Atypical Time to Contact Estimation in Young Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) present atypical sensory processing in the perception of moving stimuli and biological motion. The present study aims to explore the performance of young adults with ASD in a time to contact (TTC) estimation task involving social and non-social stimuli. TTC estimation involves extrapolating the trajectory of a moving target concealed by an occluder, based on the visible portion of its path, to predict the target's arrival time at a specific position. Sixteen participants with a diagnosis of level-1 ASD (M = 19.2 years, SE = 0.54 years; 3 F, 13 M) and sixteen participants with TD (M = 22.3 years, SE = 0.44 years; 3 F, 13 M) took part in the study and underwent a TTC estimation task. The task presented two object types (a car and a point-light walker), different object speeds, occluder lengths, motion directions and motion congruency. For the car object, a larger overestimation of TTC emerged for ASDs than for TDs, whereas no difference between ASDs and TDs emerged for the point-light walker. ASDs exhibited a larger TTC overestimation for the car object than for the point-light walker, whereas no difference between object types emerged for TDs. Our results indicated an atypical TTC estimation process in young adults with ASD. Given its importance in daily life, future studies should further explore this skill. Significant effects that emerged from the analysis are discussed.

Perception of complex Glass patterns through spatial summation across unique frames.

When processing visual information from the surroundings, human vision depends on the constant integration of form and motion cues. Dynamic Glass patterns (GPs) may be used to study how such visual integration occurs in the human visual system. Dynamic GPs are visual stimuli composed of two or more unique frames consisting of different configurations of dot pairs, called dipoles, presented in rapid succession. Previous psychophysical studies showed that the discrimination of translational and circular dynamic GPs is influenced by both the number of unique frames and the pattern update rate. In this study, we manipulated these two variables to assess their influence on the discrimination threshold of circular, radial, and spiral GPs, partially replicating previous findings on circular GPs. Our results indicate that circular GPs are more easily perceived than radial and spiral GPs, showing lower discrimination thresholds. Furthermore, we found that discrimination thresholds vary as a function of the number of unique frames but not as a function of the pattern update rate. Specifically, coherence thresholds decreased with increasing the number of unique frames. In conclusion, our findings support the existence of spatial summation of form signals coming from the unique frames that generate complex GPs. On the other hand, they do not support temporal integration of local form-motion signals based on the pattern update rate.

Does perceptual disfluency affect the illusion of causality?

When a subjective experience of difficulty is associated with a mental task, people tend to engage in systematic and deliberative reasoning, which can reduce the usage of intuitive and effortless thinking that gives rise to cognitive biases. One such bias is the illusion of causality, where people perceive a causal link between two unrelated events. In 2019, Díaz-Lago and Matute found that a superficial perceptual feature of the task could modulate the magnitude of the illusion (i.e., a hard-to-read font led to a decrease in the magnitude of the illusion). The present study explored the generalisability of the idea that perceptual disfluency can lead to a decrease in the magnitude of the illusion. In the first experiment, we tested whether a physical-perceptual manipulation of the stimuli, specifically the contrast between the written text and the background, could modulate the illusion in a contingency learning task. The results of the online experiment (N = 200) showed no effect of contrast on the magnitude of the illusion, despite our manipulation having successfully induced task fluency or disfluency. Building upon this null result, our second experiment (N = 100) focused on manipulating the font type, in an attempt to replicate the results obtained by Díaz-Lago and Matute. In contrast to their findings, we found no discernible effect of font type on the magnitude of the illusion, even though this manipulation also effectively induced variations in task fluency or disfluency. These results underscore the notion that not all categories of (dis)fluency in cognitive processing wield a modulatory influence on cognitive biases, and they call for a re-evaluation and a more precise delineation of the (dis)fluency construct.

Face Age is Mapped Into Three-Dimensional Space.

People can represent temporal stimuli (e.g., pictures depicting past and future events) as spatially connoted dimensions arranged along the three main axes (horizontal, sagittal, and vertical). For example, past and future events are generally represented, from the perspective of the individuals, as being placed behind and in front of them, respectively. Here, we report that such a 3D representation can also emerge for facial stimuli of different ages. In three experiments, participants classified a central target face, representing an individual at different age stages, as younger or older than the reference face of 40 years. Manual responses were provided with two keys placed along the horizontal axis (Experiment 1), the sagittal axis (Experiment 2), and the vertical axis (Experiment 3). The results indicated that the younger faces were represented on the left/back/top side of the space, whereas the older faces were represented on the right/forward/bottom side of the space. Furthermore, in all experiments, the latencies decreased with the absolute difference between the age of the target face and that of the reference face (i.e., a distance effect). Overall, this work suggests that the spatial representation of time includes social features of the human face.

Grounding Intuitive Physics in Perceptual Experience.

This review article explores the foundation of laypeople's understanding of the physical world rooted in perceptual experience. Beginning with a concise historical overview of the study of intuitive physics, the article presents the hypothesis that laypeople possess accurate internalized representations of physical laws. A key aspect of this hypothesis is the contention that correct representations of physical laws emerge in ecological experimental conditions, where the scenario being examined resembles everyday life experiences. The article critically examines empirical evidence both supporting and challenging this claim, revealing that despite everyday-life-like conditions, fundamental misconceptions often persist. Many of these misconceptions can be attributed to a domain-general heuristic that arises from the overgeneralization of perceptual-motor experiences with physical objects. To conclude, the article delves into ongoing controversies and highlights promising future avenues in the field of intuitive physics, including action-judgment dissociations, insights from developmental psychology, and computational models integrating artificial intelligence.

A new Bayesian procedure for the estimation of the referees' decision thresholds and agreement. The case of professional handball refereeing.

In double refereeing, agreement between referees is fundamental for the achievement of a flawless and smooth refereeing activity. Nonetheless, the agreeement can be affected by several external and internal factors, with a negative impact on the consistency of the refereeing and the fluidity of the game. The referee's Decision Threshold (DT) is the limit above which the evidence of a foul results in the call of an infraction by the referee. It represents the individual refereeing style, and it is one of the factors that can contribute to low agreement between the referees. We present an application of a new Bayesian procedure to estimate referee's DT in a typical refereeing task. To this end, 56 italian professional handball (FIGH) referees were asked to evaluate 96 potential foul plays, belonging to four different infraction types: 7-m throw, passive play, offensive foul, disciplinary sanctions. The proposed method provides information about: (i) referee's individual DT; (ii) the agreement between pairs of referees (i.e., one-to-one); (iii) the agreement between each referee and all the other referees (i.e., one-to-total); (iv) the agreement between each referee and a reference referee (i.e., one-to-expert); (v) the proportion of agreement between the referees and a reference referee for each potential foul play. Sport federations would profit by this procedure in different ways: by using the information about the DT to train referees, by detecting referees with a low agreement with their colleagues or with the reference referee, by focusing training on specific plays to improve the arbitration class internal consistency.

The psychophysics of bouncing: Perceptual constraints, physical constraints, animacy, and phenomenal causality.

In the present study we broadly explored the perception of physical and animated motion in bouncing-like scenarios through four experiments. In the first experiment, participants were asked to categorize bouncing-like displays as physical bounce, animated motion, or other. Several parameters of the animations were manipulated, that is, the simulated coefficient of restitution, the value of simulated gravitational acceleration, the motion pattern (uniform acceleration/deceleration or constant speed) and the number of bouncing cycles. In the second experiment, a variable delay at the moment of the collision between the bouncing object and the bouncing surface was introduced. Main results show that, although observers appear to have realistic representations of physical constraints like energy conservation and gravitational acceleration/deceleration, the amount of visual information available in the scene has a strong modulation effect on the extent to which they rely on these representations. A coefficient of restitution >1 was a crucial cue to animacy in displays showing three bouncing cycles, but not in displays showing one bouncing cycle. Additionally, bouncing impressions appear to be driven by perceptual constraints that are unrelated to the physical realism of the scene, like preference for simulated gravitational attraction smaller than g and perceived temporal contiguity between the different phases of bouncing. In the third experiment, the visible opaque bouncing surface was removed from the scene, and the results showed that this did not have any substantial effect on the resulting impressions of physical bounce or animated motion, suggesting that the visual system can fill-in the scene with the missing element. The fourth experiment explored visual impressions of causality in bouncing scenarios. At odds with claims of current causal perception theories, results indicate that a passive object can be perceived as the direct cause of the motion behavior of an active object.

Gazing left, gazing right: exploring a spatial bias in social attention.

Faces oriented rightwards are sometimes perceived as more dominant than faces oriented leftwards. In this study, we explored whether faces oriented rightwards can also elicit increased attentional orienting. Participants completed a discrimination task in which they were asked to discriminate, by means of a keypress, a peripheral target. At the same time, a task-irrelevant face oriented leftwards or rightwards appeared at the centre of the screen. The results showed that, while for faces oriented rightwards targets appearing on the right were responded to faster as compared to targets appearing on the left, for faces oriented leftwards no differences emerged between left and right targets. Furthermore, we also found a negative correlation between the magnitude of the orienting response elicited by the faces oriented leftwards and the level of conservatism of the participants. Overall, these findings provide evidence for the existence of a spatial bias reflected in social orienting.

Noise in the brain: Transcranial random noise stimulation and perceptual noise act on a stochastic resonance-like mechanism.

Stochastic resonance (SR) is a phenomenon in which a certain amount of random noise added to a weak subthreshold stimulus can enhance signal detectability. It is unknown how external noise interacts with neural noise in producing an SR-like phenomenon and whether this interaction results in a modulation of either network efficiency or the efficiency of single neurons. Using random dot motion stimuli and noninvasive brain stimulation, we attempted to unveil the specific mechanism of action of the SR-like phenomenon in motion perception, if present. We aimed to determine whether signal integration efficiency changes with external noise (random dot numerosity) and how electrical transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS) can affect the peak performance. The participants performed a coherent motion detection task in which the random dot numerosity varied, whereas the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) remained constant. We applied placebo or tRNS with an amplitude of either 1 or 2 mA during task execution. We found peaks in participants' performance both in the case of placebo stimulation and in the case of 1-mA tRNS. In the latter case (i.e., with an additional noise source), the peak emerged at lower random dot numerosity levels than when no additional noise was added (placebo). No clear peak was observed with 2-mA tRNS. An equivalent noise (EN) analysis confirmed that SR arises from a modulation of the network efficiency underlying motion signal integration. These results indicate a joint contribution of external and neural noise (modulated by tRNS) in eliciting an SR-like phenomenon.

Improving content validity evaluation of assessment instruments through formal content validity analysis.

Content validity is defined as the degree to which elements of an assessment instrument are relevant to and representative of the target construct. The available methods for content validity evaluation typically focus on the extent to which a set of items are relevant to the target construct, but do not afford precise evaluation of items' behavior, nor their exhaustiveness with respect to the elements of the target construct. Formal content validity analysis (FCVA) is a new procedure combining methods and techniques from various areas of psychological assessment, such as (a) constructing Boolean classification matrices to formalize relationships among an assessment instrument's items and target construct elements, and (b) computing interrater agreement indices. We discuss how FCVA can be extended through the implementation of a Bayesian procedure to improve the interrater agreement indices' accuracy (Bayesian formal content validity analysis [B-FCVA]). With respect to extant methods, FCVA and B-FCVA can provide a great amount of information about content validity while not demanding much more work for authors and experts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

When time stands upright: STEARC effects along the vertical axis.

According to the spatial-temporal association of response codes (STEARC) effect, time can be spatially represented from left to right. However, exploration of a possible STEARC effect along the vertical axis has yielded mixed results. Here, in six experiments based on a novel paradigm, we systematically explored whether a STEARC effect could emerge when participants were asked to classify the actual temporal duration of a visual stimulus. Speeded manual responses were provided using a vertically oriented response box. Interestingly, although a top-to-bottom time representation emerged when only two temporal durations were employed, an inverted bottom-to-top time representation emerged when a denser set of temporal durations, arranged along a continuum, was used. Moreover, no STEARC effects emerged when participants classified the shapes of visual stimuli rather than their temporal duration. Finally, three additional experiments explored the STEARC effect along the horizontal axis, confirming that the paradigm we devised successfully replicated the standard left-to-right representation of time. These results provide supporting evidence for the notion that temporal durations can be mapped along the vertical axis, and that such mapping appears to be relatively flexible.

Towards the boundaries of self-prioritization: Associating the self with asymmetric shapes disrupts the self-prioritization effect.

Individuals tend to prioritize self-relevant information over other-relevant information. Converging empirical evidence indicates that stimuli that are arbitrarily associated with the self are processed more efficiently than stimuli that are arbitrarily associated with stranger identities. In the present study, we tested if a salient perceptual feature (i.e., presence or absence of symmetry) can modulate this self-prioritization effect. In particular, we wanted to know how the valence of symmetry would integrate or interfere with the self. Under one condition, participants were asked to associate the self with symmetric shapes and a stranger with asymmetric shapes, whereas, under another condition, the association was inverted (i.e., self-asymmetry/stranger-symmetry). The two conditions were manipulated within participants (Experiment 1, laboratory-based) or between participants (Experiment 2, online). Participants classified a randomly generated shape (symmetric vs. asymmetric) and a label (you vs. stranger) as either matching or nonmatching with the previously learned association. In both experiments, a clear self-prioritization effect emerged in the self-symmetry/stranger-asymmetry condition whereas, strikingly, no evidence of a self-prioritization effect emerged at all in the opposite condition. The results suggest that the self-prioritization effect is not mandatory and can be modulated by the valence of the stimuli with which self and stranger are associated. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Direct Gaze Holds Attention, but Not in Individuals with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

The attentional response to eye-gaze stimuli is still largely unexplored in individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Here, we focused on an attentional phenomenon according to which a direct-gaze face can hold attention in a perceiver. Individuals with OCD and a group of matched healthy controls were asked to discriminate, through a speeded manual response, a peripheral target. Meanwhile, a task-irrelevant face displaying either direct gaze (in the eye-contact condition) or averted gaze (in the no-eye-contact condition) was also presented at the centre of the screen. Overall, the latencies were slower for faces with direct gaze than for faces with averted gaze; however, this difference was reliable in the healthy control group but not in the OCD group. This suggests the presence of an unusual attentional response to direct gaze in this clinical population.

The (a)typical burden of COVID-19 pandemic scenario in Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Psychological and mental health consequences of large-scale anti-contagion policies are assuming strong relevance in the COVID-19 pandemic. We proposed a specific focus on a large sample of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), developing an ad hoc instrument to investigate changes occurred in specific (sub-)domains during a period of national lockdown (Italy). Our questionnaire, named AutiStress, is both context-specific (being set in the COVID-19 pandemic scenario) and condition-specific (being structured taking into account the autistic functioning peculiarities in the paediatric age). An age- and gender-matched group of neurotypical (TD) controls was also provided. As expected, the severe lockdown policies had a general negative impact both on ASD and TD children, reflecting the obvious burden of the pandemic situation. However, our findings also indicate that children with ASD experienced more positive changes than TD ones. Noteworthy, we report a thought-provoking double dissociation in the context-specific predictor (i.e., accessibility to private outdoor spaces), indicating that it impacts differently on the two groups. Focusing on the ASD group, results suggest a condition-specific impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on core autistic (sub-)domains. Taken together, our data call for a multi-layered, context- and condition-specific analysis of the pandemic burden beyond any oversimplification.

Evidence of weight-based representations of gravitational motion.

A hypothesis gaining increasing popularity is that laypeople's representations of physical phenomena might be driven by internalized physical laws. In three experiments, we tested if such hypothesis holds true for the representation of gravitational motion. Participants were presented with realistic, real-scale virtual spheres falling vertically downward from about 2 m high. The spheres appeared to be made of either polystyrene or wood. In Experiment 1, participants adjusted the falling motion pattern until it appeared to be natural. In Experiment 2, they compared the perceived naturalness of vertical free falls in a vacuum with the perceived naturalness of more realistic falls characterized by the presence of air drag. In Experiment 3, they estimated the position of the sphere after a variable interval of time from the beginning of the fall. Inconsistently with predictions from physics, results showed that representations of gravitational motion were strongly affected by the implied masses of the falling objects and did not account for air drag. This provides support for the hypothesis of weight-based heuristic representations of gravitational motion against the hypothesis of the internalization of physical laws. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Is 'heavy' up or down? Testing the vertical spatial representation of weight.

Smaller numbers are typically responded to faster with a bottom than a top key, whereas the opposite occurs for larger numbers (a vertical spatial-numerical association of response codes: i.e. the vertical SNARC effect). Here, in four experiments, we explored whether a vertical spatial-magnitude association can emerge for lighter vs. heavier items. Participants were presented with a central target stimulus that could be a word describing a material (e.g. 'paper', 'iron': Experiment 1), a numerical quantity of weight (e.g. '1 g', '1 kg': Experiment 2) or a picture associated with a real object that participants weighed before the experiment (Experiments 3a/3b). Participants were asked to respond either to the weight (Experiments 1-3a) or to the size (i.e. weight was task-irrelevant; Experiment 3b) of the stimuli by pressing vertically placed keys. In Experiments 1 and 2, faster responses emerged for the lighter-bottom/heavier-top mapping-in line with a standard SNARC-like effect-whereas in Experiment 3a the opposite mapping emerged (lighter-top/heavier-bottom). No evidence of an implicit weight-space association emerged in Experiment 3b. Overall, these results provide evidence indicating a possible context-dependent vertical spatial representation of weight.

Anomalous Perception of Biological Motion in Autism: A Conceptual Review and Meta-Analysis.

Despite its popularity, the construct of biological motion (BM) and its putative anomalies in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are not completely clarified. In this article, we present a meta-analysis investigating the putative anomalies of BM perception in ASD. Through a systematic literature search, we found 30 studies that investigated BM perception in both ASD and typical developing peers by using point-light display stimuli. A general meta-analysis including all these studies showed a moderate deficit of individuals with ASD in BM processing, but also a high heterogeneity. This heterogeneity was explored in different additional meta-analyses where studies were grouped according to levels of complexity of the BM task employed (first-order, direct and instrumental), and according to the manipulation of low-level perceptual features (spatial vs. temporal) of the control stimuli. Results suggest that the most severe deficit in ASD is evident when perception of BM is serving a secondary purpose (e.g., inferring intentionality/action/emotion) and, interestingly, that temporal dynamics of stimuli are an important factor in determining BM processing anomalies in ASD. Our results question the traditional understanding of BM anomalies in ASD as a monolithic deficit and suggest a paradigm shift that deconstructs BM into distinct levels of processing and specific spatio-temporal subcomponents.

Influence of visually perceived shape and brightness on perceived size, expected weight, and perceived weight of 3D objects.

In the size-weight illusion, when two objects of identical weight but different volume are lifted, the smaller object is typically perceived to weigh more than the larger object. A well-known explanation for this and other weight illusions is provided by the hypothesis that perceived weight results from the contrast between actual and expected weight. More recently, it has been suggested that an object's size may exert a direct and automatic effect on its perceived weight, independently of expected weight. Here we test these two hypotheses by exploring two illusions that have been known for a long time but have remained relatively underexplored, namely the shape-weight and brightness-weight illusions. Specifically, we measured the influence of visually perceived shape and brightness on the perceived size, the expected weight, and the perceived weight of 3D plastic objects. A numerical rating task was used in Experiment 1, and a paired comparison task was used in Experiment 2. The results showed that spheres were perceived to be heavier than tetrahedrons and cubes, and cubes were perceived to be heavier than tetrahedrons. We did not find any consistent relationship between brightness and perceived weight. A systematic comparison between perceived size, expected weight, and perceived weight showed that the visual shape-weight and brightness-weight illusions are partially inconsistent with the hypothesis that perceived weight results from the contrast between actual and expected weight and with the hypothesis that perceived weight results from the contrast between actual weight and perceived size. The results appear to suggest that there may be a dissociation between the processing of variables that contribute to the conscious experience of size, such as brightness and vertical height, and the processing of variables that contribute to perceived weight, such as surface area.

Intuitive physics of gravitational motion as shown by perceptual judgment and prediction-motion tasks.

In Experiment 1, we explored participants' perceptual knowledge of vertical fall by presenting them with virtually simulated polystyrene or wooden spheres falling to the ground from about two meters high. Participants rated the perceived naturalness of the motion. Besides the implied mass of the sphere, we manipulated the motion pattern (i.e., uniform acceleration vs. uniform velocity), and the magnitude of acceleration or velocity. Results show that relatively low values of acceleration or velocity were judged as natural for the polystyrene sphere, whereas relatively high values of acceleration or velocity were judged as natural for the wooden sphere. In Experiment 2, the same stimuli of Experiment 1 were used, but the sphere disappeared behind an invisible occluder at some point of its trajectory. Participants were asked to predict the time-to-contact (TTC) of the sphere with the ground by pressing a key at the exact time of impact of the lower edge of the sphere with the floor of the room. Results show that the estimated TTC for the simulated wooden sphere was slightly but consistently smaller than the estimated TTC for the simulated polystyrene sphere. The influence of the implied mass on participants' responses might be the manifestation of two processes, namely an explicit 'heavy-fast, light-slow' heuristic, and/or an implicit, automatic association between mass and falling speed.

Evidence of SQUARC and distance effects in a weight comparison task.

Stimuli associated with large quantities are typically responded to faster with a right- than a left-side key, whereas stimuli associated with small quantities are typically responded to faster with a left- than a right-side key. This phenomenon is known as the spatial-quantity association of response codes (SQUARC) effect. Here, in two experiments, we explored whether a SQUARC effect can emerge for light versus heavy items. Participants judged whether the weight associated with a central target word, describing an animal (e.g. 'cow'; Experiment 1) or a material (e.g. 'iron'; Experiment 2), was lighter or heavier than the weight associated with a reference word. Responses were provided with a left- and a right-side button. Then, participants estimated the weight associated with target and reference words. In both experiments, evidence for a SQUARC effect emerged. Moreover, response times for each target word decreased with absolute difference between its rated weight and the rated weight of the reference word, in line with a distance effect. Overall, these results provide evidence of a possible spatial representation of weight.