing the temporal Doppler effect.

A recent study reported an asymmetry between subjective estimates of future and past distances with passive estimation and virtual movement. The temporal Doppler effect refers to the contraction of future distance judgments relative to past ones. We aimed to replicate the effect using real and imagined motion in both directions as well as different temporal perspectives. To avoid the problem of subjective anchoring, we compared real- and imagined-, ego- and time-moving conditions to a control group. Generally, Doppler-like distortion was only observed in conditions in which the distance between the participant and a frontal target increased. No effects of temporal perspective were observed. The "past-directed temporal Doppler effect" presents a challenge for the current theories of temporal cognition by demonstrating absence of psychological movement into the future. The effect could open new avenues in memory research and serve as a starting point in a systematic examination of how the humans construct future.

Statistician, heal thyself: fighting statophobia at the source.

Notwithstanding the popularity of psychology courses throughout the world, educators face a constant and difficult problem of overcoming the fear of and dislike for statistics which represents one of the pillars of modern psychological science. Although the issue is complex and multifaceted, here I argue that "statophobia" might represent a rational and justified response to the sense of unease felt in contact with abstract statistical concepts which are often vague, circular or ill-defined. I illustrate the problem by briefly discussing two myths about the nature of probability and statistics, namely that probability and statistics generate knowledge and that the fault for not understanding probability lies solely with the subjective cognition which is incapable of comprehending deeper mathematical truth. I argue that the confident presentation of statistical methods hides numerous conceptual blind spots that students might be aware of and that need to be addressed before other causes of statistics anxiety can be tackled successfully.

The oscillatory entrainment of virtual pitch perception.

Evidence suggests that synchronized brain oscillations in the low gamma range (around 33 Hz) are involved in the perceptual integration of harmonic complex tones. This process involves the binding of harmonic components into "harmonic templates" - neural structures responsible for pitch coding in the brain. We investigated the hypothesis that oscillatory harmonic binding promotes a change in pitch perception style from spectral (frequency) to virtual (relational). Using oscillatory priming we asked 24 participants to judge as rapidly as possible, the direction of an ambiguous target with ascending spectral and descending virtual contour. They made significantly more virtual responses when primed at 29, 31, and 33 Hz and when the first target tone was harmonically related to the prime, suggesting that neural synchronization in the low gamma range could facilitate a shift toward virtual pitch processing.

Cross-modal facilitation of mental rotation: effects of modality and complexity.

Performance in a visual mental rotation (MR) task has been reported to predict the ability to recognize retrograde-transformed melodies. The current study investigated the effects of melodic structure on the MR of sequentially presented visual patterns. Each trial consisted of a five-segment sequentially presented visual pattern (standard) followed by a five-tone melody that was either identical in structure to the standard or its retrograde. A visual target pattern was either the rotated version of the standard or unrelated to it. The task was to indicate whether the target pattern was a rotated version of the standard or not. Periodic patterns were not rotated but melodies facilitated the rotation of non-periodic patterns. For these, rotation latency was determined by a quantitative index of complexity (number of runs). This study provides the first experimental confirmation for cross-modal facilitation of MR.

Music, IQ, and the executive function.

This article is a commentary on 'Examining the association between music lessons and intelligence' (Schellenberg, 2011).

Process timing and its relation to the coding of tonal harmony.

Advances in auditory research suggest that gamma-band synchronization of frequency-specific cortical loci could be responsible for the integration of pure tones (harmonics) into harmonic complex tones. Thus far, evidence for such a mechanism has been revealed in neurophysiological studies, with little corroborative psychophysical evidence. In six experiments, we observed a rate- and time-specific response-time advantage for a sequence of target pips when the defining frequency of the target was a fractional multiple of a priming frequency. The effect was only observed when the prime and target sequences were presented at 33 pips per second and when the interstimulus interval was approximately 100 and 250 ms. This evidence implicates oscillatory gamma-band activity in the representation of harmonic complex tones and suggests that synchronization with precise temporal characteristics is important for disambiguating related harmonic templates. An outline of a model is presented, which accounts for these findings in terms of fast resynchronization of relevant neuronal assemblies.

Audiological findings in workers exposed to styrene alone or in concert with noise.

Audiological testing, interviews and exposure measurements were used to collect data on the health effects of styrene exposures in 313 workers from fiberglass and metal-product manufacturing plants and a mail terminal. The audiological test battery included pure-tone audiometry, distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAE), psychoacoustic modulation transfer function, interrupted speech, speech recognition in noise and cortical response audiometry (CRA). Workers exposed to noise and styrene had significantly poorer pure-tone thresholds in the high-frequency range (3 to 8 kHz) than the controls, noise-exposed workers and those listed in a Swedish age-specific database. Even though abnormalities were noted on DPOAE and CRA testing, the interrupted speech and speech recognition in noise tests were the more sensitive tests for styrene effects. Further research is needed on the underlying mechanisms to understand the effects of styrene and on audiological test batteries to detect changes in populations exposed to solvents.