Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： How attention plays a role in resolving ambiguous perceptual judgments is one of the age-old scientific questions. Understanding the processes of perceptual grouping, switching, processing speed, and awareness is a key step towards solving significant problems in applications such as computer vision and automatic driving involving three-dimensional space. The rotating three-dimensional (3D) structure from motion (SFM) is a well-known bistable ambiguous stimulus. Thus far, it is still an open question how attention, eye movements, and depth cues modulate perceptual judgments of rotating directions of a 3D SFM. As early as 1925, motion perception resulted from eye tracking signals was proposed by Helmholtz (Cavanagh, 1992). Pomerantz (1970) claimed that eye movement plays an important role in the occurrence of kinesthetic perception. Furthermore, neuroscience studies has supported a common neural basis for eye movement and attention transfer (Grosbras, Laird & Paus, 2005). The current study aimed to investigate the characteristics and the time course of eye movements during SFM perception by controlling exogenous visual cues and ascertain the effect of attention on SFM perception. Using advanced eyemovements analysis, we investigated how attention under both unambiguous and ambiguous depth cues modulate perceptual judgments of rotation directions in deepth.Twenty-two college students (10 males and 12 females), mean age 22, participated in this experiment. Their task was to indicate the rotation directions of 3D SFM by pressing the left (for clockwise CW percept from top view) or the right key of a mouse (for CCW percept) with their left or right thumb. A computer simulated structure-from-motion (a 3D rotating sphere) was created via 30 coherently moving dots with 0.2° diameter each along with an elliptical trajectory of different radii at a mean velocity of 5°/s. The luminant dots were randomly distributed in a spherical area extended 5°×5°. Under unambiguous depth cue condition, dots were fully illuminated in the half of their trajectories and partially illuminated in the other part of the trajectories. The two groups of dots appeared to move in opposite direction. There were two sets of cued rotations in which bright dots (drawing attention) moving leftwards or rightwards. For ambiguous condition (AMB), all dots had equal brightness (averaged luminance of unambiguous displays), which had equal chance to be seen as rotating in either CW or CCW direction. During each experimental trial, after a 500 ms fixation “+”, a rotation-in-depth structure was presented for about 950 ms. A mask of random brighter and dimer dots was displayed for 500 ms after a response window of 1500 ms at the end of each trial. Advanced eyemovements analysis, e.g. microsaccade rates with directions and time courses, were conducted using methods from Bonneh, Adini & Polat (2015) and Hermens & Walker ( 2010). The statistical analysis revealed that perceptual judgments of rotation directions under unambiguous cues were faster and more confident than those under the ambiguous conditions. For the micro-saccade, peak velocity and amplitude were higher during perception of unambiguous 3D rotation than those during the ambiguous rotations. There was no significant difference in saccade duration. When participants judged the SFM as rotation of clockwise (left), their microsaccade rate towards left was significantly higher than that towards right and vise versa while the counter-clockwise judgment was made. Under the unambiguous condition, significant differences between CW-cw and CCW-ccw were found during time widows of 150~400 ms and 500~970 ms. In contrast, ambiguous conditions (AMB-cw and AMB-ccw) differed most during 700~950 ms, which indicated extra time of attentional processes. Our findings of temporal dynamics of the ambiguous and unambiguous perceptual judgments of 3D rotations indicated two stages of processing. First, local speed calculation in three-dimensional structure construction during initial period of 150~200 ms after stimulus onset. Second, visual processing binds local motion vector flows to the overall perceptual judgment of rotation directions. The ambiguous conditions took longer time. When rotations were unambiguous, attentional facilitates during perceptual judgment of 3D rotation of SFM speed up in the higher-level processing.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： The Chinese method of thinking includes dialectical and holistic thinking. Holistic thinking refers to people’s tendency to think in a holistic manner and focus on the relationship between things, which has no effective measurement method at present. Numerous studies have speculated on the relationship between Chinese thinking and creativity, but no known empirical research has focused on exploring their relationship. An uncertain aspect is whether and how Chinese thinking styles make an impact on creativity. The present study developed a situation assessment test to measure holistic thinking and explored its relationship with creative tendency. We hypothesize that (1) holistic thinking may be (1) correlated with field-dependence cognitive style and (2) may prohibit creative tendency. To verify the preceding hypothesis, idiom stories with typical Chinese thinking styles are first selected. Thereafter, an idiom riddle cultural park with transformation of form and meaning, situation, and context was constructed using virtual reality technology. By recording and coding idioms reported by participants when they visited the park, their level of holistic thinking could be measured. Lastly, cognitive style was evaluated using embedded figure test, personality traits were evaluated using the Chinese Big Five Personality Inventory brief version, and creativity tendency was evaluated by utilizing the Williams Prefer Measurement Forms. SPSS 18.0 was used for statistical analyses. Reliability and validity research has shown that the coefficient of homogeneity is high. Results showed that under an experimental condition, holistic thinking was significantly positively correlated with field-dependence cognitive style, the proportion of subjective words was significantly negatively correlated with neuroticism, the proportion of words with deep meaning was significantly negatively correlated with agreeableness, and the proportion of words that focus on the overall effect was significantly negatively correlated with openness. These results proved that the developed test has good calibration validity. Cluster analysis indicated two types of participants: (1) people with strong holistic thinking (i.e., report words with deep meaning, considerably self-involved, and focus on overall effect) will report numerous words and are considerably unreasonable, and (2) people with weak holistic thinking (i.e., report words with plain meaning, minimally self-involved, and focus on details) will report a few words and are substantially reasonable. The independent sample T-test on the creativity tendency of the two types of participants showed that the curiosity of people with strong holistic thinking was significantly higher than that of people with weak holistic thinking. Moreover, no significant difference was observed in other aspects of creativity tendency. Results support our hypothesis. The situation assessment test we developed has good reliability and validity and a useful method to measure Chinese holistic thinking. Compared with previous test methods, the current test has better ecological validity, can measure Chinese thinking in the natural cultural mood, and provide reference for other cultural tests. The current study can also contribute to an improved understanding of Chinese thinking styles and creativity tendency. This research is the first to realize the relationship between the two concepts in a virtual reality environment. Lastly, this method provides new ideas for a follow-up research on thinking and creativity.
Subjects: Psychology >> Applied Psychology submitted time 2021-07-20
Abstract： The Chinese method of thinking includes dialectical and holistic thinking. Holistic thinking refers to people’s tendency to think in a holistic manner and focus on the relationship between things, which has no effective measurement method at present. Numerous studies have speculated on the relationship between Chinese thinking and creativity, but no known empirical research has focused on exploring their relationship. An uncertain aspect is whether and how Chinese thinking styles make an impact on creativity. The present study developed a situation assessment test to measure holistic thinking and explored its relationship with creative tendency. We hypothesize that (1) holistic thinking may be (1) correlated with field-dependence cognitive style and (2) may prohibit creative tendency. To verify the preceding hypothesis, idiom stories with typical Chinese thinking styles are first selected. Thereafter, an idiom riddle cultural park with transformation of form and meaning, situation, and context was constructed using virtual reality technology. By recording and coding idioms reported by participants when they visited the park, their level of holistic thinking could be measured. Lastly, cognitive style was evaluated using embedded figure test, personality traits were evaluated using the Chinese Big Five Personality Inventory brief version, and creativity tendency was evaluated by utilizing the Williams Prefer Measurement Forms. SPSS 18.0 was used for statistical analyses. Reliability and validity research has shown that the coefficient of homogeneity is high. Results showed that under an experimental condition, holistic thinking was significantly positively correlated with field-dependence cognitive style, the proportion of subjective words was significantly negatively correlated with neuroticism, the proportion of words with deep meaning was significantly negatively correlated with agreeableness, and the proportion of words that focus on the overall effect was significantly negatively correlated with openness. These results proved that the developed test has good calibration validity. Cluster analysis indicated two types of participants: (1) people with strong holistic thinking (i.e., report words with deep meaning, considerably self-involved, and focus on overall effect) will report numerous words and are considerably unreasonable, and (2) people with weak holistic thinking (i.e., report words with plain meaning, minimally self-involved, and focus on details) will report a few words and are substantially reasonable. The independent sample T-test on the creativity tendency of the two types of participants showed that the curiosity of people with strong holistic thinking was significantly higher than that of people with weak holistic thinking. Moreover, no significant difference were observed in other aspects of creativity tendency. Results support our hypothesis. The situation assessment test we developed has good reliability and validity and a useful method to measure Chinese holistic thinking. Compared with previous test methods, the current test has better ecological validity, can measure Chinese thinking in the natural cultural mood, and provide reference for other cultural tests. The current study can also contribute to an improved understanding of Chinese thinking styles and creativity tendency. This research is the first to realize the relationship between the two concepts in a virtual reality environment. Lastly, this method provides new ideas for a follow-up research on thinking and creativity.
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Applied Psychology submitted time 2018-04-18 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Ever since 謍man, Flykt and Esteves published their classic study in 2001, many researchers have replicated their findings regarding attentional bias to threatening stimuli in visual perception research. Based on these findings, psychologists proposed a promising theory called predatory fear, in which the attentional bias to threatening animals is interpreted as evolutionarily adaptive behavior of early mammals and the ancestors of modern humans. However, from an evolutionary perspective, the lack of ecological validity of existing experiments inevitably attenuated the interpretation. The present study aimed to fill the gaps by repeating the classic work in a virtual reality environment. A virtual reality grove was created with the Virtools virtual reality engine, in which jungles, trees, flowers, and weeds were arranged in the form of a wild grass field. The virtual reality grove was presented with an Oculus Rift DK 2 helmet. Forty participants were instructed to navigate along a path in the grove and search for threatening or non-threatening target stimuli. 3D models of a snake, a spider, a flower, a mushroom, a cicada, and a squirrel were used as stimuli in the search task, among which snake and spider were considered threatening stimuli. All the stimuli were shown in yellow and were assessed by twenty participants not included in the forty participants in search task to ensure they were of similar salience. To examine attentional bias to threatening stimuli, two experiments were conducted in the same visual search task as reported by 謍man et al. In Experiment 1, as in 謍man et al., the snake or the spider was selected as a target stimulus, and thirteen copies of the flower or the mushroom were used as distracting stimuli, or other combinations of these. Twenty participants were individually presented with the virtual grove and instructed to passively wander along the path in the jungle to search for target stimuli. A fixed camera was set at a uniform speed to simulate the navigation in visual search task. Given that searching for animals took less time than searching for plants (Soares et al, 2009), flowers and mushrooms were replaced with cicadas and squirrels in Experiment 2. The other twenty participants repeated the experiment procedure. In addition to response time (RT), response distance (RD) was also computed as a compensatory index. In Experiment 1, the results of RTs revealed that the searching for threatening stimuli (snake and spider) is faster than searching for non-threatening stimuli (mushroom, flower). The RD values showed that participants found the threatening stimuli when they were farther away than the non-threatening stimuli. In Experiment 2, the same results were found even when the distracting stimuli were all animals. The RTs and RDs both confirmed that participants were better at finding snakes and spiders than finding flowers, mushrooms, cicadas, and squirrels. The total results supported the hypothesis of predatory fear was relatively soundly and the attentional bias to threatening animals, especially snake and spider, was found to be likely to be caused by predatory fear as part of human cognition. These findings provide new evidence for the hypothesis of predatory fear from an evolutionary perspective. In addition, virtual reality was proven to be a suitable technique for assessing the ecological validity of psychological experiments.
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